Ellen Carmichael is the founder and president of The Lafayette Company, a Washington, D.C.-based communications firm. She is also the founder of the Symposium on Young American Men.
The Brotherhood Solution: How Sigma Nu is Answering America's Call for Young Men
Throughout the Fall of 2025, Americans were reminded of the crisis facing Gen-Z men. Headline after headline detailed their plight—they're lonely, they're not finding romantic relationships, they spend too much time online, they're worried about their economic prospects. Medical professionals continually sound the alarm that young males are four times more likely to commit suicide than their female peers.
For millions of young men, the same underlying conditions—social isolation, deteriorating mental health, lack of purpose, and disconnection from the structures that have traditionally helped young people navigate adulthood—manifest in quieter but equally troubling ways.
I read the news stories, but this narrative contradicted everything I'd witnessed in my work. As founder and president of The Lafayette Company, a public relations firm that serves several fraternities and Greek life trade associations, I've seen fraternity men consistently demonstrate better outcomes across every metric—mental health, academic performance, professional success, and life satisfaction.
How could these two realities exist simultaneously?
Seeking Answers
I needed to understand this disconnect. So, in just five weeks, my team organized the inaugural Symposium on Young American Men at the National Press Club on November 3, 2025. We brought together an unprecedented coalition: the Knights of Columbus representing 2.3 million Catholic men, numerous college fraternities, leading academics, a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators, major think tanks, medical professionals, the YMCA, the American Legion, and more.
Working with Cygnal, 538, and the New York Times's top-rated political polling firm, we commissioned exclusive nationwide research on 1,000 males aged 16 to 28. We needed data, not anecdotes.
What we discovered changed everything.
What the Numbers Revealed
Among the sea of troubling statistics, only four groups of young men stood out as having any meaningful quality of life: men involved in organized activities, men who practice religion, men who exercise regularly, and fraternity members. These are men who were more likely to have mentors, who spent less time online, and who are “high social,” engaging with others in person 11 or more hours a week. The fraternity advantage was unmistakable, and fraternity men were often part of all four categories simultaneously.
When I first reviewed the data comparing fraternity-affiliated men to their non-affiliated peers, the contrast was transformative.
Take mental health: 53% of fraternity members rate their mental health as good or excellent, compared to just 41% of non-affiliated men – those who are not part of any organized group. Only 14% of fraternity members have poor or very poor mental health, versus 24% of Gen Z men overall. While 41% of young men overall report their mental health has worsened since 2020, fraternity-affiliated men were among the only groups reporting actual improvement.
The friendship gap was equally stark. 64% of fraternity members have three or more close friends they can count on, even if it has been a while, while just 36% of non-affiliated men say the same. A concerning 11% of all young men surveyed reported no close friendships at all.
Perhaps most revealing is how these young men spend their time. Fraternity men are more likely to limit recreational online hours, with just 19% spending more than six hours online daily compared to 33% of non-affiliated men. Instead, fraternity collegians and alumni invest in face-to-face relationships: 67% of fraternity members spend at least six hours each week engaged in in-person social activities, versus 48% of men overall.
When asked if their lives are going the way they expected or envisioned, 61% of fraternity collegians and alumni answer affirmatively, compared to just 37% of non-affiliated men. Fraternity members also exercise more regularly, practice religion at higher rates, and maintain involvement in other organized activities. By every metric, they’re embracing the protective factors that buffer young men against isolation and despair.
The Mentorship Advantage
The most dramatic finding centered on mentorship. 71% of fraternity men have a male mentor or role model, compared to just 42% of non-affiliated men. This revealed something fundamental about how fraternities function.
Of all the factors we examined, mentorship proved the most powerful indicator of young men's well-being. Men with mentors reported better outcomes in every single category we measured: mental health, life satisfaction, social connection, sense of purpose, and balanced living.
Fraternities naturally provide this intergenerational brotherhood. Older members mentor younger ones. Alumni stay connected to chapters. The structure ensures that young men are not figuring out life alone; they have people who have walked similar paths offering guidance, opening doors, and simply showing up.
This matters enormously when 17% of young men have no one to teach them how to be a man, leaving them to figure things out on their own, often turning to algorithm-driven online content rather than real human relationships. Notably, fewer than four in ten men said their own fathers filled this vital developmental role, underscoring the urgency of addressing their needs just as soon as they leave home. A fraternity may be the only place these young men will encounter embodied mentorship, consistent presence, and other men who genuinely care what happens to them.
Fraternities don't just provide mentorship as an add-on benefit. It's embedded in the organizational structure itself.
The Mental Health Connection
At the symposium, we dedicated an entire panel to the mental health crisis, bringing together Marine Corps veteran and American Legion executive Cole Lyle, community organizer Dan Kain from Brotherhood DMV, and Dr. Sally Satel from Yale University. Their discussion reinforced something I'd already begun to see in our data.
