10 Pieces of Advice for the Gen Z Male

By almost every metric, the young Gen Z male is falling behind. Here's the good news: when the average guy is slipping, it's never been easier to climb into the top 5% of your age group.

The numbers are bleak. One in four American men ages 15 to 34 felt lonely for "a lot of" the previous day (Gallup, 2023–2024). Fifteen percent of men say they have no close friends, up from 3% in 1990 (Survey Center on American Life, 2021). And 63% of men under 30 are single, compared with 34% of women their age (Pew Research Center, 2022).

GQ, Playboy and Esquire no longer exist to give men in their 20s and 30s real social and professional guidance. So we'll give it a shot.

Every generation says the next one is different. Gen Z and Millennials actually grew up in two different worlds.

We Millennials used Facebook only to talk to friends and post homecoming photos taken on a separate camera. We learned to text on T9. Apple made the thing you listened to music on.

If you're 25 or younger, your world looked nothing like that. I wouldn't trade mine.

The average American man in his twenties is about 5'9" and 190 pounds (CDC NHANES, 2015–2018). If he's 25 to 34 and works full time, his median paycheck comes to about $62,500 a year (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2025). The average federal student loan borrower owes about $39,000 (Federal Student Aid, 2025). And Americans now carry $1.26 trillion in credit card debt, still climbing (New York Fed, Q2 2026).

If he's 25 today, he was born in 2001. He got a smartphone with full internet access around 13; by 12, 69% of kids already had one (Common Sense Media, 2019). Then COVID hit his freshman year of college.

For development, that's a perfect storm. No wonder men seem to be falling behind.

But flip it around. If the average guy is slipping, the bar is on the floor. Step over it.

You get 168 hours a week. That's roughly 88,000 hours in your twenties. Make them count.

We could write a whole book on this. Here are 10 pieces of advice instead.

The average S&P 500 CEO is 58 (Spencer Stuart, 2025). The median American worker is 42 (BLS, 2024).

That means when today's CEO started his career, around 1990, Excel was barely five years old. When the median worker started, around 2006, his company was still handing out BlackBerrys.

AI is one of the few places where you can be objectively better than everyone above you. Be the AI guy in your office: the one who automates the boring stuff, saves the team hours, and teaches everyone else how to do it. That's leverage, visibility and job security in one.

We're still early. But if you only use AI as a better search engine or an email drafter, you're already behind.

What to do this month:

Nearly half of employers, 47%, say Gen Z lacks satisfactory communication skills. Only 11% say that about Gen X (Indeed Global Talent Report, 2025).

That isn't your fault. It's very fixable.

Be in the office as much as possible. Assume every big company has a layoff list ready to go. Your salary is small right now, so if you're recognizable and well liked, that might be most of the job security you need.

One day we'll look back and laugh that we let the least social men in the country build and run the social media companies.

Mark Zuckerberg on a 2025 podcast: "The average American has fewer than three friends, fewer than three people they would consider friends. And the average person has demand for meaningfully more. I think it's something like 15 friends or something." His pitch is that AI can help fill that gap.

Don't let it. Don't rely on AI for friends, or worse, a girlfriend. It doesn't help that Sam Altman named Her his favorite sci-fi movie (Dreamforce, 2023). There are 8 billion people on this planet and half of them are women. Don't use tech to solve this problem.

What to do:

In a Harvard study of more than 92,000 adults, men gained an average of 21 pounds between age 21 and 55 (JAMA, 2017). Most of them didn't notice it happening. You'll notice it at your 10-year reunion.

There isn't a pill for everything.

You can't control your height or your hairline. You can control your weight and your muscle.

This part is hard. Your job in your 20s is to meet as many people as possible and climb at work, and that means nights out. You can cut back on drinking in your 30s and 40s, but in your 20s you need to be in the room. If it gets away from you, an aggressive six-month plan in your 30s can take it back off.

Walk. Aim for 10,000 steps a day. A large analysis of 15 studies found the drop in death risk levels off around 8,000 to 10,000 steps a day for adults under 60 (The Lancet Public Health, 2022). A brisk walk gets you roughly 1,000 steps every 10 minutes.

Outside with no headphones is best. Second best: put a walking pad next to your couch and walk through the game instead of lying down for it.

