How Testosterone Is the Jekyll and Hyde of Hormones

Far too many young males are having a hard time today. From addiction and “failure to launch,” to anxiety and depressive disorders, to unemployment and dropping out of school, signs of deep trouble are everywhere.

In a few years, the U.S. has changed from boy-friendly to boy-blaming. The phrase “Boys will be boys” has fallen out of favor, hard. The phrase “toxic masculinity” is popular for a reason.

Misguided enculturation, or a misguided culture, is often blamed for the troublesome behavior of young males. Culture certainly plays a role. There is, however, a more fundamental culprit—one which, properly controlled, could be a hero. This Jekyll/Hyde is testosterone.

Though females produce small amounts of testosterone, it is primarily a male sex hormone. Its function is to support mating: the physical act and the quest for the chance to accomplish it, as well as the production of sperm. Male animals with higher levels of testosterone have a higher desire for sex. They will search farther for females and fight harder to mate with them.

Testosterone increases muscle mass and bone density and decreases fat. It reduces feelings of stress and anxiety, lessens pain, and makes strenuous effort feel good. It also promotes novelty-seeking (i.e., adventurousness) and competition. Simply engaging in competition boosts testosterone. Winning the competition boosts it more.

Testosterone, in part, encourages men to achieve high status, thereby attracting women. High status may be attained through excellence and accomplishment but also through aggression. By supporting warrior capabilities—bravery, determination, ruthlessness, physical strength, and skill–testosterone predisposes males to fight.

This is, so to speak, a double-edged sword. It’s easy to condemn fighting when not faced with a physical threat. This can change quickly, though, as witnessed in Ukraine and Club Q. Warrior capabilities, like a standing army, are prudent to possess, even in peacetime.

Off the battlefield, testosterone-supported traits can be invaluable to society. Competing for status encourages ambition, excellence, and productivity in science, art, and philosophy—everything that has built civilization. Testosterone encourages status-enhancing altruism, too.

Humans have always invested a lot of cultural energy into domesticating testosterone, channeling it in ways that help society. Fathers and organized religion have, in the past, been instrumental in this channeling. The decline in power of these and other forces has diverted or clogged the channels. Male energy has overflowed, becoming aimless and destructive. The suffering of young males spills onto everyone.

Many boys and younger men today feel unvalued and hopeless. They are agonizingly aware that they lack status. They may feel unwelcome in school and disrespected at work and in society, even as they are bombarded with images of desirable women and trappings of success unavailable to them. Not having learned to channel testosterone energy productively, they see few viable paths out of the morass of their lives.

One rare path, sadly, even leads to mass murder and suicide. Another path leads to crime. Crime is an arena where testosterone-supported traits can still pay off. Sometimes. For a while.

Can anything be done to help?

As a man who has done psychotherapy with many men and is the father of a son, I offer the following suggestions. Few will be easy to implement. Some will require significant cultural shifts. Still, the need is too great not to try.

1. Acknowledge and celebrate males’ contributions to the world.
2. Recognize that a large number of boys and young men of all races seem to be shipwrecked and drowning.
3. Do everything possible to see that boys grow up with committed fathers (or father figures) in the home.
4. Reject the current male versus female paradigm in favor of males with females. Men and women evolved to create a synergistic unit, strengthened by the partners’ similarities and differences.
5. Make school more boy-friendly. Re-institute recess and shop classes. Give up the notion that everyone, males and females, must go to college to deserve status and respect. Plumbers, carpenters, and merchants are at least as vital to civilization as college degrees.
6. Understand the biological components of masculinity and femininity.
7. Within reason, let boys be boys. Don’t try to extinguish the influence of testosterone.
8. Give up the belief that today’s anointed seers, guided by the often-unscientific social sciences, know better how to shape good men than all of the wise people who have come before. Differentiate what works from wishful thinking.
9. Limit as much as possible the pernicious influence of social media.
10. Reserve a few places—clubs, scouting, sports teams, whatever—where boys can just be with other boys. Girls should, of course, have these zones, too.
11. Find workable ways to instill in boys a sense of purpose and meaning, including laudable goals and the means to achieve them. Recognize that, although traditional sources of values have blind spots and flaws, radical politics—far-left or far-right—make bad substitutes with catastrophic outcomes.

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A well-functioning society requires well-functioning males and females. Nothing I’ve written here is intended in any way to diminish females, their successes, or their rights.

Too many young males today aren’t functioning well. The situation has moved beyond sad to dangerous. The most basic instinct when people feel attacked is to strike back. Testosterone-supported traits, ungoverned, can be wildly destructive. Controlled, they can be a powerful force for good.

Our world faces myriad problems. For us to solve them, we'll need testosterone to help.