Scott Galloway is right to sound the alarm: technology and artificial intelligence are not neutral tools when they reshape how young men form bonds, take risks, and handle rejection. We are watching a generation of men hollowed out by endless scrolling and dopamine-driven feedback loops, and the evidence is stark — sexual inactivity among young men has surged in recent years, with roughly one in three men aged 18 to 24 reporting no sexual activity in the past year in recent surveys.
This is not a private sorrow; it has become a public-health emergency the medical establishment can no longer ignore. The U.S. Surgeon General has called loneliness and social isolation an epidemic with physical harms comparable to smoking, urging a national response to rebuild real-world social connection rather than letting billion-dollar platforms profit from substituting clicks for community.
Meanwhile, pornography and gaming have quietly supplanted courtship, intimacy, and male mentorship for many boys and young men. Studies and reporting show dramatically increased exposure to explicit material at ever-younger ages and rising patterns of problematic consumption that distort sexual expectations and blunt the incentive to pursue real relationships.
Add to that the rise of AI-powered “companions” and relationship simulators that validate every complaint and erase the sting of disappointment, and you create an ecosystem that trains men to prefer controllable, nonjudgmental machines over the messy work of human intimacy. International analyses and policy reports warn that synthetic relationships can foster dependency, reduce interest in human partnership, and even produce addiction-like behaviors in vulnerable users.
The consequences ripple into our institutions: fewer men are enrolling in and completing college at the rates we once expected, and many young men are disengaging from stable work and community roles that build purpose and responsibility. Those trends are already reshaping family formation and civic life, and they will not reverse themselves if we continue to treat the digital economy as beyond reproach.
Conservatives must call out the root cause honestly — Big Tech’s engagement-first algorithms monetize isolation, and woke campuses and hollow institutions have offered no counterweight of masculine mentorship or civic virtue. This is not a culture-war slogan; it is a policy and community problem that demands parents, churches, employers, and lawmakers reassert the values that turn boys into resilient men: work, faith, accountability, and face-to-face community.
Hardworking Americans should not be asked to barter their sons’ futures for the profits of Silicon Valley. Turn off the devices, insist on in-person obligations, demand age-appropriate protections and transparency from platforms, and rebuild institutions that teach young men how to tolerate rejection, take responsibility, and lead. If we do not act, the next generation will be more isolated, less productive, and easier to manipulate — and that is a threat to our country every bit as serious as any foreign adversary.
