Low testosterone can be a touchy subject when it comes to men’s health. To some, it’s a loss of masculinity, or what society perceives as being a “man.” Low T, as it’s called, can cause a host of problems, not only in the bedroom, but with depression and other health issues. However, this isn’t just a problem for older men – at least not according to the social media influencers pushing to have younger guys check their testosterone levels and supplement to increase them.
The Push for Testosterone Testing and Treatments
As liberals struggle to define what a woman is, online influencers are busy associating testosterone with manliness. “Social media content portrays low testosterone as a crisis of masculinity,” according to a study by Social Science & Medicine. Researchers analyzed 46 posts about Low T and testing across TikTok and Instagram accounts with a combined following of nearly 7 million.
Emma Grundtvig Gram, the lead author of the study and a public health researcher at the University of Copenhagen, said the social influencers promoted routine screening and often “framed normal variations in energy, mood, libido or ageing ‘as signs of pathology,’” The Guardian explained. Because of this, “men may come to perceive themselves as inherently deficient or in need of medical intervention,” she wrote. “This creates a sense of urgency for solutions, which in turn fuels lucrative markets for pharmaceuticals, supplements and medical devices, even in the absence of clear clinical benefit. More broadly, this contributes to the medicalisation of masculinity itself. It reinforces a narrow, idealised model of masculinity, while marginalising non-traditional or diverse expressions of gender.”
The posts usually targeted younger, fit men who likely don’t need a testosterone adjustment. “Within this narrative, so-called ‘alpha men’ are promoted as dominant, sexually successful and physically powerful, and our study found testosterone was positioned as the key to achieving this status,” Gram said. “This connection is important because it shows that testosterone marketing is not just about health, but is embedded in wider cultural and ideological narratives about gender and power, and the manosphere is not simply an ideology, but also an industry.”
Facts of the Male Hormone
Testosterone is typically at its highest during puberty and early adulthood, helping boys to develop masculine features such as body and facial hair, muscle strength, and a deeper voice. As males get older, the levels of the male hormone naturally decrease. According to the Urology Care Foundation, about 2.1% (about 2 men in every 100) may have Testosterone Deficiency Syndrome (TD). “As few as 1% of younger men may have TD, while as many as 50% of men over 80 years old may have TD.”
While aging is one factor of Low T, there are others to take into consideration as well. Injuries and diseases can impact the hormone levels and TD is more common in men who have diabetes or who are overweight. Urology Care Foundation noted that “30% of overweight men had Low-T, compared to only 6.4% of those with normal weight.”
Another, perhaps less well-known cause of low testosterone is fatherhood. Science.org explained that “although high levels of the hormone may help men win a mate, testosterone-fueled traits such as aggression and competition are less useful when it comes to raising children.”
A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) illuminated this by following 3,000 women who were pregnant in 1983 and their children. They followed about 600 men and measured their testosterone levels when the males were about 21 in 2005, then again in 2009. According to the findings, those with the highest levels of the male hormone were more likely to become committed partners and fathers.
“The drop in testosterone seems to be a biological adjustment that helps men shift their priorities when children come along,” anthropologist Christopher Kuzawa told Science.org.
While a low sex drive is typically associated with Low-T, there are many other symptoms including loss of body hair, loss of lean muscle mass, fatigue, obesity, depression, and poor memory. Low testosterone can be part of the natural aging process or an indication of another, more serious complication or disease, such as diabetes. What is bothering medical professionals is the way social media influencers are relating the hormone to manliness, urging young men to get tested and seek treatment.
“Biomedical ‘solutions’ on social media promise empowerment but are narrow and risky,” ScienceDirect warned in its study. Furthermore, “Mass screening for low testosterone is clinically unwarranted as a large proportion of healthy men have low testosterone levels but without any symptoms.” The study warns of potential harms of testosterone replacement therapy, including “cardiovascular adverse events, male infertility, acute kidney injury and pulmonary embolism, decreased libido, erectile dysfunction, and gynecomastia [enlargement of male breasts].” The study concluded that “promotion of testing and treatment among men with no or vague symptoms might lead to a medicalisation of men’s health, and potentially cause unnecessary diagnosis without benefit (overdiagnosis) resulting in overtreatment.” But one of the most detrimental side effects of taking testosterone therapy when it isn’t truly needed is that it causes the body’s own natural production of the hormone to slow or even stop entirely.
At the center of this debate is a simple disconnect. Medical research describes testosterone as a hormone that naturally rises, falls, and varies from person to person, while social media influencers are treating it as a scoreboard for masculinity.
