Something has gone deeply wrong in how men and women are connecting — or more accurately, failing to connect.

According to research from psychologist Andrew Thomas (DatePsychology), 59% of single men aged 18–25 haven't approached someone they're interested in within the past year. Even more striking: 45% have never done it at all. Not once.

Meanwhile, 77% of women say they want to be approached more.

Three out of four women want men to come talk to them, and nearly half of young men have never even tried. This isn't just a dating problem. It's a crisis of masculinity, confidence, and health — and it's getting worse every year.

THE NUMBERS ARE GETTING WORSE

The Institute for Family Studies tracks sexual behaviour through the National Survey of Family Growth and General Social Survey. Their findings paint a disturbing picture:

These are not small shifts. This is an entire generation pulling back from human connection.

WHY AREN'T MEN APPROACHING?

Risk aversion — the tendency to prefer a "safe" outcome over one that carries any chance of negative consequence — has become the dominant psychological mode for young men.

The fear isn't irrational — social media has amplified the consequences of any awkward social interaction. A rejected approach that might have been forgotten in five minutes twenty years ago could now theoretically be filmed and posted online.

But here's the paradox: over 60% of men across all ages wish they had approached more women. The regret of inaction compounds over a lifetime. Risk aversion isn't protecting men. It's imprisoning them.

Here's something most men don't think about: dating apps are structurally designed to keep you on the app, not to help you find a partner.

A 2025 paper published in JMIR Formative Research put it plainly — dating apps function like casinos, calibrating reward cycles to keep users swiping rather than meeting. From a revenue standpoint, a successful offline relationship means a lost subscriber. The business model incentivises keeping you engaged, not getting you results.

Here's the deeper issue that many men overlook: dating apps reduce your motivation to go outside and meet women in the real world.

This is something we've observed firsthand. When you have an app on your phone showing you faces of women you could theoretically match with, the urgency to go outside and interact with the real world diminishes. The app becomes a release valve. You feel like you're "doing something" about your dating life while sitting on the couch.

Here's an uncomfortable truth that sits at the centre of the male loneliness epidemic: pornography and masturbation have become the path of least resistance — and they're draining men of the very drive they need to pursue real connection.

The neuroscience is clear. Pornography triggers unnaturally high and sustained dopamine spikes in the brain's reward system — surpassing what natural sexual experiences produce. Over time, this leads to desensitisation: the brain's reward circuitry becomes dulled, requiring increasingly novel or extreme content to achieve the same effect. This is the same tolerance mechanism observed in substance addiction.

This is the mechanism that kills approach behaviour: when a man can get sexual release instantly, without risk, without effort, and without leaving his bedroom, the biological urgency to go outside and engage with women evaporates.

Think about it from an evolutionary perspective. For the entirety of human history, if a man wanted sexual gratification, he had to engage with the real world. He had to develop social skills, build physical competence, demonstrate value, and take the risk of approaching a woman. The sexual drive was one of the most powerful motivators of male behaviour — it pushed men to build, to achieve, and to connect.

Pornography short-circuits this entire system. It provides the neurochemical reward of sexual behaviour without any of the real-world effort that traditionally accompanied it.

Then came OnlyFans — and it got worse.

Unlike traditional pornography, OnlyFans creates what psychologists call a parasocial relationship — a one-sided emotional bond where the consumer feels genuine intimacy with someone who doesn't know they exist. OnlyFans isn't just selling sexual content; it's selling the illusion of connection.

Men pay to message creators, believing they're building a relationship, when in reality many of those conversations are managed by agencies or AI chatbots trained to extract more money.

The parasocial trap is particularly cruel because it mimics just enough of real intimacy to suppress the loneliness that would otherwise push a man to seek genuine connection. It's a paid simulation of a relationship — and for lonely men, it becomes a substitute for the real thing.

Every iteration of this cycle makes it harder to break free. The man's baseline motivation drops. His confidence erodes because he's not practising real social interaction. His libido becomes trained to respond to screens rather than people.

