When the Bikes Vanished: 

There was a time when a pile of bikes at someone’s house meant the neighborhood had awoken. That was our trailhead: pickup games, scraped knees on driveways, and the steady hum of collective mischief. We climbed the day together, step by sunlit step. But those piles have disappeared. Now, for many young men, the gathering happens in an online lobby.

The Stoic Cliff: Masculinity’s Emotional Double-Bind

Imagine standing at the base of a cliff, told you must climb—but only if you remain silent. Boys grow up on that cliff face. The landscape of masculinity demands stoicism: show no fear, hide compassion. Show too much anger, you’re “dangerous.” Show too little, you’re “disengaged.”

As John Eldredge writes in Wild at Heart, “Society at large can’t make up its mind about men. ‘Where are all the real men?’ is regular fare…” The cultural signals are contradictory: be strong, but not too strong; be tender, but not too tender. This leaves men on a narrow ledge with no sure footing.

The American Psychological Association reports that traditional masculine norms such as emotional control and self-reliance link to higher rates of depression, stress, and poorer social functioning.

Many men experience normative male alexithymia, an emotional blindness shaped by cultural conditioning rather than clinical disorder. These norms construct an emotional trap: men are discouraged from emotional fluency, then chastised when it isn’t there. And yet, learning to name and feel what’s inside us is often the very thing that keeps us whole. I’ve written more about this in The Soft Heart: Living Whole in a Numb World, where I explore why tenderness is not weakness, but strength.

Video Games: The Virtual Basecamp of Adulthood

Nearly a decade ago, psychologist Jean Twenge and colleagues at San Diego State University reported that today’s teens and young adults are “growing up more slowly” than previous generations. Working less, delaying milestones like moving out, and spending more time at home (Twenge et al., 2017).

Follow-up studies show many young men devote a large share of that time to video games. Economists at the University of Chicago and Princeton observed that from 2004 to 2015, men in their twenties reduced their work hours and devoted much of that freed-up time to gaming and online leisure (Aguiar et al., 2021). Some scholars have suggested this offers a kind of “illusory purpose” a way to feel competent, accomplished, and socially connected without the risks and delays of real-world achievement (Thomas, 2014). Only by stepping into real terrain do you gain that kind of strength men are looking for. In Between the Ridges: Building Resilience in Ourselves and Our Children, I talk about how real-world challenge shapes us in ways no digital victory can.”

But there’s another layer. For many men, gaming offers one of the few spaces where others celebrate them rather than merely tolerate them.

In-game:

• They see your abilities and value them.
• They reward your achievements, tracking, celebrating, and sharing your progress.
• They offer camaraderie, pulling you into a team with shared goals.
• They honor your victories, making your success visible, public, and meaningful to your peers.

As Eldredge puts it

 “Deep in his heart, every man longs for a battle to fight, an adventure to live, and a beauty to rescue.”

If the real world withholds the first two, the digital one will happily supply them: complete with quests, comrades, and visible proof of your contribution. Research on “third places”  informal social hubs where identity and camaraderie form finds that online multiplayer games now function in much the same way for young men, especially when offline options are scarce (Steinkuehler & Williams, 2006).

When the Trail Closed: The Pandemic and Social Re-Engineering

Before COVID-19, online gaming was already becoming a kind of social basecamp. Then, almost overnight, the trails closed. Basketball courts sat empty, school hallways went silent, and the pile of bikes vanished completely.

During lockdown, gaming filled the vacuum: surveys found teen boys’ weekly gaming time rose by more than 60%, with many maintaining elevated levels long after restrictions eased (Pew Research Center, 2022). Behavioral science tells us new habits can form in as little as 66 days (Lally et al., 2010); the pandemic lasted years.

The result? The social map changed. For many boys, the online lobby didn’t just replace the cul-de-sac; it became the only place where friendship, recognition, and shared adventure still existed.

Psychological Anchors: Connection, Emotional Intelligence, and Stress

Contrary to stereotypes, gaming can foster genuine psychological and social benefits. Cooperative gaming has been linked to stronger peer relationships, lower loneliness, and greater teamwork skills (Ohannessian, 2017; Kowert et al., 2014). Gaming can also provide measurable stress relief. One study found casual video games reduced tension and improved mood within minutes of play (Russoniello et al., 2019).

Still, Eldredge warns in The Way of the Wild Heart:

“A boy has a lot to learn in his journey to become a man, and he becomes a man only through the active intervention of his father and the fellowship of men. It cannot happen any other way.”

Gaming can provide fellowship, but without embodied mentors and lived experience, the initiation into manhood risks stalling at the virtual threshold.

Gaming as Symptom : Not the Summit

If the pile of bikes disappeared, what else went missing? Recognition. Ritual. Trust. Brotherhood. Purpose.

Eldredge reminds us:

“The masculine heart needs a place where nothing is prefabricated… where there is room for the soul.”

Video games, by design, are prefabricated worlds; rich in challenge, but bounded by code. They meet real needs for competence, relatedness, and autonomy (Ryan et al., 2006), yet can crowd out skill development in unstructured, real-world environments if overused (Przybylski et al., 2010). The wilderness of life: ambiguity, risk, loss, and growth can’t be patched in a software update.

The Ascent We Still Need

If virtual arenas honor our sons, how do we recreate that in the real world?

• Communities of purpose : shared projects that matter beyond the scoreboard, which research shows foster long-term resilience and belonging (Scales et al., 2014).
  
• Rites of passage reimagined : mentorship, apprenticeships, and shared challenges that test body, mind, and spirit.
  
• Emotional training grounds : These are spaces vulnerability isn’t penalized, but valued, a key factor in emotional intelligence and male mental health (APA, 2025). That kind of openness is rare, but it’s the very thing that heals. I explore this more in The Hard Heart and the Antidote, a reflection on how safe connection can bring us back to life.”
  

Because “masculine initiation is a journey, a process, a quest really, a story that unfolds over time” (Eldredge, 2006). And until we reclaim that journey in flesh-and-blood life, the digital refuge will remain more inviting than the open trail.