One answer keeps surfacing for men’s struggles in our modern world: books.
In podcasts, essays, Substack newsletters, and social media feeds, many across the ideological spectrum are increasingly offering reading as a form of quiet repair. Men are restless because they scroll, shallow because they swipe. Replace feeds with novels, the argument goes—Homer instead of TikTok, Dostoevsky instead of dopamine—and something weighty will return.
That hope recently took center stage when Bari Weiss introduced a new podcast from The Free Press hosted by Shilo Brooks. Framed as a response to the cultural and spiritual drift of young men, Old School treats reading for pleasure not merely as enrichment but as intervention, a way to restore attention, seriousness, and moral depth in a distracted age. The question that sets its tone, and now hovers over the wider conversation about today’s young men, is simple: “Can reading fix men?”
There is something true in that instinct. Leisure reading in the United States has been declining for decades. According to recent research, the share of Americans who read for pleasure on an average day has dropped drastically over the last 20 years. Another survey found that roughly 40 percent of adults did not read a single book in 2021. These declines are not evenly distributed. Men are less likely than women to read for pleasure even as they consume digital media incessantly.
The effects of this shift show up in habits of attention and imagination. Deep reading requires patience, sustained focus, and an ability to deal with complexity without immediate payoffs. Skimming screens, by contrast, trains the eye to flicker and the mind to wander. Over time, these patterns shape the way a person thinks, feels, and relates. They shape not only what a man knows but also how he knows it.
Books help not just with our immediate cognition but also with thinking well. They can offer models of bravery, friendship, and sorrow. They can expand the moral imagination in ways screens rarely do. These are genuine goods to long for.
So yes, reading can aid young men. It can steady them. It can orient them toward what is meaningful. But I really have to split with the premise there. Reading cannot fix men.
Part of the appeal of Old School is in the name itself—a gesture toward the good old days when men were well-read, serious, and formed by books rather than short-form videos. Much of the current push for reading carries the same nostalgic undertone: If we could just recover older habits, texts, and rhythms, perhaps we could recover good, virtuous men.
But the past we are tempted to romanticize was not made up of healed men—even literate ones. Those generations read deeply and wrote eloquently, and they still wrestled with cruelty, addiction, violence, despair, and antisemitism. A love of books did not keep men from hating their neighbors or destroying themselves. Reading shaped their minds; it did not cure their hearts.
That distinction matters because the crises young men face today are not primarily intellectual. Porn addiction persists not because men lack stories or imagination but because desire has been trained without restraint. Gambling thrives not because young men misunderstand the odds but because their hope has narrowed to the next win. Antisemitism spreads not because they lack information but because resentment and fear have found a home in their hearts.
Reading can help a young man recognize what is good more clearly. It can sharpen his judgment and widen his empathy. But it cannot give him the power to choose what is good when it costs him something. It can guide his thinking; it cannot heal his heart. And that is why, for all its real benefits, reading alone will never be enough to fix what is broken.
Scripture tells a different story.
When the apostle John addresses young men in 1 John 2, he describes them as strong and then explains why: “The word of God lives in you” (v. 14). Strength, in John’s account, grows from indwelling truth. God’s Word has taken up residence within them. It shapes how they respond when pressure comes and desire asserts itself.
This claim rests on a distinctly Christian understanding of Scripture. The Bible has never been simply a source of insight or instruction. Christians throughout history have confessed it as God’s Word, made effective by the work of the Holy Spirit. Scripture does not remain external to the reader. It acts upon the heart, exposing motives, steadying the will, and forming new habits of love and obedience over time.
Jesus models this kind of formation in the wilderness (Matt. 4). When temptation comes, his response is immediate and grounded in the Scripture he already knows: “It is written …”
For centuries, the church recognized the importance of this internal formation. People learned Scripture by heart, recited it in prayer, and carried it through daily life.
The psalmist describes God’s Word as something hidden within, close at hand when we need guidance most. Augustine once described Scripture as letters from home, words that reach beyond information to reshape our loves and desires. For him, Scripture was not simply something to be understood; it was something that understood him. Through it, God addressed the disorder beneath his restlessness.
That same disorder remains among young men today. And it explains why renewed interest in reading, for all its promise, has left something unresolved. Books prepare the mind and sharpen moral awareness. Scripture addresses the deeper struggle beneath behavior—the place where temptation takes hold and habits form.
Some young men sense this difference. Bible sales have increased in recent years, and churches across the country report more young men showing up—often unsure of what they believe but aware that distraction and self-improvement have not provided what they hoped for. Reading great literature has helped some of them recover attention and seriousness. For others, it has revealed a hunger that reading alone cannot satisfy.
I share much of Shilo Brooks’s instinct and appreciate the vision behind Old School. I want young men to read more. I want them to recover depth and patience in a culture that rewards neither. Books are a gift worth reclaiming.
And yet something far more vital is at work in Scripture. God uses it by his Spirit to form people from the inside out. Over time, it cultivates strength that endures—strength that holds in moments of temptation, steadies the will, and reshapes desire.
If young men are going to overcome the crises pressing in on them, if they are going to be strong in today’s world, it will not be because they finally chose the right reading list. It will be because the Word of God lives in them.
Luke Simon is the codirector of student ministries at The Crossing in Columbia, Missouri, and an MDiv student at Covenant Theological Seminary. He has written on Gen Z, technology, masculinity, and the church. You can follow him on X.
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