We have heard for the past several decades that society should be concerned about the development and progress of boys in our culture. Women continue to outnumber men in professional graduate schools of medicine, law, and business school, and women are now closing the gap in the engineering field.
We also know that with the development of technology, gaming, and social media, young boys have retreated into these worlds and the rising generation, as a whole, has decreased social and interpersonal skills. Meanwhile, schools across the country are reducing recess time and physical education programs as busy little boys are forced to sit still all day, repress their natural energy, and find other outlets for releasing their frustrations.
I am a mother of one of those “busy little boys” and new book from psychologist and Stanford professor emeritus, Philip Zimbardo, continues to sound the alarm about boys in our culture. Zimbardo and co-author, Nikita D. Coulombe, in Man (Dis)connected: How Technology Has Sabotaged What It Means To Be Male, attempt to answer why boys don’t man-up as previous generations of males ostensibly did.
I have been concerned about the effect of violent games and the plentiful amount of porn on adolescent boys. Zimbardo’s book only reaffirms my suspicions. He examines patterns among boys in the U.S. and UK and concludes that while girls continue to progress in the real world, boys are retreating into cyberspace for the security and validation they cannot find elsewhere. Zimbarbo contends that they are bored at college, increasingly have no father figures to encourage them (or to be a model for healthy relationships), and lack the experience for genuine romantic relationships. As a result, they disappear into their bedrooms in which they run the risk of getting addicted to porn, video games and Ritalin.
This is not encouraging news for parents of boys, or for that matter, parents of girls. If this is the state of affairs what are the prospects for our daughters?
The overall effects of online porn on society have been documented by numerous experts and practitioners. It perpetuates the degradation of women which leads to a variety of societal ills; it can destroy relationships; and for boys, Zimbardo argues, it’s a disastrous introduction to human sexuality. He believes it is destructive because it eliminates romance and love. In today’s hook up culture, these words almost sound foreign. The more a boy watches porn, the more he believes it depicts activities that are the social norm. I have often wondered if this might explain the alcohol-infused gang rapes which are occurring on some college campuses. The question is: who are these men who think this is normal behavior? Where and how were they raised? Perhaps these are the very same young men Zimbardo believes are most affected by this dangerous trend.
Retreating into an online world means our boys are not learning the basic social skills of interacting with the opposite sex. The results are less flirting, less dating and therefore, less risk of rejection. In essence, some boys are missing an aspect of growing up. We all dislike rejection, but it is a natural path of maturity and development.
Zimbardo is not willing to completely give up. He has many suggestions for improving the situation with boys including more male teachers; mentoring groups for boys without dads in the home; creating video games without the violent content; and parents talking to their children about appropriate sex and relationships.
These are not ground breaking ideas nor are they impossible to accomplish. More importantly, parents have access to a variety of tools and resources to help monitor their children’s access and interaction with online technology and smartphones. Laptops can be placed in a central location and not taken to private areas, parental restriction software can be installed on tablets and smartphones, and YouTube and Safari can be disabled. But with all things, it requires discipline: discipline for the parents to enforce and maintain the rules and the discipline for kids to follow them.