By New York Post (U.S.) | Created at 2026-09-15 21:59:59 | Updated at 2026-09-15 22:46:02
55 minutes ago
Man, oh, man.
The number of single young men in America has soared nearly 50% since 2000 — and despite what the ladies may think, that’s not necessarily a good thing.
There were 30.4 million bachelors ages 20 to 39 in the country in 2025, while about 15.4 million men were married, according to a recent report from the Institute for Family Studies.
In 2000, by comparison, there were 20.7 million bachelors and 18.1 million husbands in the US — showing the gap between unmarried and married men is now almost six times as great these days.
The number of single young men in America has soared by nearly 50% since 2000. fotoduets – stock.adobe.com“Such men are more likely to be lonely, prone to deaths of despair and unhappy,” said Brad Wilcox, a sociologist at the University of Virginia, to the Washington Times, referring to bachelors.
“It’s never good for a society to have large numbers of unattached, dispirited, and unhappy young men.”
Wilcox noted that the marriage rate has dropped fastest among working-class men, as has child-rearing — and pointed to a growing share of young men who play video games and are addicted to social media.
“The digital revolution has exacted a major toll on their social skills, their opportunities to mix and mingle and their educational attainment,” he said.
“Our schools also do them a disservice, as they tend not to cater to the interests and educational orientations of boys,” Wilcox said.
About 25% of 40-year-olds of both genders also reported in 2021 that they were never married, up from 6% in 1980, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data.
Broken down by gender, that represented 28% of men and 22% of women.
The median age of first marriages for American men is now around 31, up from 23.5 in 1975, according to US Census Bureau data.
The news comes hot on the heels of reports that more than two-thirds of Americans don’t socialize at all on any given day, with Gen Z particularly affected after spending key developmental years in COVID lockdowns.
Gen Z also appears to be the most suspicious generation, with just 13% agreeing with the statement that most people can be trusted.
At the same time, nearly 10% of Gen Zers reported zero face-to-face interactions with another person in their daily life.
