In the 1980s and 1990s, boys still dominated American classrooms. They easily outscored girls in math and science, they raised their hands more often and they got more attention from teachers, data showed.
That’s not the reality for today’s students. More than half of teenagers say that boys and girls are now mostly equal in school. And significant shares say that girls have advantages over boys — that they get better grades, have more leadership roles and speak up more in class, according to a Pew Research Center survey of teens nationwide published Thursday.
Boys are more likely to be disruptive, get into fights or have problems with drugs or alcohol, the teenagers said. And strikingly, boys said they’re much less likely to be college-bound: 46 percent of boys said they planned to attend a four-year college, compared with 60 percent of girls.
Teenagers aren’t often surveyed by high-quality pollsters. Their responses in the Pew survey reflect other data on educational outcomes. Boys today have more challenges than girls in school as early as kindergarten. Girls have narrowed gaps with boys in math (though they have widened since pandemic school closures), and girls outperform boys in reading. Boys graduate from high school and attend college at lower rates.
Boys’ struggles in school could have long-term consequences, researchers say. The share of men working has declined. Nearly half of Republican men say American society has negative views of men, beginning with their experiences as boys in school. Young men’s feelings of disconnection played a role in the election — this group swung toward President Trump, perhaps in part because he promised to restore their status in American society.
“In the last 50 years, as girls have made gains, what we’ve seen is boys haven’t made the same gains,” said Matt Englar-Carlson, who studies boys and men at Cal State Fullerton and is a member of the American Psychological Association’s task force on boys in school. “The bigger issue is: What happens to a society when there’s such disparity between men and women in educational outcomes?”
Researchers don’t know exactly why boys have fallen behind girls in school to such an extent. Some of it is could be biological — boys mature later, and school has become more academic earlier, requiring boys to sit still and work independently at young ages. The fact that most teachers are women could contribute.
In the survey, boys were more likely to say that teachers favored girls: 23 percent of boys said this, compared with 9 percent of girls. (Very few teenagers said teachers favored boys.)
There is also evidence that boys are socialized to care less about academics. And years of being perceived as being problematic in classrooms could weigh on them, researchers said.
Rebecca Winthrop studies education at the Brookings Institution and is the co-author of a new book with Jenny Anderson, “The Disengaged Teen.” In their research, Ms. Winthrop said, they found that teenage boys were more likely to do the bare minimum at school, while girls were focused on achievement.
“It’s about how boys and girls are socialized differently,” she said. “Boys say they don’t gain status from trying hard and being smart, and girls are much more socialized to do the right thing and not disappoint anybody.”
Teenage girls are also struggling in some ways, according to the survey, which polled 1,391 people ages 13 to 17. Teens said girls were more likely to have anxiety or depression. Girls feel more pressure than boys to look good and fit in socially.
Yet decades of efforts to empower girls in school seem to have paid off in many ways. People are more likely than not to say there’s now enough emphasis on girls doing well in school, standing up for themselves and being leaders, found a companion Pew survey of 6,204 adults. That has changed even since 2017, when Pew asked the same questions and respondents were much more likely to say there wasn’t enough emphasis on girls’ studies and leadership.
There are also signs in the surveys that people are starting to think there should be more investment in boys and their outcomes.
“A lot of what we see in acting out behavior is boys struggling with emotional regulation,” Professor Englar-Carlson said. “What we need is teachers and staff who understand boy development, who are able to understand their own biases.”
Fifty-seven percent of adult respondents said there wasn’t enough emphasis on helping boys talk about their feelings. And nearly half said there needed to be more emphasis on helping boys do well in school, compared with just over a quarter who said girls needed that encouragement.
There were no major gender differences in how people thought about encouraging children to be leaders or stand up for themselves — roughly four in 10 adult respondents said both boys and girls needed more of that.
There are some gender norms that seem to be stickier, especially regarding physical attributes. More than half of teenage girls said they feel pressure to look good, and nearly half of teenage boys feel pressure to be physically strong, which aligns with other data on young people.
Teenagers said mental health issues were the biggest problem among their peers — just over two-thirds said anxiety and depression were a problem at their school. Most teens said they had at least one close friend they could turn to for emotional support, though they said that was easier to do for girls.
Apart from going to college — which girls were much more likely to plan to do — teens of both genders had similar goals for adulthood. Eighty-six percent said having a job they enjoyed was important, followed by having close friends and earning a lot of money.
