What I Learned About the Gender Gap by Growing Up with My Twin

There’s more to the story than what’s been covered.

This summer, The Up and Up is fortunate to have two stellar interns contributing to our growth and strategy. Brooke Cashman, a rising senior at The Noble and Greenough School in Dedham, Massachusetts (my alma mater), joins me in writing today’s edition of The Up and Up. Brooke is sharp-eyed and forward-thinking when it comes to spotting trends amongst her peers (more on that below). But first, a note from me.

At The Up and Up (and in some of my freelance writing), I’ve explored the evolving realities of what it’s like to be a young man or young woman today. Men and women have always seen the world differently, but in 2025, having grown up online, post-Me Too, post-Covid, and amid-Trump 2.0, those differences feel especially pronounced.

The stark difference in how young men and women experience our world today has become a defining theme of The Up and Up. It’s also been dissected in headlines, podcasts, and even an SNL sketch mocking the ‘manosphere’ media world credited with helping President Donald Trump make inroads with young men in last year’s election.

But the youth gender gap is not just political. Politics, if anything, reflect a larger social rewiring that’s unfolded over the past decade. I often come back to Bloomberg’s analysis on how young men are falling behind in our country’s classrooms and careers, or the recent NBC piece on how “young men are struggling in a slowing job market, even if they have degrees.”

In my listening sessions with Gen Z, I’ve noticed a few patterns: dating and having kids feel like less of a priority, young women are plan obsessed and future focused, and women are closing the gap with men when it comes to investing habits, even if crypto (and let’s be real, finance) culture is still male dominated. Of course Gen Z isn’t monolithic, and even within the two Gen Zs, men and women express different perspectives on how gender shapes their outlooks.

Which brings me to Brooke. Who better to unpack these differences than someone who has lived them – right alongside her twin brother?

My Front-Row Seat to the Gender Gap

By Brooke Cashman

I’ve lived side by side with my twin my entire life. Same family, same home, same school, same opportunities. And yet, my brother and I have always experienced things differently.

Nothing exemplifies this more than our rides home from school, when I unpack every detail of the day, asking my brother his thoughts, only to be met with a shrug of a response. No matter the subject, I tend to overanalyze, wanting to talk things through. He’s more focused, quieter about what’s going on internally.

Those differences got me thinking: Is this just us, or do we embody something bigger?

So, I decided to ask around. I sent the same set of ten questions to 12 of my friends — six girls and six boys — from 11 different high schools. We talked about school, stress, social media, success, relationships, and what we all fear most about the future. I included both my brother’s and my own responses, too.

What I learned confirmed what I’ve felt for a while: Girls and boys are going through high school very differently, even when they’re trying to make sense of the same things.

Girls are more vulnerable, especially around comparison culture

Am I enough? This is a question boys and girls alike are asking of themselves. However, the level of scrutiny for girls is much higher as tendencies for comparison to others are so high. The boys I spoke to are more likely to judge themselves by their own expectations, and, if anything, comparison motivates them to be better. The girls I heard from said they are focused on looks and grades, while many of the guys I spoke to were comparing physical ability or performance-based metrics.

“I compare myself to other people my age or people who are the same gender as me,” one of my girlfriends said.

“I also definitely compare my looks to others which is something I’m really trying to work on. It’s just really hard in today’s society when everything is so edited and fake. But even in the real world, I do find myself comparing my looks but I’m really working on it,” said another girl.

“I try not to, because I try and stay focused on what I can control,” said a guy friend.

“A lot of the times I compare myself to other pitchers at the high school level to get a gauge on what I’ve done well and what I’ve done poorly. Being one of the better pitchers on one of the best teams in the state, I more often people compare me to other pitchers than I compare myself to other pitchers,” said a baseball player I heard from.

The feedback I heard confirms that girls feel a level of social pressure where comparison seeps in even when we try to ignore it. Clearly guys feel it too. Girls, however, are more willing to talk about this whereas boys seem to avoid it and do their best to focus on themselves or take others’ success as motivation to improve.

The social risk of sharing stress

School, sports, and expectations from parents are the biggest sources of pressure for us all. But I found that boys often leave their emotional weight unspoken, while girls scrutinize themselves in ways that can take a toll.

“When it comes to my relationships with people, I care a lot and hate hurting people’s feelings and I just care a lot about what people think of me,” my girl friend shared.

“I don’t want to disappoint my parents or anyone else in my life,” said one of my guy friends.

“Academics give me the most stress by far,” shared another guy friend.

