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They hide in cyberspace, are in no hurry to grow up and believe that others should do everything for them. What is happening to modern boys? Hypothesis of the social psychologist.
In Russia, as in Europe, a child by adolescence more often has a TV in his own bedroom than a father who lives with him in the same house. Even if the fathers are somewhere nearby, the sons do not maintain contact with them: for every 44 hours spent by the boys in front of the TV screen, computer or smartphone, there are only half an hour of conversations with the fathers. Why is this problem so serious especially for boys?
Why do boys need fathers?
Every person needs both a father and a mother, because they love a child in different ways. Maternal love is by its nature unconditional: the mother loves the child already because she gave birth to him, because he was part of herself. You show your mom the diary: “Mom, how are you?” Mom will say: “It’s okay, I love you. Learn, son. A father’s love is conditional. “Do you need pocket money? Do you want me to turn off your computer? Then do your best.”
This is the eternal dilemma of fathers and sons: “Do not expect that you will get everything for nothing just because you were born and received my last name. Father’s love and respect must be earned.
Today almost every second child is deprived of this main source of external motivation. For example, in the UK, every third boy has a father who lives separately from the family. And one in four is raised by a single mother. No wonder boys today fail to grow up to be real men.
They retreat into cyberspace in search of security and recognition they can’t get anywhere else. They do poorly in school, lacking sufficient motivation. They find it natural that others (usually mothers) do everything for them, and they strive to avoid impending adulthood and everything that can come with it – responsibility, work that does not give pleasure and other tedious duties.
It is not surprising that mass culture today is simply replete with infantile heroes, sexy youngsters (remember at least the TV and movies Freaks, Love and Other Troubles, Step Brothers, Singles Week, The Hangover), not having practical goals, emotional intelligence, incapable of doing things or taking responsibility.
90% of teachers in primary schools are also women. Among them, of course, there are excellent specialists, but still, women more often form in their students skills that are well given to girls – the development of fine motor skills, for example, to the detriment of physical activity. Women teachers do not particularly welcome outdoor games during breaks, which are so necessary for boys.
And teachers also like to give assignments like writing in the genre of a personal diary. But boys don’t write diaries! The worst gift for a boy, in my opinion, is a thick notebook for keeping a diary! And for boys with a high need for movement, doctors quite often diagnose “hyperactivity syndrome” and prescribe the psychostimulant Ritalin, which actually causes addiction, and the person will have a need for it for life.
Why are boys more likely than girls to be addicted?
Boys tend to hide from real life, while girls, on the contrary, are more actively involved in it. They study harder, work harder and achieve more. Boys are increasingly dropping out of college. In the UK, many universities have 5-10% more female students than male students. It seems that there will soon have to introduce mandatory quotas for young men …
Boys, on the other hand, retreat faster into cyberspace. The fact is that they are not particularly inclined to indulge in self-reflection. They are interested in acting, doing things, and girls are concerned about people’s lives, their feelings and relationships. The world of video games encourages to act, but not to think and contemplate. Therefore, computer games are not particularly attractive to girls. And they also find pornography boring. Indeed, for girls, sex is always associated with romance, and boys are attracted more by the visual side and physiology. I guess boys masturbate more than girls, but there are no exact statistics on this.
And besides, modern porn ignores the plot side of the relationship. Before, in old porn films, at least something happened – there were some stories in which the characters had sex. And today in such films we are talking about exclusively physical contact. And this has a terrifying effect on the formation of youthful sexuality, because porn excludes love and romantic relationships.
It’s always been hard for boys because they never know what’s on girls’ minds.
Pornography is visually oriented, so boys don’t even realize what they’re missing – the tenderness of touch, the kissing, the communication, the experience of pushing boundaries. When you watch a hundred thousand of these episodes, they will become a social norm for you. And in the end, the teenager begins to believe that this is exactly what all women and girls want. He does not learn the skills of courtship, flirting, he is not ready to just invite a girl on a date.
It has always been difficult for boys because they never know what girls have in mind. But now, in the absence of practice, it becomes even more difficult to establish contact. Much easier to move into the virtual world. There, no one will definitely reject him, no one will laugh at him. In addition, pornography has moved to a new level – it imitates reality better, it is becoming more and more engaging, interactive. You put on 3D glasses, and now a woman or a man on the screen offers herself to you. Sometimes you can even enter into a dialogue with him (her), ask, for example, to take off your clothes.
Soon, technology will allow you to tell the main character your appearance. And then it turns out that you are exactly the hero with whom a man (woman) is eager to have sex immediately. Who will be attracted after this conventional relationship? It seems to me that there are more and more men who do not need a real partner to satisfy their sexual needs. I would call it “sexual singularity”, self-sufficiency. In Japan, there is even an expression to describe a man who is not interested in real sex – soshoku danshi, which means “herbivore man.” I’m afraid that such herbivorous men are becoming our universal phenomenon.
What should parents do?
To reconnect the boy with the real world, there are different ways. Parents need to talk more with their sons about relationships and sex so that they realize how much pornography distorts real life. If possible, choose male teachers for him, look for male companies, clubs, sections for him, where he will find male mentors for himself. Let him go in for sports, dancing – something that will help him to establish contact with reality, with living people. I’m not sure that the picture will change dramatically, but something must be done, because our boys are not okay.
About the author: Phillip Zimbardo is an American social psychologist, professor at Stanford University (USA), his studies of human social behavior, in particular the Stanford experiment, have become classics of world psychology.