Reaching the hallmark of 18 years of age does not an adult make. I have reached a few milestones that are considered a part of the journey into the now seemingly elusive adulthood.

First, I turned 18, but besides trying to smoke for the first time, I didn’t feel any different than I was the day before. Then, I became an Eagle Scout, a fairly elite group. Then, I graduated high school and began college. Yet, throughout all of these events, I didn’t fully feel like I had become any manlier than I was previously.

Here, in America, we live in a pop culture society that over-saturates every aspect of our lives. There are billboards that plaster the roads with the latest trends. Commercials that blink and flash products to buy. The vast expanses of the Internet, a place of literally unlimited knowledge where we become lost in the newest video posted on social media. Then, there are movies.

And, what do we, as boys, learn from this? First is that we need to be hulking giants who crush others in football, swallow steaks whole, fire machine guns from the hip with pin point accuracy and, of course, always make the women swoon over our bulging muscles while enticing them with a sly and dashing Han Solo like remark.

So, where does this leave us? What does this all-encompassing and engrossing pop culture have to do with anything? Well, it’s the brutal fact that real life is nothing like it, and we begin to learn this very quickly. That yes, even in college, we begin to slow down in our running, lift less, gain weight and start losing hair. Therefore, another form of culture comes forth: immortality.

Boys get sucked into this “Lost Boy’s” mindset where video games and pizza rule the day, football on TV and beers until you can’t stand. We truly are lost boys, stripped of any decency or honor.

Our society had ingrained this cancerous idea into our minds, that of the man-child, the forever 21-year-old and the frat boy bachelor.

Writer Brett McKay over at the Art of Manliness website often writes wonderful articles on how to achieve the lost ideals of yesteryear and what the “modern” man can learn from them.

In his article, “Why are We So Conflicted About Manhood in the Modern Age?” he proposes the notion that this is a part of the natural ebb and flow of society, where the primary characteristics of men, such as being the breadwinner and the hunter, are no longer represented. In our society, we have progressed passed the hunter-gather mentality with most needs only an arm's reach away.

We no longer need the specific attributes that we have valued in men across time and the differences and roles between men and women fade. We live in a position of ease. There is one downside present in the stress-free environment we’ve created for ourselves: Biology.

Men still pump testosterone, still long to feel a burn in their muscles and put themselves to a purpose. There are no outlets for them to go to in an age where men wear humiliating harnesses to hold pudgy babies at cocktail parties.

They harness their God-given characteristics and run a muck with them, as demonstrated across college campuses and men outside of further education still neglecting to do anything meaningful with their lives.

So, where do we go from here? We should promote a healthy culture where the importance of maturity and responsibility is encouraged, not some daunting or mundane task your dad did. We need to wake up as a society and realize our grievance before they collapse upon us.

As a call to action, I will leave two quotes to ponder. The first is the problem told by Norman Mailer, “Because there is very little honor left in American life, there is a certain built-in tendency to destroy masculinity in American men.” Finally, the solution from David Gilmore, “Manhood is the defeat of childhood narcissism.”