Despite feeling the same pressures, the key difference is that girls verbalize this stress, exposing vulnerability, while boys downplay just how much the stress impacts them. In my experience, there seems to be an expectation that boys mask their feelings. To share them out loud or with a friend would require taking a social risk.

Boys are more focused on present-day performance, meanwhile girls are planning to a tee for their future

There’s a divide in what my guy friends and girl friends are prioritizing. For boys, sports and grades are top of mind. These are things that have a tangible effect on short term success. There was less of an emphasis on plans, even if that may be in the back of their mind or at the root of their obsession with metrics or living to the fullest. Meanwhile, girls are focused on taking advantage of opportunities and planning.

“Success to me is being able to look back on my life, and knowing that I have lived my days to the fullest. Because my time is so limited, I want to spend every day like it’s the last. That being said, I definitely don’t,” one boy said.

“School and baseball. It’s tough to balance schoolwork and getting good grades while also improving as a pitcher and not letting teammates down,” said another.

“My biggest fear is uncertainty, I am obsessed with knowing my plan and what’s next, but sometimes that’s not possible, and I have to learn to accept that,” one of my girl friends told me.

My research revealed that boys tend to focus on things they can control. This lens helps them to stay clear-eyed on the present-day and what they can do to perform their best in the here and now. Girls, on the other hand, tend to mix worries about today and the future together. We plot out our paths and tend to analyze how today’s actions might impact tomorrow’s success, even if some of things are outside our realm of control.

Romantic relationships: Not a priority, even for those in them

The consensus surprisingly was that romantic relationships, even for those in a relationship, are not an immediate priority. Overall, my peers equate romance with distraction. Some girls mention the difficulty in finding a “good guy" these days with true intentions of a real relationship.

“What’s holding me back is finding a nice guy that won’t leave me on delivered for 4 days!,” said one of my girl friends.

“It’s not important at our age but it’s more of a want,” said another girl.

“Not that important. I don't think having a girlfriend at this age is significant,” said my guy friend.

“It’s not important to me at all. I don’t have the time for it because of school and sports,” said another boy.

From Grease to High School Musical, a certain version of high school romance has been at the center of pop culture for decades. But for Gen Z this looks different. First and foremost, with what feels like so many crucial life decisions and high stakes moments on the line (especially for high school seniors like myself and my twin), dating can feel like an extra thing on your plate, rather than the main focus. Meanwhile, “hookup culture” has displaced the idea of romance oftentimes making a relationship feel unserious even when you’re in one.

Across the board: friends, family, and fulfilling future

Whether it’s “doing what I love” or simply being excited about life, most teens define success as more than just money or prestige, but whatever makes them feel fulfilled and gives them purpose.

When asked what makes them the happiest on any given day, there was unanimous agreement: being in person, with friends and family. While social media is a tool to stay connected, it’s the in-person time with the people my friends feel closest to that provides a source of support and happiness. I was 13-years-old during the peak of Covid. Being together in person is a way for us to push back against our very online childhood.

Turning to thoughts of the future, many of my peers stressed the importance of having a family and success in their jobs with a steady income. But there was a divide in how to get there. For the boys, many specifically mentioned the priority of finding a loving wife, while the girls were more broad in expressing hope for a healthy and happy life.

My experience is not isolated

While boys and girls express their worries differently, we’re all asking the same big questions: Am I enough? Am I doing this right? Where am I going? And will I be okay?

This may sound like a typical rite of passage for teens, and of course it partially is, but for our generation in particular, social media creates a fish bowl culture through which we compare ourselves to one another constantly. That’s compounded by a level of scrutiny and pressure to achieve from our parents that raises the stakes. We worry we are one bad grade away from not living up to our potential.

As a twin, I have an intimate (and at times biased) view of the youth gender gap. But the feedback from teens our age confirms that my experience is not isolated. There are huge differences in how teen girls and boys view the world and their place in it, as well as what the future might look like. This process helped me realize that beyond data points and headlines obsessing over where and how young men and women differ, there’s more to the story than what’s been covered. The media narrative about Gen Z men and women tends to pit us against each other. But my research, and my own relationship with my twin brother, proves that we’re all going through similar things. We just show it differently.

Noteworthy reads

• Who’s afraid of Bushcore?, By Carolina de Armas and Paulina Prosnitz for Air Mail

• Gen Z is facing a job market double-whammy, Emily Peck for Axios

• ‘You’re a Boomer If You Wear Leggings’: The Rise of Big Workout Pants, Rory Satran for The Wall Street Journal

• Location sharing was cool for Gen Z until Instagram made it weird, Ethan Beck for The Washington Post