This is not how your ancestors lived. They didn't have infinite novelty at their fingertips. Their sexual drive pushed them into the world, not away from it. That drive was a feature, not a bug — it was nature's way of ensuring men engaged with reality.

One of the hidden drivers of male withdrawal from dating isn't just psychological — it's biological.

Research using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES) found a nearly 25% decrease in average total testosterone levels among young men aged 15–40 between 1999 and 2016.

This isn't just an ageing population effect — the decline was significant even among men with normal BMI, suggesting environmental and lifestyle factors are contributing beyond obesity alone. Low testosterone is directly linked to:

When a man's biology is telling him he doesn't need to seek out a partner, is it any wonder he stays home? When his energy is low and his drive is suppressed, the idea of walking up to a stranger and starting a conversation feels impossible — not because of social anxiety alone, but because his body isn't giving him the signal to act.

This is why what you put into your body matters. The decline in testosterone isn't inevitable. Nutrition, movement, sleep, and supplementation with clinically studied ingredients can make a meaningful difference.

When your libido returns, something shifts. You want to go outside. You want to engage. The world becomes interesting again because your biology is working with you, not against you.

Here's a question nobody asks: if young men were confident, would this crisis exist?

Probably not. Confidence is what closes the gap between seeing someone attractive and actually walking over to introduce yourself. And confidence has been systematically eroded for an entire generation of men.

Social media comparison. Men are bombarded with highlight reels of other men's physiques, wealth, relationships, and achievements. Research consistently links dating app use with increased body dissatisfaction and negative self-image.

Fatherlessness. Nearly one in four men have grown up without fathers. Without a model of masculine confidence — someone who shows you through action that approaching the world with courage is normal — many young men simply never develop the instinct.

Declining physical capability. Men who are sedentary, overweight, and physically weak don't feel confident. This isn't about vanity — it's about the deep connection between physical competence and psychological self-assurance that has existed for the entire history of our species.

This is the second connection to what you put into your body. When men feel energised, when they're recovering properly, when they're performing better athletically and cognitively, confidence isn't something they need to manufacture. It emerges naturally from achievement.

Ashwagandha for stress resilience and recovery. Guarana and Spirulina for athletic endurance. Lion's Mane for cognitive clarity. These aren't abstract benefits — they're the building blocks of a man who feels capable, and a man who feels capable is a man who approaches life differently. Including approaching women.

There's a growing ideological gap between young men and young women that makes connection harder. NBC exit polls from the 2024 US election showed young men (18–29) leaning toward Trump while young women of the same age leaned heavily toward Harris. This isn't a political statement — it's an observation about how polarised the genders have become in their worldviews.

Men are being pulled toward figures who tell them society is rigged against them. Women are being pulled toward narratives that villainise men. Both extremes make genuine connection harder.

The answer isn't in ideology. It's in action. The man who is physically strong, mentally sharp, emotionally grounded, and willing to engage with the world directly doesn't need an influencer to tell him what to think about women. He forms his own views through real-world experience — the kind of experience that only comes from actually talking to people.

YOUR ANCESTORS DIDN'T SWIPE RIGHT

Your great-grandfather didn't have an app. He didn't have a dating coach. He didn't need a YouTube video to tell him that it was okay to introduce himself to a woman he found attractive. He just did it. Because that's what men did.

This doesn't mean being aggressive. It doesn't mean ignoring social cues. It means understanding that respectful, genuine approach is not only acceptable — it's welcomed by the majority of women.

Remember: 77% of women want to be approached more. The data doesn't lie.

WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT

MAN MUST ADAPT

The world has changed. The rules of social engagement have shifted. Technology has rewired how we interact. None of that changes the fundamental reality:

If you want connection, you have to pursue it.

Not through a screen. Not through an algorithm. Through the ancient, uncomfortable, deeply human act of walking up to someone and saying hello.

The data tells us that the men who do this — even imperfectly — are overwhelmingly better off than those who don't. The women want it. The research supports it. Your ancestors modelled it.

The loneliness epidemic is real, but it's not inevitable. It ends one approach at a time. One conversation at a time. One decision at a time to prioritise real-world connection over digital comfort.