In 2011 Phillip Zimbardo, famous physiologist, gave a TEDTalk called The demise of guys?. He wanted to warm whole society that girls not only outperform boys significantly on every level of school, but also boys are failing in business, they are falling socially and even sexually.
He gave a few reasons why boys are worst and worst, but the most controversial one blamed porn and games!
In his opinion, games give a sense of achievement and appreciation but at the same time isolate from the world outside and do not develop social skills. Moreover, it turns out that reality is less attractive than diverse and intense games. In his book Gdzie Ci mężczyźni he informs that nowadays in the United States a young person spends 10,000 hours playing before his 21st birthday. The average student needs twice less time to defend a bachelor’s degree! And of course, boys play much more than girls: 13 hours per week compare to 5 hours. Games start to replace reality instead of inspiring the gamers and create a better reality.
Readily available porn also has a hand in it. Young boys without any sexual experiences and sex education basics base their knowledge only on pornographic movies. Their ideas about sex are distorted and cause difficulties in achieving sexual arousal during contact with another person. The problem is sufficiently large: nowadays it is impossible to find a control group which is not watching porn at all! Girls, of course, watch porno as they play games, but 75% of the access to pornographicsite is generated by man and only 2% of registered credit cards on paid services belong to women. Some companies even detect women’s names during registration as an attempted fraud. The problem is, that adults know that porn is only a fantasy while for teenagers is a role model.
Any idea what we can do as a mothers, fathers, future wives, teachers, or in general, society?
The problem is more complex, so I really encourage you to watch excellent Phillip Zimbardo TED Talk and find the solution 🙂
for those more interested:
Books:
in english:
The Demise of Guys: Why Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It
Man (Dis)Connected: How Technology Has Sabotaged What it Means to be Male
Man, Interrupted: Why Young Men are Struggling & What We Can Do About It
in polish: