America's Growing Gender Divide: Why Are Young People Losing Each Other?

Introduction: A Society Coming Apart

In his new book Generation Uncoupled: America's New Gender Divide and the Crisis of Human Connection, Daniel Cox, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), paints a troubling picture: young men and women are not only drifting apart politically but are also systematically decoupling in dating, trust, and basic human connection.

On Vox's podcast The Gray Area, Cox sat down with host Christine Emba (filling in) for a two-hour deep dive, ranging from the consequences of introducing smartphones to an Amazonian tribe to why contemporary parents no longer transmit values to their children. This article draws on the original interview to trace the core chain of his argument.

From Isolation to Dysregulation: When the Internet Becomes the Only Social Venue

Cox first situates this gender crisis within the broader decline of social participation. He notes that America has always been a highly individualistic society, and what used to hold it together was a whole "social fabric" of civic organizations, social clubs, and religious groups. But this system has been shrinking steadily since the 1990s, with people spending more and more time online.

Cox uses a striking example to illustrate the internet's "social transformative power": after Elon Musk's Starlink brought Wi-Fi to an isolated Marubo tribe in the Amazon rainforest, phenomena such as young people becoming addicted to screens, gossiping behind each other's backs, and pornography flooding the community erupted almost simultaneously. A New York Times reporter documented the process. Cox sees the tribe's experience as a "microcosm" of what is happening in our own society.

More critically, there is the "always-with-you" nature of smartphones. Cox recalls growing up in a home with a single computer and a single TV—screens didn't follow you around. Today's mobile internet means you carry an attention disruptor with you at all times—even when having dinner with someone, a phone on the table continuously erodes the quality of interaction.

Social fabric is a sociological term describing the totality of institutional, organizational, and informal relational networks that bind individuals into a community within a society. It typically includes intermediate organizations such as churches, unions, neighborhood associations, volunteer groups, and sports clubs, as well as kinship networks, habitual reciprocity, and shared norms. Political scientist Robert Putnam systematically documented the decline of America's social fabric since the 1960s in Bowling Alone: falling voter turnout, shrinking union membership, declining church attendance, and withering clubs and community activities. Putnam attributed this change to generational turnover, suburbanization, the spread of television, and shifts in time structures as women entered the labor force. The weakening of social fabric does not necessarily mean people are lonelier; rather, it means connections have shifted from stable, mediated, face-to-face structures to more temporary, fluid ones dependent on individual choice. The gender decoupling Cox describes occurs against this backdrop: once public intermediate organizations decline, there are fewer institutionalized settings and shared norms for contact between the sexes, leaving the internet as the only remaining social venue—and its algorithms and incentive structures tend to amplify antagonism and stereotypes.

The Capacity for Perspective-Taking Is Disappearing

In his book, Cox revisits the famous 1982 "Tootsie assignment": a professor asked students to write about a day in their life from the perspective of the opposite sex, and students overwhelmingly found it extremely difficult. Cox's judgment: if the same experiment were run today, the results would be even worse.

The internet was supposed to expose us to more diverse life experiences and thereby strengthen empathy. But Cox admits he himself once held that optimistic expectation, and reality has moved in the opposite direction—people slide more quickly into tribalism, more readily explain others' behavior through generalizations and stereotypes rather than asking "why is this person doing this?"

This decline in empathy projects directly onto gender relations. According to data Cox cites, the gap between young American men and women in political identification has now reached about 20 percentage points. On feminist identity, the divergence between Gen Z men and women far exceeds that of any other generation.

The Tootsie assignment takes its name from the 1982 film Tootsie starring Dustin Hoffman, in which the male lead disguises himself as a woman to win a role and is thereby forced to experience daily life as a woman. The assignment asked heterosexual male students to write a first-person account from a female perspective, or vice versa, with the goal of getting students to practice perspective-taking by imagining another gender's daily experiences. Classroom experiments at the time showed that many students found it extremely difficult and even deeply uncomfortable, because they had never systematically thought about the opposite sex's situation in public space, the workplace, or intimate relationships. Cox revisits this case to argue that perspective-taking is not a natural ability but a social skill that must be trained and reinforced. The internet theoretically offers more opportunities to encounter the opposite sex's experiences, but platforms' content distribution mechanisms tend to push users into homogeneous information bubbles and sustain engagement with conflict-driven content. The result is that people engage less in slow, specific, contextualized perspective-taking and rely more on labels and group attribution. This atrophy of the empathy muscle directly undermines the foundational capacity needed to build trust and intimacy between the sexes.

The Vicious Cycle of Collapsing Trust and Self-Protection

One finding from the interview that was not anticipated in advance drew widespread attention: Gallup's long-running data on perceived crime threat shows that fear of sexual assault among women aged 18 to 49 rose significantly between 2015 and 2017, while men's fear barely changed.

Cox attributes this to a confluence of factors. On one hand, the #MeToo movement raised public awareness of sexual harassment and assault; on the other, the internet widely circulated "self-protection" content—such as a woman living alone leaving a pair of men's shoes at her door when ordering takeout. Cox counters: if the world weren't extremely dangerous, why would such measures be necessary?

The deeper problem lies in the collapse of institutional trust. Cox's team's data shows that young women lack confidence in the ability of police, the judicial system, and even religious institutions to handle sexual harassment complaints. When institutions are perceived as unable to provide protection, individuals can only internalize safety responsibility as personal boundary management, further intensifying suspicion and estrangement between the sexes.

