By
Adam Yamaguchi
September 26, 2025 / 8:27 PM EDT
/ CBS News
The new CBS Reports documentary “Boys to Men: Why America’s Sons Are Struggling” premieres Saturday, Sept. 27, at 5 p.m. ET on CBS News 24/7 and Paramount+.
Oberlin, Ohio — Every other week, Johnny Cole, the founder of Hey Brother, and David Reese, a language arts teacher at Oberlin High School in Oberlin, Ohio, lead a group of more than a dozen high school boys in lessons and discussions focused on the role of men in today’s world — a program they call Men’s Work.
“I think boys, in particular, feel this emotional roller coaster, this push and pull of, like, on the one hand, I’m hearing from media and news that I think men should be able to cry,” Cole told CBS News. “But I also don’t feel like I can express myself, don’t have enough adult men in my life that actually model that for me.”
Cole says Hey Brother is an organization that seeks to challenge and examine what it means to be a modern man.
According to a survey released earlier this year by the Pew Research Center, only 38% of teen boys say they are comfortable talking about their mental health with friends, compared to 58% for teen girls.
In the same survey, 43% of teen boys said they feel pressure to be physically strong. It’s one reason that some young men are drawn to social influencers collectively known as the “manosphere,” a term widely used to describe the ecosystem of content aimed at men.
The Men’s Work sessions are designed to discuss and challenge messaging from the “manosphere” that students like Santos Navarro, a senior at Oberlin High, are frequently exposed to online.
“I like to work out a lot, and I feel like there’s a lot of, like, these influencers now that try to tell kids nowadays, use steroids and stuff like that,” Navarro said.
According to a 2023 survey by the American Psychological Association, teens and young adults who reduced their social media use by 50% saw significant improvement in how they felt about their weight and overall appearance.
“There’s a pain that’s there, and that pain is real and it’s authentic,” Reese said. “It’s understandable, the draw to the manosphere, because, you know, who else is actually talking about some of the struggles of what it means to be a boy, and trying to understand these feelings and emotions? And you’re hearing from people who look and sound like they got it all together. It’s pain layered on pain that’s there. We’re just trying to offer a more loving way to move forward.”
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