‘What Everyone Gets Wrong About Our Generation’—According to 21 College Kids

In the early days of 2025, there was a formula that every publication I read seemed to follow on their homepage: photo of young men + MAGA hat, cowboy hat, or lost stare into the distance + headline along the lines of: “Young American men are angry, MAGA-fied, entering the manosphere, antifeminist, addicted to their phones, and not okay.” “Is your son ‘Dark Woke?’ ” “Is Joe Rogan replacing church?” “Is your masculinity toxic?”

I’m not an expert on men, but I am married to one. When we go back to each other’s East Coast hometowns, we often reminisce on how boyhood played out around us. Broken bones and blood watered down with Miller High Life and backyard DIY video projects. Hiding trash bags full of red cups before someone’s parents got home, and the pain that comes with friendships shifting in college. When I saw those headlines about Gen Z men, I wondered if those guys were developing the same memories.

One thing that became evident through the 21 conversations I conducted recently with American college men—about dating, partying, AI, MAGA, and the greatest misconceptions about their generation—is that there is very little room in their life for low-stakes mischief. “Everyone has receipts now. I see surveillance culture leaking into nondigital interactions. You can’t even sneak out of your house now because your parents have you on Life360.” It was in this conversation with Kunsh, a 22-year-old rising senior at Ohio State, that I learned about Life360, the location-sharing app mainly used by families to track one another’s whereabouts. The company made over $371 million in revenue last year.

Nolan, a 22-year-old rising senior at Purdue, shared a similar concern. “There’s a fear of being seen as, or being, cringeworthy, and then getting posted for all the internet to see. It’s like, ‘If I approach this girl, how is it going to be seen in a group chat with all of her friends?’ ”

These conversations didn’t center around surveillance, but the more the topic came up, the more suffocated I felt for young men in this country. Does the inability to pool-hop without being caught by an Amazon Ring camera or get tongue-tied while texting a new friend without being screenshotted have long-term effects? I don’t know. “The biggest problem with surveillance is that no one wants to genuinely be themselves,” Damola, a 21-year-old rising senior at Michigan, told me.

The question we should all be asking isn’t “Are today’s young men okay?” (Because: Were the men around you in college okay?) The much more interesting question to me is what a generation growing up in the glow of blue lights will say when given the opportunity to be unfiltered.