Novels demand sustained attention to another person's contradictions
Irvine Welsh, the Scottish novelist who built his reputation by forcing readers into the minds of society's most overlooked, now turns that same unflinching gaze on a quieter crisis: young men, he argues, have abandoned fiction and, with it, the practice of inhabiting lives unlike their own. Speaking from the vantage of someone who has documented addiction with clinical intimacy, Welsh draws a direct line between the retreat from novels and a measurable erosion of empathy — and sees the smartphone as the new syringe. His concern is less about literary culture than about what happens to a generation formed without the imaginative tools that teach us how to feel what another person feels.
- Welsh is sounding an alarm that goes beyond reading statistics — he believes young men are losing the neurological and emotional exercise that fiction uniquely provides.
- Women have become the dominant consumers of novels, creating a growing gender fault line in who receives the empathy-building benefits of literary immersion.
- Smartphones, Welsh argues, are not merely distractions but dependency systems as structurally corrosive as heroin — a comparison he makes from lived knowledge, not rhetorical convenience.
- Young men are simultaneously abandoning fiction and being forced to make life-defining decisions in their twenties without the imaginative frameworks that novels have historically offered.
- Welsh's new novel 'Men in Love' — an expansion of the Trainspotting saga — arrives as a living counter-argument: proof that broken, complex men are still worth the effort of deep attention.
Irvine Welsh, the Scottish author whose novels about addiction and urban decay demanded readers sit uncomfortably inside minds society prefers to ignore, has a diagnosis for what ails young men: they've stopped reading fiction, and it's cost them their empathy.
Traveling through Spanish media, Welsh has been making a pointed observation — young men have largely traded novels for screens, leaving women as fiction's primary audience. The consequence, he argues, is not a mere demographic shift but a genuine erosion of the emotional understanding that literature cultivates by placing readers inside the interior lives of people unlike themselves. That act of imaginative inhabitation, Welsh suggests, is one young men are increasingly refusing to perform.
His concern extends to the technology filling the void. Smartphones, in his estimation, operate with the same corrosive gravity as heroin — a comparison he doesn't make lightly. Welsh has documented addiction from the inside with unflinching precision, and when he reaches for that analogy, he's drawing on something more than metaphor.
There's a particular resonance to his timing. He's currently promoting 'Men in Love,' a new novel expanding the Trainspotting saga — a franchise built on the premise that damaged, economically abandoned people contain depths worth exploring. It is, at its core, a literary argument against dismissal.
Welsh also names a subtler crisis: the bewildering compression of early adulthood, where young men barely know which pub they'll drink in next yet are forced to make decisions that will define the rest of their lives. Fiction has traditionally been where people rehearse such confusion — borrowing language and frameworks from characters navigating the same vertigo. What Welsh is ultimately describing is not a reading problem but a developmental one, raising the question of whether an entire generation of men is being shaped by tools that are excellent at many things but notably poor at teaching you how to feel what someone else feels.
Irvine Welsh, the Scottish author whose unflinching novels about addiction and urban decay made him a literary fixture, has a diagnosis for what ails young men today: they've stopped reading fiction, and it's cost them their capacity for empathy.
Welsh has been making the rounds of Spanish media outlets with a stark observation. Young men, he argues, have largely abandoned novels in favor of screens, leaving women as the primary consumers of fiction. The consequence, in his view, is not merely a shift in reading demographics but a genuine erosion of emotional understanding—the kind that fiction, at its best, cultivates by forcing readers into the interior lives of characters unlike themselves.
The critique carries weight coming from Welsh, whose own work has always demanded that readers sit uncomfortably inside the minds of people society prefers to ignore. His novels don't ask for sympathy so much as recognition: here is how this person thinks, feels, rationalizes. That act of imaginative inhabitation, Welsh seems to be saying, is something young men are increasingly refusing to do.
But Welsh's concern extends beyond the reading habits themselves. He's also sounding an alarm about the technology that's replacing books. Smartphones, in his estimation, are as corrosive as heroin—they pull people downward with the same inexorable gravity, the same promise of escape that becomes a trap. The comparison is not casual. Welsh knows addiction from the inside; his work has documented it with unflinching precision. When he says phones operate like drugs, he's drawing on something more than metaphor.
There's a particular poignancy to Welsh's timing. He's currently promoting the return of his Trainspotting saga with a new novel, "Men in Love," which continues to follow the damaged, magnetic characters readers first encountered decades ago. The franchise that made Welsh's name is built on the premise that broken people—addicts, criminals, the economically abandoned—contain depths worth exploring. It's a literary argument against dismissal, against the easy moral certainties that allow us to look away.
Welsh also touches on another dimension of young male experience: the bewildering compression of adulthood. In your twenties, he observes, you don't even know which pub you'll drink in next, yet you're forced to make the decisions that will define the rest of your life. That's a different kind of crisis than addiction or poverty, but it's real—the vertigo of early manhood in a world that offers no clear map. Fiction, traditionally, has been one place where young people could rehearse such confusion, could watch others navigate it, could borrow language and frameworks for understanding their own experience.
What Welsh is describing, then, is not simply a reading problem but a kind of developmental one. If young men are losing empathy, if they're retreating into screens, if they're making life-defining choices without the imaginative resources that fiction provides, the implications ripple outward. The question his commentary raises is whether this is a temporary cultural shift or something more structural—whether an entire generation of men is being formed by a fundamentally different set of tools than their predecessors, tools that may be excellent at many things but are notably poor at teaching you how to feel what someone else feels.
Notable Quotes
Young men in their twenties don't know which pub they'll drink in next, yet they must make the decisions that will define their entire lives— Irvine Welsh
Phones are as destructive as heroin because they pull us downward with the same inexorable gravity and false promise of escape— Irvine Welsh
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
When you say young men have lost empathy, are you describing something you've observed directly, or is this more of a cultural intuition?
It's both. I see it in the readers I encounter, the ones who do still read—they're overwhelmingly women. But it's also what the data suggests, what teachers and parents report. The empathy question isn't abstract; it's about whether you can imagine yourself into someone else's skin.
But couldn't you argue that young men are just reading differently—online, in different formats? Why does it have to be novels specifically?
Because novels demand something particular. They require sustained attention to interiority, to the slow accumulation of understanding another person's contradictions. A tweet or a video doesn't do that. It can't. The form itself is the message.
You compare phones to heroin. That's a strong claim. Do you really think the mechanism is the same?
The mechanism of addiction is remarkably consistent. The promise of relief, the dopamine hit, the escalating need for more. I've written about heroin for decades. I recognize the pattern when I see it.
Your new book returns to Trainspotting characters. Are you suggesting that fiction about damaged people is somehow more important now than it was before?
I'm suggesting it's more necessary. If young men aren't reading at all, they're missing the chance to understand people who aren't like them, people society has written off. That's not a luxury. That's essential.
What would it take to reverse this? Can novels compete with screens?
Not by trying to be screens. By being what they've always been—a space where you have to slow down, where you have to think, where you have to feel. Whether that's enough anymore, I honestly don't know.