Just never get caught on a Zoom call on that walking pad, or in a weighted vest. Your seniors will laugh at you.

Vaping was sold as a healthier alternative for cigarette smokers. Then it found a younger audience. In 2022, Juul agreed to pay $438.5 million to 34 states and territories to settle an investigation into marketing that state attorneys general said targeted young people (Connecticut Attorney General, 2022).

People will tell you you're young and getting this stuff out of your system. More likely you're getting it into your system, and it's becoming your way of life.

Without knowing it, you spent your whole adolescence up against the best data scientists, engineers and marketing budgets in the world, all fighting for your attention. They got to you before your prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that handles planning and decision-making, finished developing. That doesn't happen until your mid-to-late 20s (National Institute of Mental Health).

Stephen King, born in 1947, saw it coming. In On Writing (2000), he called himself part of "the final handful of American novelists who learned to read and write before they learned to eat a daily helping of video bullshit."

Gambling, porn and video games are built to hook you. Skip all three and you're in rare company. You'll probably be the only guy she's ever been on a date with who can say that.

Why it matters: Your brain was built for sunlight, physical work, eye contact and deep sleep. It wasn't built for TikTok and online casinos. When you're constantly doomscrolling and sleeping badly, your stress hormones stay high. When dopamine comes easy and unearned, through porn, junk food and notifications, real life starts to feel flat and your motivation crashes. That's a big part of why so many men feel aimless, anxious or hooked.

What to do:

Comfort is the most expensive thing you can buy in your 20s.

Every hard thing you avoid now gets harder later: the tough conversation with your boss, the cold call, the gym at 6 a.m., the apology you owe. Pick one uncomfortable thing a week and do it on purpose.

And own your outcomes. When something goes wrong at work, be the first to say "that's on me, here's the fix." That one habit will separate you from most of the guys you came up with.

Ask women in their 20s whether there's a shortage or a surplus of good guys to settle down with. Every one of them will say shortage.

You already saw the numbers: 63% of men under 30 are single (Pew Research Center, 2022). Scott Galloway has talked about this at length, and his conversations with Richard Reeves are always worth your time.

Juan Soto made about $62 million in 2025 and hit .263 (Baseball-Reference; FanGraphs). That means he didn't get a hit in nearly three of every four at-bats. He kept swinging.

Give a man average sex, average income and average food, and that's enough for him to stop chasing his dreams.

Be intentional. It's okay to end things fast. It's very easy to slide into casual sex and get comfortable with that life. And the women you date are carrying more than you think: about 1 in 10 women ages 18 to 39 took an antidepressant in the past month (CDC NCHS, 2015–2018). Be the steady one.

What to do:

For the last 10 years you didn't get a choice about keeping politics out of your feed. It was the feed.

You do get a choice about whether it becomes your personality. Vote. Have opinions. But if the first thing people learn about you is which side you're on, you've handed your identity to cable news and an algorithm.

The guy who can grab a beer with people on both sides will go further at work, in friendships and in dating than the guy who can't.

Own one tailored navy suit, a couple of white dress shirts and two very good ties.

Keep a proper black suit for funerals. No need to overspend on that one.

Start here: How to Dress Like a Man

Nobody is ever mad at the guy who overdressed.

You should be in the office five days a week. The random Friday coffee or drink with someone senior can shape your future earnings more than your next review.

Boys today spend most of their early education with very few men around. Only about 1 in 10 public elementary school teachers is male (National Center for Education Statistics, 2020–21).

Read Dr. Robert Glover's No More Mr. Nice Guy. He gives the best explanation of how, as America moved from farms to offices, boys lost time with their dads and grew up with far less male influence than ever before.

There's a shortage of good male role models, and neither the GQ editorial board nor Andrew Tate is helping.

So find your own. If you're 25 and there's a 35-year-old guy in your office whose style, presence and life you admire, tell him. Ask how he did it. Then copy the process.

A great first boss can be worth more than any raise. Curate an X feed and a YouTube feed full of men you'd actually want to become.

Life is long and it only gets harder. Play the long game. Never burn a relationship. Make more calls than you think you need to.

You don't need all 10 of these by Friday. Pick the one that stung the most when you read it and start tonight.

Then send this to the friend who needs number four the most. Or tell me which one I got wrong.

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