The Demise of Guys: Why Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It

by Philip G. Zimbardo

  The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) article “What’s the Problem with School?”66 sums up the situation well:

  “The average boy is less mature socially and verbally yet more physically active than the average girl when he starts school.” Since boys are more active than girls, they have more difficulty sitting still for long periods of time. (As a side note, much of the active time kids used to have during school has all but vanished. Children spend about half as much time outdoors today as they did in the 1980s, and some schools have eliminated recess altogether. In recent years, 40,000 American schools have eliminated recess, with only 12 percent of states requiring elementary schools to offer any free time and only 13.7 percent of elementary school students having gym classes at least three times a week.67)

  Children are now being taught to read in kindergarten, and boys, being less verbally skilled than girls, are not developmentally ready to be receptive to reading exercises.

  “The elementary classroom is four-fifths language based, and girls are, on average, stronger than boys in language.” Thus boys feel like they are not good at literacy, and that perceived deficit becomes a part of their new negative self-identity.

  Boys tend to learn best with hands-on learning activities, and schools don’t offer enough opportunities to manipulate actual things. Furthermore, diaries and first-person narratives, writing styles preferred by girls, are often favored over comic books and science fiction, themes favored by boys.

  Fewer than one in nine schoolteachers is a man.68 Most teachers in elementary schools are women, which leaves fewer male models for learning as a masculine pursuit. (We would add that this is even more true in high school classes.)

  Once students are in college, they face other kinds of challenges. Clifford Nass, distinguished communications professor at Stanford University, sees consequences of the ubiquitous digital life:

  You walk around the world and you see people multitasking. They’re playing games and they’re reading email and they’re on Facebook, etc. … On a college campus, most kids are doing two things at once, maybe three things at once. … Virtually all multitaskers think they are brilliant at multitasking. And one of the big discoveries is, You know what? You’re really lousy at it! It turns out multitaskers are terrible at every aspect of multitasking. They get distracted constantly. Their memory is very disorganized. Recent work we’ve done suggests they’re worse at analytical reasoning. We worry that it may be creating people who are unable to think well and clearly.69

  And that is true of some of the best college students in America — the 1,500 select few who are accepted to Stanford from among the 30,000 applicants annually. If they can’t multitask, but believe they can, what chance is there that less-talented students can do so effectively?

  High on life, or high on something

  In 2006, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor John Gabrieli and his research team found that medication for ADHD improves the performance of normal kids by the same degree that it improves the performance of kids with ADHD.70 So when someone responds well to the medication — better behavior, focus and grades — it doesn’t necessarily mean they have ADHD, yet many parents and doctors are using these improvements to confirm the disorder.

  What’s the harm if the medications help the kid do better in class? While kids generally do perform better and become more manageable, being on these medications for even just a year can lead to changes in personality. Friendly, outgoing, adventurous boys become lazy and irritable.

  Professor William Carlezon and colleagues at Harvard University Medical School recently reported that giving stimulant medications — such as those used to treat boys with ADHD — to juvenile laboratory animals resulted in those animals displaying loss of drive when they grew up. These animals looked normal but were lazy. They didn’t want to work hard, not even to escape a bad situation. The researchers suggested that similar effects could be seen in children. Children might look fine during and after taking these medications, but as adults they won’t have much motivation or drive.

  Sax writes in Boys Adrift that stimulant medications appear to harm the brain by damaging an area called the nucleus accumbens, where motivation is turned into action. If a boy’s nucleus accumbens is damaged, he may still be hungry or sexually aroused, but will not do anything about it. Independent groups of researchers at Universities in the United States and Europe have found that even when young laboratory animals were exposed to even low dosages of these medications for short periods of time, permanent damage to the nucleus accumbens can happen:

  One particularly disturbing study — conducted jointly by researchers at Tufts, UCLA, and Brown University — documented a nearly linear correlation between the nucleus accumbens and individual motivation. The smaller the nucleus accumbens, the more likely that person was to be apathetic, lacking in drive. These investigators emphasized that apathy was quite independent of depression. A young man can be completely unmotivated — and still be perfectly happy and content.71

  He just won’t do much or want to do much, but be a smiling couch potato. This is especially relevant to guys since nearly 85 percent of all stimulant medications are prescribed to American boys.72

  One of the side effects of taking stimulants is nervousness and anxiety. What’s a great way to reduce these side effects? Smoke pot.