The panel confronted alarming statistics: skyrocketing rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide among college-aged males, combined with cultural barriers that prevent young men from seeking help. What emerged was recognition that clinical intervention, while necessary for serious conditions, addresses only part of the challenge. The broader issue is social -- loneliness, lack of purpose, absence of meaningful male relationships, and disconnection from community. These aren't problems that therapy alone can solve; they require the kind of consistent, accountable brotherhood that men can organically provide each other.
For Gen-Z men whose developmentally formative years were framed by COVID-19 changes, this type of human interaction is utterly essential. And we know fraternity members demonstrate greater resilience in maintaining social connections post-pandemic. While 36% of all young men report being less socially engaged than before 2020, fraternity-affiliated men buck this trend significantly, maintaining higher levels of in-person social activity than virtually any other measured demographic.
Fraternities as Authorities on Young Men
Here's what the data makes crystal clear: fraternities should be recognized as authorities on young men. There are no other organizations in the U.S. that collectively represent a larger constituency of men from the earliest days of college throughout their entire adult lives.
After years of being maligned as antiquated, elitist, or even dangerous, the evidence reveals a different story. An increasingly diverse student body of young men—across race, socioeconomic background, and geography—is showing near-unprecedented levels of demand for these organizations. They're seeking fraternities because of the challenges facing young men, not despite them.
Today's college students inherently recognize what the data confirm: they need structured community, consistent mentorship, accountability frameworks, and face-to-face connection. Fraternities provide all of this by timeless design.
Like any organization comprising thousands of young people navigating the recklessness inherent to youth, fraternities confront challenges that demand accountability. High-profile incidents of hazing, sexual misconduct, and alcohol abuse occur on college campuses and among Greek and non-Greek students alike. As someone who has worked in crisis communications for fraternal organizations, I've seen these all-too-human failures up close.
What distinguishes fraternities is not immunity from youthful poor judgment, but rather the accountability structures, conduct enforcement mechanisms, and intergenerational oversight designed specifically to prevent such behavior. Fraternities possess the frameworks—internal and campus judicial processes, alumni advisers, and national organization support—that non-affiliated students lack entirely.
Any incidents involving members represent failures to uphold fraternity values, not expressions of them. The relevant question isn't whether young men sometimes make poor choices — since the dawn of time, they sadly do, regardless of organizational affiliation — but whether fraternities provide structures that reduce harm and promote flourishing better than the alternative of unaffiliated campus life.
Our data answer definitively: they do and dramatically so. Countless additional studies confirm that men in fraternities demonstrate a greater willingness to intervene in risky behavior, stronger peer accountability, and more positive outcomes across every measure precisely because of the frameworks fraternities provide.
Why This Matters Now
Our research identified what Cygnal principal and pollster Alex Tarascio nicknamed a "basket of behaviors" that correlates with negative outcomes: never exercising, not practicing religion to any degree or frequency, high online usage, low social engagement, and lack of affiliation with organized groups or activities. Young men exhibiting these patterns consistently report the worst life satisfaction, mental health, and community engagement.
Fraternity membership sits at the opposite end of this spectrum. Fraternity men exemplify those protective factors that buffer against the isolation, purposelessness, and disconnection driving so many young men toward negative outcomes, whether those manifest as withdrawal, radicalization, violence, or simply quiet desperation.
The crisis is real and pervasive. When half of young men report poor mental health, when nearly half have few close friends, when millions lack mentors or meaningful connection, we cannot afford to dismiss the institutions that are demonstrably producing better outcomes.
Moving Forward
For decades, fraternities have operated defensively, left in a perpetual state of responding to criticism, managing crises, and justifying their existence. That era should end. The research positions Greek organizations not as problems to be managed but as authorities on what actually works for young men.
This means fraternity leaders must step into that role with confidence backed by evidence. When university administrators question the value of fraternal organizations, show them the mental health data. When parents worry about their sons joining, show them the mentorship and friendship statistics. When media outlets run negative coverage, counter with the life satisfaction and balanced living outcomes.
But authority comes with responsibility. If fraternities claim to address young men's struggles, they must operate with integrity worthy of that mission. Zero tolerance for hazing and sexual misconduct. Robust member education. Genuine accountability systems. Cultures that prioritize wellbeing and values-driven brotherhood.
The crisis facing young American men manifests in social isolation, deteriorating mental health, lack of purpose, and connection. The solution is structured community, consistent mentorship, accountability and genuine belonging. It's exactly what fraternities, at their best, have always provided.
For Sigma Nu and the wider fraternal community, the charge is clear: steward this proven model with excellence, expand access to more young men who need it, and make the data-driven case that fraternity isn't a luxury or anachronism. It's one of the most effective interventions we have for the young men's crisis.
Brotherhood works. Now we have even more proof of it.
Additional Research on the Benefits of Fraternity Membership
Ellen and Cygnal’s findings are not the only data demonstrating the value of fraternity membership. In previous spring issues of The Delta, we have highlighted the work of the North American Interfraternity Conference to showcase a growing body of research confirming what many of us already know to be true: fraternities foster positive mental health, serve as accelerators of student success, and cultivate lifelong loyalty and connection among alumni to their alma mater.
To learn more about this research, visit nicfraternity.org/research.