A “crisis” of masculinity is brewing in young men who “are combining playing video games, and … watching on average two hours of pornography a week,” leading Stanford University psychologist Philip Zimbardo.
“Freely available pornography” has led to a “new form of addiction,” warned the author of Man (Dis)Connected in an interview with the BBC today.
“Boys’ brains are becoming digitally rewired,” said Zimbardo, who studied 20,000 young men and their relationships with video games and pornography.
While some people object to pornography for moral reasons, Zimbardo stresses that his objection is purely for the way porn “begins to change brain function, and we have lots of research to show it … it begins change the reward sectors in the brain … it’s a kind of excitement, it’s that kind of an addiction.”
People who are addicted to pornography show brain activity that mimics that of an alcoholic, a Cambridge University study showed.
“When an alcoholic sees an ad for a drink, their brain will light up in a certain way and they will be stimulated in a certain way,” said lead scientist on the study Dr. Valerie Voon. “We are seeing this same kind of activity in users of pornography.”
A young man addicted to pornography says: “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,” explains Zimbardo.
The combination of excessive use of porn, video games and the Internet have caused young men to pass up social interaction, leading to stunted development, Zimbardo said in a TED talk in 2011.
