Every number on this page is sourced from peer-reviewed research, federal government data, or nationally representative surveys. This is not content. This is documentation. Read it and understand why NOT/AVG. exists.
NOT/AVG. Standard: Awareness without bitterness. These numbers are not here to make you angry. They are here to make you clear. The man who understands his environment makes better decisions in it.
The percentage of men with zero close friends has increased by 500% since 1990. From 1 in 33 men to 1 in 7. This is not a feeling. It is a documented structural collapse of male social bonds over one generation.
Source: Survey Center on American Life, 2021. American Enterprise Institute.
The percentage of men with 6 or more close friends dropped from 55% to 27% in 30 years. The average man's social world has been cut in half and nobody is treating it as a crisis.
Source: American Perspectives Survey, 2021.
2 in 3 men aged 18–23 agree with the statement: "No one really knows me well." Gen Z men have the highest rate of any generation. A generation of young men is disappearing in plain sight.
Source: Equimundo State of American Men, 2023.
44% of men surveyed had experienced suicidal ideation within the previous two weeks. Not in their lifetime. Not as a passing thought. In the prior two weeks. This data was collected from a nationally representative sample of American men.
Source: Equimundo, 2023. U.S. Men and Masculinity Survey.
63% of men under 30 are single. Only 34% of women the same age are. The gap — nearly double — is the largest recorded in US history. The question everyone is asking but nobody is answering honestly: who are all the young women dating?
Source: Pew Research Center, 2023.
1 in 3 men aged 18–30 had zero sexual activity in the past year. In 2008 that number was approximately 1 in 10. It has tripled in under 20 years. Male virginity among ages 22–34 rose from 4% to 10% in the same period — more than doubled.
Source: CDC National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG). Institute for Family Studies, 2024.
Women on Bumble have a 45% match rate. Men on the same platform at the same moment have a 3% match rate. That is a 15x gap. On the same app. Same city. Same moment in time. This is not bad luck — it is structural.
Source: SwipeStats.io, 2023 (n=60,000+). Bumble internal data.
In a room of 100 dating app users — 67 are men, 33 are women. Even in the best possible scenario where every woman matches exactly one man — 34 men walk out with nothing. That is the mathematical floor. The actual outcome is far worse.
Source: Business of Apps Gender Ratio Analysis, 2026. SwipeStats.io.
Tinder is 75% male users, 25% female. Hinge is 64/36. Bumble is 62/38. Every major dating platform has the same structural imbalance — yet continues to market itself as a solution for men. The business model depends on men not finding what they are looking for.
Source: Business of Apps, 2026. Statista Dating App Demographics.
69% of all divorces are initiated by women. Among college-educated couples that number rises to 90%. Most men who get divorced did not choose to end their marriage. They were left. Then separated from their children. This data is consistent across eight decades of research.
Source: American Sociological Review. Michael Rosenfeld, Stanford University, 2015. n=2,262.
80% of custodial parents are mothers. Most men who get divorced lose daily access to their children — children they did not choose to leave. They were left, then the legal system separated them from their kids. Nearly 98% of all alimony recipients are women.
Source: US Census Bureau, 2023. Divorce Statistics compilation.
Men whose parents divorced are 3 times more likely to consider suicide than men whose parents stayed married. The effects of family breakdown travel across generations — directly into the mental health of the next one.
Source: Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. Canadian longitudinal data.
The US marriage rate has dropped from 10.6 per 1,000 people in 1970 to 5.1 in 2022 — cut nearly in half. Men are not avoiding commitment because they are afraid. The terms of marriage have structurally changed. The data confirms what men are already sensing.
Source: CDC National Vital Statistics Reports. National Center for Health Statistics.
Men account for nearly 80% of all suicides in the United States while representing 50% of the population. In 2023 alone: 39,045 men died by suicide compared to 10,270 women. Men are 4 times more likely to die by suicide than women. This receives a fraction of the awareness, funding, and conversation.
Source: CDC Suicide Data and Statistics, 2024. American Institute for Boys and Men, 2023.
New fathers die by suicide 7 times more often than new mothers in the first 1,001 days of their child's life. In Wales: 107 fathers died by suicide versus 16 mothers in that window. There are almost no mental health services designed for new fathers. The system does not see them.
Source: Swansea University study, 2024. 1001 Critical Days Foundation. Wales population data 2002–2021.
40% of men surveyed met the clinical screening criteria for depressive symptoms. Most of them had never sought help. Most of them were going to work, maintaining surface-level relationships, and appearing functional while carrying something nobody around them knew about.
Source: Equimundo State of American Men Survey, 2023.
19 million children — 1 in 4 — are growing up in the United States without their biological father. The United States has the highest rate of children in single-parent households of any nation on earth. More than 3 times the global average. There is no other country on the planet with numbers like this.
Source: US Census Bureau CPS 2023. N-IUSSP Global Single Parent Study, 2025.
85% of all youths in prison grew up in fatherless homes. Children from fatherless households are 20 times more likely to be incarcerated than children from two-parent homes — even after controlling for income, race, and geography. The most accurate predictor of incarceration is not poverty. It is the absence of a father.
Source: US Department of Justice. Fulton County Georgia / Texas Dept. of Correction data.
72% of adolescent murderers grew up in fatherless homes. In a study of 56 school shootings — only 10 of the shooters (18%) were raised in a stable home with both biological parents. 82% grew up without both parents together.
Source: America First Policy Institute Fact Sheet. US Dept. of Justice data.
71% of high school dropouts grew up in fatherless homes. Children from fatherless homes are twice as likely to drop out of school. Fatherless children are 10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances. The absence of one man in the home creates a cascade that touches every outcome.
Source: US Department of Justice. National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse. National Center for Fathering.
