You’ve no doubt heard about the “manosphere,” a loose, online community of men, typically single ones, who are dissatisfied with their dating options (or lack thereof), promote a hypermasculine lifestyle, and criticize progressive gender dynamics. These men frequently complain about modern women, whom they accuse of seducing high-status men for self-serving reasons such as excitement and money, and who will purportedly discard a lower-status mate with little remorse. Men, the manosphere participants reason, must look out only for themselves.
Like so many ideas propagated as fact on social media and the internet, this belief gives a wildly distorted picture of the desires and needs of the vast majority of both women and men today. The best data on what young adults are actually looking for comes from data collected by think tanks such as the Institute for Family Studies and the Wheatley Institute, which together have recently published a report titled “State of Our Unions 2026: The Dating Recession.”
It is true that, according to the report’s survey, only 21 percent of single young adults today are satisfied with their dating options. But contrary to the idea that young women are solely after good times and resources, the researchers find that 83 percent strongly endorse a dating culture focused on forming serious relationships and creating emotional connections. And lest you think that young males simply seek short-term hookups, the corresponding numbers for men are 74 percent (relationships) and 76 percent (connections).