Institutional trust refers to an individual's stable expectations regarding the fairness, effectiveness, and goodwill of formal organizations such as police, courts, schools, and religious institutions. Political science and sociology typically distinguish between generalized trust and specific trust: the former is a general trust in strangers, while the latter is trust in specific institutions and personnel. When a sexual harassment or assault complaint occurs, victims need to believe that reporting will not lead to secondary humiliation, that judicial procedures will not be delayed or dismissed, and that schools or employers will handle it fairly. Gallup and other surveys show that young women's confidence in these institutions' handling of such complaints is significantly lower than that of older groups and men. This distrust does not arise from nowhere: it comes both from observing historical cases and from the widespread circulation of failure stories on social media. When institutions are deemed unreliable, individuals turn to self-protection strategies, including restricting social settings, presuming men to be potential threats, and maintaining defensive boundaries in intimate relationships. These strategies are rational at the individual level, but at the collective level they create a cycle of suspicion between the sexes: men feel pre-criminalized, women feel unprotected by institutions, and both retreat to their respective safe camps.

Politics Has Become the New Religion, and Parents Have Abandoned the Duty to "Shape"

Cox observes a striking change: politics is no longer just policy disagreement but has become a core vehicle of personal identity, with a level of commitment comparable to religious faith. He believes this is closely tied to how a generation was raised—these young people were told from childhood that "you can become anything you want to be," and when family and religion no longer provide a framework of meaning, politics becomes a substitute for self-expression.

He bluntly assigns part of the responsibility to parents. Cox writes: "Our obsession with individual autonomy leads parents to measure success by how many doors they can open for their children, rather than telling them which door to walk through. We know very well what a good, meaningful life looks like, yet we refuse to tell our children."

The data supports this judgment: when asked whether children should share their political or religious beliefs, today's parents say it's "not very important," in stark contrast to the traditional function of the family as an institution for transmitting values. Cox emphasizes that the issue is not what identity children ultimately choose—sexual orientation or gender identity itself is not the point—but that endlessly asking "which group do I belong to" pulls people away from community rather than embedding them in it.

Without Shared Rules, Everyone Enforces the Law Alone

The later part of the interview touches on a more fundamental sociological problem: when shared norms of public behavior disappear, individuals are forced to establish and enforce personal boundaries on their own. Cox considers this "extremely inefficient and exhausting" work.

He cites a case from journalist Carter Sherman's book: a teenage girl sent an intimate photo to a boy, and the photo then spread throughout the entire school. Cox notes that the incident was widely covered by the media, but society was "paralyzed"—because people refuse to make moral judgments. His argument is clear: some things, even if in a gray area, should still allow clear boundaries to be drawn. Schools, families, and society should establish baseline norms for teenagers, rather than pushing all the responsibility for policing onto girls who already face power imbalances and social pressure.

Similar logic applies to behavioral misconduct in public spaces. Cox notes that America is becoming an "accommodation nation," where people expect the external world to adapt to their needs and desires. This mindset partly stems from shrinking family sizes—in single-child or small families, resources are concentrated, and children learn from an early age that "the family serves me."

Accommodation nation is a term Cox uses to describe a cultural mindset: individuals assume by default that the external world should adjust itself to their needs, preferences, and desires, rather than requiring themselves to adapt to public norms. This mindset contrasts with traditional civil society—the latter requires individuals to restrain themselves, compromise, and abide by shared rules in public spaces. Cox attributes the rise of the accommodation nation partly to changes in family structure: in single-child or small families, adults organize their lives around the child, with resources, attention, and time highly concentrated, and the implicit rule children learn from an early age is that the family system serves me. When these children enter school, the workplace, and intimate relationships, they tend to interpret conflict as "the other person didn't satisfy me" rather than "both sides need to negotiate shared rules." In gender relations, this mindset manifests in two simultaneous phenomena: some demand that the opposite sex unconditionally adapt to their emotional and sexual needs; others replace public norms with strict personal boundaries, because they no longer believe there are rules that can be collectively enforced. The result is further hollowing-out of public behavioral standards, with each person becoming the sole enforcer of their own boundaries.

The Way Out: Rebuilding Connection Starting from the Family

Cox does not just criticize. He offers some concrete, actionable directions. First, let children learn about family history—knowing they are part of a larger "constellation," not just an isolated star. Second, have children substantively participate in running the household and take on responsibilities within their capacity.

He admits he himself is deeply troubled by his phone: while talking with his wife in the morning, he scrolls Wordle. But when he began consciously putting his phone away, the quality of conversation changed noticeably. He calls it "attention infidelity"—even if you are physically present, the presence of a screen makes you miss key social cues such as the other person's tone and body language.

At the end of the program, Cox reveals that his next phase of research will focus on the impact of artificial intelligence on social connection. He believes Gen Z has begun to recognize the problems brought by social media and smartphones, and support for restricting campus and nighttime use is rising.

The core message of this interview can perhaps be distilled into one sentence: human connection is not a natural byproduct of technology but a fragile achievement that requires institutions, norms, and sustained investment to maintain.

One-line Summary

Young American men and women are decoupling across politics and intimacy alike, driven by the decline of social fabric, smartphone erosion of empathy, collapsing institutional trust, and parents abandoning value transmission.

Paragraph Summary

In his new book Generation Uncoupled, AEI senior fellow Daniel Cox argues that young American men and women are systematically decoupling across politics, dating, trust, and basic human connection. In an interview on Vox's The Gray Area, he situates this gender crisis within the broader decline of social participation: shrinking civic organizations, the always-with-you smartphone eroding face-to-face interaction, and declining perspective-taking. Gallup data shows that fear of sexual assault among women aged 18 to 49 rose significantly between 2015 and 2017, forming a vicious cycle with collapsing institutional trust, forcing individuals to internalize safety responsibility as boundary management. Politics has become the new identity religion, while parents have abandoned transmitting values to their children, leaving young people without anchors of meaning. Cox suggests rebuilding connection through family involvement and family narratives, and reveals that his next step will be studying AI's impact on social connection.