That is the view of Philip Zimbardo, the psychologist famous for the Stanford Prison Experiment (read about it, it’s fascinating). Zimbardo has released a new book, which through studying 20,000 young men, argues a growing addiction to online pornography and video games is creating a ‘masculinity crisis’. He states:
“It (the addiction) begins to change brain function. It begins to change the reward centre of the brain, and produces a kind of excitement and addiction. What I’m saying is – boys’ brains are becoming digitally rewired.”
This is not the first time we’ve heard about a modern ‘crisis in masculinity’. Many are becoming increasingly concerned with the trajectories of young men in our society, and for good reason. Look at mental health, for example. In the United Kingdom, while rates of female suicides have remained steady over the past forty years, male suicide rates have increased significantly. Men are now between three to five times more likely to commit suicide than women. The Australian Bureau of Statistics finds similar data, with men being three times more likely to commit suicide than women. Something is certainly going on.
Yet, as a young person, I cannot help but feel we are as a society, Zimbardo included, largely missing the point.
Clearly some of Zimbardo’s results are concerning. He talks about young men who play video games up to 15 hours a day. Research show people with these sorts of addictions have similar brain functioning to those addicted to drugs or alcohol. It is clearly not healthy.
Yet, it is far too easy to worked up about this ‘crisis’ and then attribute it to the wrong factors when real problems are discovered.
It may be hard to miss, given all the moral panic about the issue, that despite potential increasing addiction to porn and video games, alcohol abuse is actually going down. The same can be said for the number of assaults in our society. While many are whipping up a frenzy about a drunken violent young generation, the simple facts don’t hold this up to be true.
But that doesn’t mean there isn’t something wrong. The problem is that we’re just blind to the real problem. Zimbardo for example seems to place the blame entirely onto porn and video games, but the issues are much more complex than that. Pornography and video games are not the cause of the problem, they are a symptom. To understand this we should look at alcohol and drug addiction. Johann Hari argues these sorts of addictions are not due to some ‘moral failing’ or even to chemicals reaction in the brain. Instead, he says: “addiction is an adaptation. It’s not you. It’s your cage.” This can be said about porn and video games as well. This is not about the failings of young men, who have become too “lazy” or “selfish”. It is about a cage that has been placed around young people that is making it difficult for many to function.
Now, before anyone gets worried here, no, I’m not about to blame feminism. While many “mens rights organisations” have blamed this crisis on the growth of feminism, I stand with Steve Biddulph, who says “the women’s movement was the most positive event of the 20th century.” There is no doubt that feminism changed male roles in our society, yet that is a change that has been needed for a long time.
The problem however is much deeper than this, and it is one that affects people of all genders. We are facing aWestern Cultural Crisis. Our society has become obsessed with work, consumerism and productivity,disconnecting people from the social bonds that make us human. And young people are facing the brunt of this the worst. We are told we must work hard to succeed, yet we are struggling in the economy of today. Young people face increasing student debts, more difficulty finding secure jobs and the idea of buying a house is now laughable for most people my age. Add in the stress of climate change and it’s no wonder many young people are worried, pessimistic and depressed.
And how does our society deal with this? Young people face an almost daily barrage of being told by we are ‘lazy’ or that we are ‘self-obsessed’. We face an impossible economy and are then lambasted for struggling in it. It’s no wonder so many young men are deciding to hide in their rooms, preferring to play video games and watch porn.
In his comments about his book, Zimbardo gave an example of the mindset of someone addicted to porn and video games. He said:
“When I’m in class, I’ll wish I was playing World of Warcraft. When I’m with a girl, I’ll wish I was watching pornography, because I’ll never get rejected.”
Reading that I thought this person was speaking about fear of being rejected by someone we are attracted to — a pretty common feeling. But it seems much deeper than that. Young people, men and women, are not just being rejected romantically, we are facing a much broader rejection from society. And while much of the frenzy about this amounts to little more than moral panic, there is a real crisis happening. A crisis that goes to the root of our culture. Instead of just finger waving and calling us all lazy and selfish it’s time our society dealt with the real issue at hand.
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