A GENDER IN CRISIS: The numbers of young, poor, educated people are growing - and the men don't like it one bit.

OK Men. Why are you so angry?

The big, new, scary, demographic time-bomb ticking in the world right now concerns blokes. Young blokes. Young, angry blokes.

In Abu Dhabi's The National, very impressive journalist Afshin Molavi writes half of the world's seven billion people are under 25, with poorer countries more likely to skew young.

And while being young is grand, being young and poor isn't, especially if you're educated enough to expect better. And, as Molavi points out, looking past North Africa to Greece and America, being young and poor and educated is becoming more common.

But women are less likely to mind than men, the New America Foundation thinker postulates. Men, promised so much, used to much more, are more likely to feel massively ripped off.

Hence the age of the Angry Young Man.

Molavi makes a compelling argument, aided by recurrent visions of male wrath wrought across the Middle East, and that trendy thought bubble floating about that puts Masculinity in Crisis.

But I wonder if, closer to home, our young men are pissed off too.

And if they are, how is it affecting their relationships?

I took to Twitter with my question and was amused by a squad of responses from dudes using caps lock to say, jokingly, WHO? ANGRY? ME?!?!

Yet a couple emailed, saying they thought yes, there was some kind of rage bubbling away beneath their housed, sheltered, well-fed exteriors. Some blamed video games. Others blamed women/feminism/their mothers.

However one young man said his own growing sense of discontentment had little to do with his gender and more to do with a general lack of self assuredness. He felt so little was certain in the world anymore, so murky was his future, and that anger bred of confusion had developed into the default position.

As a young person, I am "fully down" with such sentiments, as they say, though I wonder whether this vague fury brewing in our country really compares to the rage in Molavi's reckoning.

I mean, life here is still pretty great, relatively speaking. What have we got to be actually upset about?

Following the London riots, squawking media dramatists were quick to whip up fears the malaise could spread to the colonies. Though not exclusively male, the unrest was characterised by chavy-lads and the gripes were very Western - surely our rowdy young men, who booze and biff too much already, would follow suit! It might not be jihad, but by jingo, we should be worried!

Well, it sort of didn't happen. But, while I don't think our men number among the Many Angry Young Ones currently or imminently revolting elsewhere, I do get the feeling, largely from past comments on this blog, that there may be something amiss with Dave, Dad and The Boys.

A lack of positive role models perhaps? A sense of placelessness in a feminising culture? Not enough sex, or too many video games?

Being not a bloke, I can't answer. So I ask. Anger - is it a guy thing? And why?

-Sydney Morning Herald