  Many young men, both those taking and not taking medication, smoke marijuana. And marijuana is not the same drug it used to be. The average potency of weed has risen steadily for the last three decades. The average THC content (the psychoactive constituent of marijuana) in 1983 was less than 4 percent, but in 2008 the THC content was more than 10 percent, and it is expected to rise to 15 percent or 16 percent in the next 10 years. In October 2011, the Dutch government announced that high-potency weed (with a THC content of 15 percent and higher) would now be classified in the hard drugs category along with cocaine and ecstasy.73 One reason for the reclassification may be that high-potency weed significantly impairs executive function and motor control,74 processes that are involved in planning, memory, attention, problem solving, verbal reasoning and resisting temptation. From one generation to the next, marijuana has become an entirely different drug that can potentially do more harm than good.75

  One male freshman college student told us a story that is becoming more and more common:

  In the first grade, I was diagnosed with ADHD. I began taking Ritalin soon after. That diagnosis has complemented the trajectory of my social and academic life up to this very day. My teachers and parents always told me I was smart, but I had a hard time believing them, as I always found myself in trouble or with a tutor. Middle school was particularly turbulent for me, as I moved to an elite private school in the seventh grade. My grades were abysmal, and from the start, up until I transferred after the end of my freshman year of high school there, there was not a semester where I was not on some form of probation, be it academic or social. Furthermore, trouble, in school and out, has never failed to find me.

  He added that he smoked a fair amount of marijuana, which was a common practice across campus.

  Back away from the doughnut

  Roughly 71 percent of adult males in America are overweight.76 When men gain weight — the bad kind, as opposed to bulking up muscles — a metabolic change happens that drops the hormone levels in the body. Researchers from the University of Buffalo recently determined that obese men have lower levels of testosterone, and when that male hormone drops, one of the biggest victims is bedroom performance. The study shows that 40 percent of obese men have abnormally low levels of testosterone.77 Obesity can also trigger Type 2 diabetes, one effect of which is restricted blood flow to veins, especially the small ones in the penis and testicles. That surge of blood is essential for male erections. An interesting corollary of the combination of obesity and testosterone decline in males is the rise in their bodies of the female hormone estrogen, which can lead to erectile dysfunction and infertility.78

/>   Over the last few decades, physical activity among youth has decreased while screen time has increased. Sedentary behavior fills time that children could be spending in physical activities or even sleeping, contributing to excessive snacking and eating meals in front of the television or computer screen. “Young teen boys in particular who spend their nights playing video games or texting their friends instead of sleeping are putting themselves at greater risk for gaining unhealthy amounts of weight and becoming obese,” reported April Fulton in a recent National Public Radio article.79 Childhood habits tend to stick with people for the rest of their lives. Thus kids who watch television and play video games instead of being active are setting themselves up for a sedentary future, reported a recent Harvard University Medical School Special Health Report.80 Not surprisingly, several studies have found a positive association between screen time and prevalence of overweight in children.81

  There may also be a strong correlation between family trauma — like divorce — and being overweight. In a survey of almost 300 morbidly obese patients, researchers found a very high occurrence of severe family dysfunction, particularly sexual abuse. About 50 percent (both male and female) reported they were sexually assaulted or abused as children, a rate 300 percent higher than the general male population. Pretty much all those surveyed reported experiencing some lasting form of childhood trauma. Weight gain often immediately follows a distressing life event. Examples of this on a large scale include divorce, and divorce rates increased considerably in America before obesity began to soar.82 Young boys often have more difficulty adapting to a parent’s divorce than young girls — especially if the father leaves the home, putting them at higher risk.

  Just press Play: Porn and video games

  Technology challenges us to assert our human values, which means that, first of all, we have to figure out what they are. That’s not so easy. Technology isn’t good or bad, it’s powerful and it's complicated. Take advantage of what it can do. Learn what it can do. But also ask, “What is it doing to us?” We’re going to slowly, slowly find our balance, but I think it’s going to take time.

  — Professor Sherry Turkle, MIT Initiative on Technology and Self83

  To a young man, the thrill-packed worlds of online porn and video games are far more exciting than real life. And these sources of stimulation are now totally pervasive. Internet, videos and television are available 24 hours a day on a variety of devices (computers, laptops, phones, TVs, iPads, and so on.). Part of the problem is that we are telling boys their inner worlds are unacceptable and scary, therefore they have no other outlet for their impulses. This is all contributing to an overall decrease in motivation to contribute or partake in real-world events and social relationships.

  Pornography is a dopamine-producing machine. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter associated with activation of the brain’s reward system. Its presence helps initiate feelings of enjoyment and pleasure. Rewarding experiences such as eating, taking drugs and having sex release dopamine into two main brain regions, the nucleus accumbens and the frontal cortex. However, once a person develops an addiction, the dopamine pathways become pathological. Neutral stimuli and events that are associated with the addictive substance or its process, such as gambling casinos or drug-taking sequences, can become conditioned to generate further arousal and add to the body’s chemical addiction. When excessive porn viewing becomes addictive, the brain lights up as if it were on heroin.

  Many people who watched Phil’s TEDTalk commented that porn and video games should not be lumped together. Video gamers are not necessarily porn users, and vice versa. In many ways, porn and video games are different, but they share many characteristics. Both video games and porn are entertaining and have interesting and useful applications, but they can also be a huge waste of time and potentially psychologically and socially damaging to some guys. We are concerned about young men who are excessively using one or both porn and video games in social isolation. We consider four hours or more a day of playing video games alone to be excessive. There has been no established guideline about what constitutes an excessive amount of porn; the effects of porn are more abstract and difficult to define.

