'The Demise of Guys': How video games and porn are ruining a generation
By Dr. Philip G. Zimbardo and Nikita Duncan
Is the overuse of video games and pervasiveness of online porn causing the demise of guys?
Increasingly, researchers say yes, as young men become hooked on arousal, sacrificing their schoolwork and relationships in the pursuit of getting a tech-based buzz.
Every compulsive gambler, alcoholic or drug addict will tell you that they want increasingly more of a game or drink or drug in order to get the same quality of buzz.
Video game and porn addictions are different. They are "arousal addictions," where the attraction is in the novelty, the variety or the surprise factor of the content. Sameness is soon habituated; newness heightens excitement. In traditional drug arousal, conversely, addicts want more of the same cocaine or heroin or favorite food.
The consequences could be dramatic: The excessive use of video games and online porn in pursuit of the next thing is creating a generation of risk-averse guys who are unable (and unwilling) to navigate the complexities and risks inherent to real-life relationships, school and employment.
Stories about this degeneration are rampant: In 2005, Seungseob Lee, a South Korean man, went into cardiac arrest after playing "StarCraft" for nearly 50 continuous hours. In 2009, MTV's "True Life" highlighted the story of a man named Adam whose wife kicked him out of their home -- they have four kids together -- because he couldn't stop watching porn.
Norwegian mass murder suspect Anders Behring Breivik reported during his trial that he prepared his mind and body for his marksman-focused shooting of 77 people by playing "World of Warcraft" for a year and then "Call of Duty" for 16 hours a day.
Research into this area goes back a half-century.
In 1954, researchers Peter Milner and James Olds discovered the pleasure center of the brain. In their experiments, an electrical current was sent to the limbic system of a rat's brain whenever it moved to a certain area of its cage. The limbic sytem is a portion of the brain that controls things like emotion, behavior and memory. The researchers hypothesized that if the stimulation to the limbic system were unpleasant, the rats would stay away from that part of the cage.
Surprisingly, the rats returned to that portion of the cage again and again, despite the sensation.
In later experiments, when they were allowed to push a stimulation lever on their own accord, they self-stimulated hundreds of times per hour. Even when given the option to eat when hungry or to stimulate the pleasure center, the rats chose the stimulation until they were physically exhausted and on the brink of death.
This new kind of human addictive arousal traps users into an expanded present hedonistic time zone. Past and future are distant and remote as the present moment expands to dominate everything. That present scene is totally dynamic, with images changing constantly.
A recent study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that "regular porn users are more likely to report depression and poor physical health than nonusers are. ... The reason is that porn may start a cycle of isolation. ... Porn may become a substitute for healthy face-to-face interactions, social or sexual."
Similarly, video games also go wrong when the person playing them is desensitized to reality and real-life interactions with others.
Violence in video games is often synonymous with success. Children with more of a propensity for aggression are more attracted to violent video media, but violent media, in turn, can also make them more aggressive. This could be related to the fact that most video games reward players for violent acts, often permitting them to move to the next level in a game.
Yet research reported in the Annual Review of Public Health suggests a link between violent video games and real-life aggression: Given the opportunity, both adults and children were more aggressive after playing violent games. And people who identify themselves with violent perpetrators in video games are able to take aggressive action while playing that role, reinforcing aggressive behavior.
Young men -- who play video games and use porn the most -- are being digitally rewired in a totally new way that demands constant stimulation. And those delicate, developing brains are being catered to by video games and porn-on-demand, with a click of the mouse, in endless variety.
Such new brains are also totally out of sync in traditional school classes, which are analog, static and interactively passive. Academics are based on applying past lessons to future problems, on planning, on delaying gratifications, on work coming before play and on long-term goal-setting.
Guys are also totally out of sync in romantic relationships, which tend to build gradually and subtly, and require interaction, sharing, developing trust and suppression of lust at least until "the time is right."
Less extreme cases of arousal addiction may go unnoticed or be diagnosed as an attention or mood disorder. But we are in a national, and perhaps global, Guy Disaster Mode that needs to be noticed and solutions advanced to fix a totally novel phenomenon, which will only increase in intensity and breadth without the concerted efforts of educators, gamemakers, parents, guys and gals.
It's time to press play and get started reversing these trends.
As always, once again there is someone that knows how too live your life better than you do.
Video games weren't out 50 years ago, or not at least submersive videos. So part of the theory here isn't valid it was based on.
Every generation comes out with some reason why someone knows better how to live your life than you. Religion has been one of the constant providers of this type of attitude. What you should do, how you should live, and the way you should live.
What hasn't changed in all this is the human factor. We're still basically the same as the guy that came out of the cave toting his club, emotionally. What has changed has been the environment, not the human factor.
If you want to look at the environment and how that's changed, that's pretty simple. I don't need a lot of letters behind the name to do that. Take cell phones as a start. How many times have you heard just how bad it is to drive and text or talk on the cell phone? It has consequences, as with the young man that moments before his death on the highway was texting an average of once every 12 seconds. Think maybe that had something to do with his 'reward behavior'? Or that maybe it changed his outlook on life in the years prior to the event of his death, where he plowed into a school bus full of children? He wasn't gaming.
Games have always been the target of 'we need to do something' social and political wise. One such nut became such a pest to the Florida courts they finally barred him from practicing law and took his license to do so. By that time he had cost the Florida taxpayers untold of millions in legal costs. Yet games are still here and still being played.
The social factor is more I think of being a result of isolation. The parent learns early that the tv is a great baby sitter. The kid learns being an invalid while participating in voyeurship is ok. But games satisfy that part buried in every human of doing, exploring, and achieving without actually having to do it physically. Suddenly you can be the he-man, the hero, all without having to learn any major skills at all.
The internet is another great isolation game changer. It helps prevent the kid from getting social skills that are obtained by body language because he isn't there to get that part of the conversation. It is estimated between 80-90% of conversation is done on a non-verbal level and you can't get that from the net.
What is happening and I come to this unlike the ones above, merely by observation, is that our social circles are changing. Our life patterns are changing from what our parents had. That social skills are declining doesn't have as much to do with games as it does the environment.
All kids are socially awkward; it's part of the learning that is usually done in public schools. What is and is not acceptable behavior within public. But schools don't usually cover the interpersonal actions that come between two seeking mates or sex and that is something these kids come out of school mostly not knowing. Hormones have a way of changing that. It's built in and a part of the human factor too. It's what pushes us out of the minor world and into puberty. It works on both sexes. Very little if any attention is paid to this in school or how to deal with it. It just happens.
On the whole this business of games and how it leaves the life unprepared for the future of social graces is once again, just another boondoggle. Hopefully in this write up, I have shown you why.
The 1950's social mores of the "Leave it to Beaver" age don't work anymore. The idea that mom and pop had just enough sexual desire to create Little Johnny and then it all disappeared is as foolish as can be and just looking around with your eyes once you have discovered how to think for yourself, reveals how pathetic it is to think that.
'The Demise of Guys'...
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