The trouble with being a boy today
Catherine Carr travelled the UK to meet the next generation of men for a radio series that aired last week. This is what they told her er about being g young and male in 2024 24
It was two separate conversations that made me think properly about what life might be like as a boy these days. The first was about a 13-year-old, the son of a friend, who said he had been rounded on for making a small (and, he thought, complimentary) comment about a girl’s haircut.
He told his mother that the girl’s friends were outraged: “Oh my God, you can’t say that about someone’s appearance. That’s so bad. You can’t talk about a girl like that!”
He fancied the girl, so the whole episode was pretty painful. He was deflated, embarrassed and resolved never to “go there” again.
The second conversation was with a mother of a 16-year-old. He had started having sex, and talked to her about some of the realities of dating and hooking up. He said it was “quite common” among his friends to record their partners on their phones giving verbal consent before having sex. Sometimes, he said, they recorded again midway through – this time to make sure that the girl was happy to “do something different or something” – and sometimes the phone was left recording the whole event … “to make sure”.
My own boys were 13 and 15 at the time, smack bang in the middle of secondary school and just at the tail end of Covid. Until then, I had been busy enough worrying about normal things: whether they could break a bone in a rugby match; if they were safe being out after dark; what they saw on their phones, and how they were getting on with schoolwork.
Added to that were pandemic worries about time spent online, their lack of social lives and what those months cooped up might have done to their development and happiness. At no stage did I consider worrying about the effect that #MeToo and Everyone’s Invited – brilliant campaigns which raise awareness of the shocking levels of sexual assault against girls and women – might have on boys. It became a new worry for my list.
I should make it completely clear that I think anything which helps reduce violence against women and girls is good. Both these movements were really good. As women of my generation know only too well, before they existed it was very hard to speak out. It still can be. But once I started talking to other mothers about their sons, it became clear that conversations about sexual assault had made many them fearful about sex and relationships.
Some seemed to have even internalised ideas about boys being “bad” or felt in trouble before they started. Many hadn’t even ever tried to initiate a relationship, because of what they perceived to be the risks attached.
Conversations about sex, consent and false allegations became the focus for one of the five programmes I ended up making for a BBC Radio 4 series, About the Boys , which aired last week. The other episodes cover life online, pornography, friendships, education, and ideas of masculinity and success. I travelled to Devon, Hertfordshire, Carmarthen, Rochdale, Bradford, London and Cambridge to interview all kinds of boys in all kinds of settings, including youth clubs, schools, colleges, sports clubs and dance companies. I sent recorders to Scotland so members of the Boys’ Brigade there could take part, too.
Before I set off, I spoke to experts who have researched boys for years. One of those I interviewed, Dr Niobe Way, had written a book about teenage boys and friendship. “That must be a short book!” someone joked when she told them, as if all teenage boys have nothing much to say. She found the opposite, and so did I.
I was amazed at the openness, thoughtfulness, honesty and vulnerability the boys showed. Some of them confessed they’d never thought, before I asked, about “what it means to be a man” or what they would want listeners to know about
being a boy in 2024. Once I did ask, they were so willing to talk. “People think boys are bratty, spoiled, disgusting … and rude, as well,” one toldme. told me. “It’s all not true.”
Another said: “Men come across in relationships as these powerful figures that need to protect and all that. But men have off days, we can’t always be like that. We are fragile … And I feel like some women need to understand that.”
The boys I met were all aged between 13 and 19, with an honourable exception for a group of adorable primary school boys who sang for me, showed me their press-up skills and told me how many fish fingers they can eat “in one go” (20, in case you are wondering: 10, then a small break, then 10 more).
The older boys talked about the patriarchy being a bad thing for boys as well as girls, and their concerns about male mental health: “Eighty per cent of suicides are men.”
They told me that oral sex was more common at year 11 parties than any other kind of sex, and how watching porn gave them unrealistic ideas about what their bodies and their faces should look like during intercourse, and what they should be doing. “Even though we know it’s an unrealistic expectation of what might happen,” one boy explained, “you still have to fill those boots.”
They worry that porn videos showed penetrative sex lasting for 25 minutes, which they thought “challenging”, and were reassured to hear in a lesson that the average time is more like three to four minutes.
Many were angry that the adults in their lives dodged uncomfortable conversations about sex, including “what to do and where everything even is”, and others confirmed what I already knew: that the fear of getting accused of assault puts them off the whole idea completely. “Even if they do consent, what am I gonna do if they say ‘nah’ right after?”
As a radio producer, editing different episodes, I found it impossible to segregate and separate the topics. Sex has such obvious connections to the time boys spend online, whether watching porn or other videos on YouTube and TikTok. The boys were all too aware of the way that pornographic content seeps into almost every place they visit on the internet.
I found it heartbreaking to hear the way boys from all corners of the UK described trying to live in a digital world without being constantly sucked into a doomscrolling vortex on their phones at home, alone. “I wish I was brought up in a different generation,” one 15-yearold in Dartmoor told me. “I look up, and minutes have turned into hours,” said another. One boy from Herefordshire shared his total hours online over the Christmas holidays: 40 a week.
The data backs up the stories. Boys are retreating from the real world and have been ever since video games were invented in the 1970s. The arrival of the smartphone has accelerated the process and – as researchers from New York University have shown – one of the results is that many boys are losing vital skills. Zach Rausch, a research scientist at NYU-Stern, explained how studies show that in order to play together, boys say they need to be physically separate: in their own rooms with their own screens. Boys I spoke to who were keen on gaming said that– unlike girls “who want to go shopping and get their nails done” – they were happier to chill at home, online.
Those who had found close IRL (in real life) friendships were usually older teen, who had navigated the tricky waters of secondary school friendship hierarchies, where your status can be directly connected to “your ability to get girls”. Those low down these hierarchies told me they felt too socially insecure to even challenge racist or sexist comments that they know are wrong.
Like a stick of rock, throughout every conversation on every topic, the boys all kept coming back to feelings. “They don’t think we are soft inside,” one said. “It’s hard to open up as a boy.” Ideas of what it means to be a man, how to start a relationship, keep a friendship, be successful or get on well at school, were all tangled up with old ideas of being “stone-faced” and “manning up” and newer ideas of being “emotionally expressive and vulnerable”.
One boy gave me the example of a girl breaking down in tears in class. Think how different the reaction of their classmates would be, he said, if the person who’d broken down in tears was a boy.
If the picture appears bleak, then I don’t mean it to be. The boys I spoke to were all so warm and thoughtful and frank. But I am not naive. I met them all in settings where at least one adult in their life is invested in them and is making an effort to get to know and support them – whether that’s a teacher, youth leader or coach. It’s harder to reach boys who lack any cheerleaders at all.
Having been hugely encouraged by the willingness of boys I did meet to talk of their lives so honestly, I did add a big new worry to my list: after the massive cuts we’ve seen to youth services – which enable boys to be reached and supported – what might the end result be?
I was amazed at the openness, honesty, thoughtfulness and vulnerability the boys showed