90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes — 32 times the average. 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes — 5 times the average. The data is consistent across every measure of social outcome. Father absence is not a demographic footnote. It is the root system of most of what we call social problems.
Source: US Dept. of Health / US Census. National Fatherhood Initiative research compilation.
During a visit to a Florida juvenile detention facility in 2022, workers discovered that 94% of the juveniles in that facility had no father at home. Not a national study. One building. 94%. This is not an outlier — it is confirmation of a pattern that repeats in every facility across the country.
Source: Washington Times, April 2022. Juvenile facility field report.
Of the roughly 800,000 incarcerated parents in US prisons — 92% are fathers. There are 1.7 million children with a parent currently in prison — 2.3% of every child in the United States. Most of these incarcerated fathers were themselves raised without fathers. The cycle is not a metaphor. It is a documented feedback loop.
Source: US Department of Justice, 2021. Washington Times fatherhood analysis, 2022.
Children without fathers are 20 times more likely to end up incarcerated and 11 times more likely to exhibit violent behavior than children from two-parent homes — even after controlling for income, race, and education. The single most powerful intervention against future incarceration is a present father.
Source: National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse. US Department of Justice data.
A 2002 Department of Justice survey of 7,000 jail inmates found that 39% had lived in mother-only households growing up. Only 44% had lived with both parents. More than half of all jail inmates grew up in a home without a father present. This is not a racial statistic. It is a family structure statistic that cuts across every demographic.
Source: US Department of Justice Survey of Inmates in Local Jails, 2002. n=7,000.
Approximately 80% of all youths in prison come from fatherless homes. You can build more prisons. You can hire more police. You can pass more laws. Or you can address the one variable that predicts criminal outcomes more accurately than any other. The data has been saying the same thing for 40 years. Nobody in power wants to hear it.
Source: Texas Department of Correction. National Fatherhood Initiative. US DOJ research compilation.
2.2 million cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis were reported in the United States in 2024 alone — even after a 9% decline from the prior year. Overall STI cases are still 13% higher than a decade ago. Nearly half of all STI cases occur in young adults aged 15–24.
Source: CDC STI Surveillance Report, 2024 (Provisional).
1 in 5 women aged 14–49 has genital herpes (HSV-2). 1 in 10 men in the same age range has it. Women carry HSV-2 at nearly double the rate of men. The reason: the female anatomy makes transmission from men to women significantly more efficient. Women are more likely to be infected but more likely to be asymptomatic — meaning they may not know they carry it.
Source: CDC / Office on Women's Health, 2023. WHO Herpes Fact Sheet, 2025.
HSV-2 infects women almost twice as often as men because sexual transmission is more efficient from men to women anatomically. Globally, 520 million people aged 15–49 carry HSV-2. Two thirds of all positive herpes cultures in clinical settings come from women — who are often asymptomatic and unaware they are infectious.
Source: WHO Herpes Simplex Virus Fact Sheet, 2025. PMC Clinical Studies. CDC NCHS Data Brief.
Congenital syphilis — syphilis passed from mother to newborn — has risen 700% in the last decade. Nearly 4,000 cases were reported in 2024 including 279 stillbirths and neonatal deaths. This is the 12th consecutive year of increase. A disease that was nearly eradicated in the US is now killing infants at a rate not seen since 1992.
Source: CDC STI Surveillance Report, 2024. CIDRAP analysis, 2024.
Women consistently report higher chlamydia rates than men — 61.4 cases per 100,000 females vs 35.4 per 100,000 males in the most recent surveillance data. Chlamydia is often completely asymptomatic in women — meaning it is carried and transmitted without knowledge. Screening is the only detection method. Most sexually active people are not screened regularly.
Source: STI Monthly Surveillance Report, St. Louis County, September 2025. CDC national chlamydia data.
The most dangerous fact about STIs is not the transmission rate — it is the asymptomatic carrier problem. Most people infected with HSV-2 do not know they have it. Chlamydia presents no symptoms in the majority of women. Gonorrhea is frequently asymptomatic in women. You cannot rely on someone telling you what they do not know about themselves. This is the argument for sexual health transparency — not judgment. Protection.
Source: CDC STI Treatment Guidelines. WHO Herpes Fact Sheet. PMC Clinical Literature Review.
41.3% of men admit to overstating their partner count. 32.6% of women admit to understating theirs. When peer-reviewed researchers adjusted for this social reporting bias in a nationally representative sample of 15,000+ adults — the true gap between men and women narrowed from 7 partners to approximately 2.63 partners. The numbers most people argue about are not accurate.
Source: Mitchell et al., Natsal-3, Journal of Sex Research 2018. PMC6326215. n=15,162.
1 in 4 single women are simultaneously dating 3 or more men at once. Not between relationships — concurrently. In the 2024 GSS, 13.9% of women aged 18–44 reported more than one partner in the past year compared to 11.1% of men. When it comes to active concurrent behavior — women slightly exceed men.
Source: 2024 GSS General Social Survey (NORC). Simultaneous dating survey data.
28.3% of men and 12.9% of women report 15 or more lifetime partners according to CDC NSFG data. However — given that 32.6% of women admit to understating their number, the true female figure is likely meaningfully higher than reported. The gap exists but is smaller than commonly assumed once reporting bias is accounted for.
Source: CDC National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) 2015–2019.
Partner count history is not just a number — it is a behavioral predictor. Women who cheated on their husbands had 2.3 times more prior partners than those who did not — statistically significant at p<0.05 in a peer-reviewed study of 7,526 women. The number itself matters less than what the pattern of behavior it represents predicts about future relationship outcomes.
Source: Peer-reviewed infidelity study. n=7,526. Statistical significance p<0.05.
These numbers exist whether you look at them or not. The man who understands his environment makes better decisions in it. That is what NOT/AVG. is built for.
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