  Both video and online porn are relatively recent forms of digital entertainment that have been added to the social environment. The industries are increasingly merging and becoming particularly seductive to gamers, as Andrew Doan, author of Hooked on Games, points out:

  The combination of sex and pornography in a video game has the potential for explosive growth and has already proven to become so. In Second Life, it’s reported that there are over 20 million accounts with more than half of those being active gamers. … There are people making significant amounts of real money by providing a virtual escort service, some are making six-figure incomes. By day, a woman could become a mom, lawyer, or other professional. But by night, she is the voice behind an avatar that charges twenty dollars an hour for a man to have a virtual companion and virtual sex.84

  Eroticism and motivation are both fueled by arousal. If there is lust, arousal veers in a sexual direction, and if there is a need to triumph, arousal sends one down the path of goal setting and long-term success. Real life is competing with digital alternatives for nearly every aspect of existence; since porn and video games are readily accessible, burden free and fun. The choice for lots of young men is often the digital alternative.

  Though nearly every social need in reality now has a complement in the digital world, it is unclear whether the digital alternatives satisfy those needs in the same way. In Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, physiological and safety needs must be met in physical reality. Is it possible, however, for the top three needs in Maslow’s hierarchy — belongingness, love and esteem, and self-actualization — to be met in digital reality? Could a person be just as, if not more, fulfilled in digital reality? The answer is yes and no; some needs can be achieved in the digital world, but because these needs are met without risk of consequence, and frequently in social isolation — as if in a dress rehearsal — a person may be able to achieve their esteem needs yet completely bypass belongingness and love needs. Therein lies a major problem: entitlement without the ability to relate to others. Furthermore, self-actualization could not be reached without the fulfillment of the other needs, so a lack of intimacy and appreciation for others creates a distorted sense of potential and actualization not based in shared reality.

  It’s unclear how well kids can move between reality and digital worlds. Katie Salen, director of design at the Quest to Learn school in New York, says, “People talk about this distinction between the virtual world and the real world, and there’s concern that there is an inability on the part of young people to separate the two. I actually think that that distinction is a very adult idea, an idea that has come from a generation of people [for whom] virtual didn’t exist and it was something new that was then added to the real world. But kids have that ability to move kind of seamlessly between the digital and the real.”

  Jeremy Bailenson, director of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford University, says, “The distinctions between real and virtual world are becoming blurred, even interchangeable.” In the documentary Digital Nation, Bailenson makes a realistic-looking avatar of host Douglas Rushkoff:

  In one study, we made you 10 centimeters taller than you actually were and had you conduct a negotiation with someone. Having 10 centimeters difference in height from your normal self causes you to be three times more likely to beat someone in a negotiation in virtual reality. … Regardless of our actual heights, you’ll then beat me face to face when we have a negotiation. … A small exposure inside the virtual reality carried over to their behavior face to face. … We’ve done studies with children [in which] they see themselves swimming around with whales in a virtual reality; a week later, half of them will believe that they swam with whales.85

  Dynamics of porn

  Woody Allen once said, “Sex without love is an empty experience, but as
empty experiences go, it’s one of the best.” Or is it?

  One high-school-age guy from our survey commented, “I think the on-demand pleasure, gratification, control and stress release of pornography and video games reduces our patience, makes us hold ourselves to unrealistic expectations and cripples us socially.”

  Pornography is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter meant to stimulate sexual arousal and satisfaction. Unlike art or erotica, porn has little artistic merit and is focused on the physical act of sex rather than feelings and emotions. Depictions of sex have been around since prehistoric times, but the concept of pornography was not widely understood until the latter half of the 19th century. The large-scale excavations of Pompeii in the 1860s kicked off discussions on what exactly qualified as obscene, resulting in many of the erotic objects discovered being carted away to private museums.

  The production of pornographic films quickly followed the invention of the motion picture in 1895. Quickly after that, sexually explicit materials were deemed obscene and made illegal, which continued through the 1960s. Today, access to pornographic material is limited to people over 18, though enforcing “community standards” is tricky, especially online. Most people would agree that hard-core pornography should not be available to children, but access to it — voluntary and involuntary — is difficult to regulate.

  In 1970, the total retail value of hard-core pornography in the United States was estimated to be $10 million. The porn industry revenues in 2006 were estimated at $13.3 billion.86 Despite what appear to be large profits, industry executives say the business of porn is suffering these days due to the weak economy, piracy, and free or inexpensive porn available online.87 While huge profits used to be made from hotel room adult entertainment and DVD sales, the market has shifted in favor of the affordability and anonymity that the Internet provides; porn is now only a click away. Technology has also made it easier to enter the industry; anyone who wants to have sex on camera can be a porn player — and if they’re any good at enticing viewers, a porn star.