Guys are "over-aroused" by video games&porn... and that's connected to why they're 30% more likely to drop out of school.

 

Boys are 30 percent more likely than girls to drop out of school. In Canada, five boys drop out for every three girls. Girls outperform boys now at every level, from elementary school to graduate school. There’s a 10 percent differential between getting BA’s and all graduate programs, with guys falling behind girls. Two-thirds of students in special ed remedial programs are guys. And as you all know, boys are five times more likely than girls to be labeled as having attention deficit disorder — and therefore we drug them with Ritalin.

What are the causes? Well, it’s an unintended consequence. I think it’s excessive Internet use in general, excessive video gaming, excessive new access to pornography. The problem is these are arousal addictions. Drug addiction, you simply want more. Arousal addiction, you want different. Drugs, you want more of the same — different. So you need the novelty in order for the arousal to be sustained.

And the problem is the industry is supplying it. Jane McGonigal told us last year that by the time a boy is 21, he’s played 10,000 hours of video games, most of that in isolation. As you remember, Cindy Gallop said men don’t know the difference between making love and doing porn. The average boy now watches 50 porn video clips a week. And there’s some guy watching a hundred, obviously. And the porn industry is the fastest growing industry in America — 15 billion annually. For every 400 movies made in Hollywood, there are 11,000 now made porn videos.

So the effect, very quickly, is it’s a new kind of arousal. Boys’ brains are being digitally rewired in a totally new way for change, novelty, excitement and constant arousal. That means they’re totally out of sync in traditional classes, which are analog, static, interactively passive. They’re also totally out of syncin romantic relationships, which build gradually and subtly.

 

This is a great talk. 

The idea that men are prone to “arousal addictions” is something worth thinking about as you come across various sorts of behavior in life.

7 Notes/ Hide

  1. findingalifemanual posted this

Recent comments

Blog comments powered by Disqus