Pornomania is the scourge of modern men. Part 5

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

A renowned professor at Stanford University argues that humanity will not end from a giant asteroid impact, a deadly tsunami or irreparable climate change. An excessive addiction to computer games and online pornography will lead to this, he writes in his article.

Men will die out from video games and pornography - Professor Philip Zimbardo

Philip Zimbardo, a 79-year-old psychologist from Stnford, California, believes that people who regularly play computer video games do more harm to their bodies than they think.

Zimbardo: “Young people spend far too much of their time in the digital world - playing video games, watching porn, texting, watching sports - all alone.”

Games, as well as an addiction to pornographic resources, with which the world wide web abounds, creates a "generation of male losers." These passions, according to Dr. Zimbardo, lead young people to "digital isolation", due to which they are unable to function normally in the real world and develop healthy relationships with women. Remaining lonely, men die earlier, writes the psychologist.

A Stanford psychologist told a TED talk that the sad data is backed up by the medical evidence from the US Annual Public Health Survey: increased aggression is becoming an integral companion of the person who is addicted to violent video games.

By becoming regular consumers of online pornography and video games, men get used to loneliness, lag behind in development and stop coping with real life, which is unthinkable without relationships with people, not to mention communication with the opposite sex. Man is a social animal, reminds Zimbardo, and is doomed to extinction, because he loses this characteristic.

In the life of a generation, there is a "desynchronization" - in an educational institution, at work, in romantic relationships, since virtual reality causes excitement, the professor writes.

Reference:

Philip Zimbardo is an American social psychologist and author of the famous Stanford Prison Experiment. Italian by birth. Grew up in the South Bronx. He received his bachelor's degrees from Brooklyn College, his master's and doctoral degrees from Yale University. After working at New York University, Zimbardo was promoted to professor at Stanford University. In his Stanford Prison Experiment, 24 ordinary college students were randomly assigned to groups of "inmates" and "guards" in a simulated prison set up in the psychology department's basement.

How porn is rebuilding your brain and destroying your privacy

"The proliferation of pornography on the Internet is the most global experiment ever unconsciously conducted by mankind," - this is how the American neuroscientist Gary Wilson began his talk at the TED conference in Glasgow in 2012.

This report is a reaction to the report of the American social psychologist Philip Zimbardo (the one who conducted the famous Stanford prison experiment) "The disappearance of men." In his speech, Zimbardo classified sex addiction in general and addiction to Internet pornography in particular as a serious mental disorder that can lead to the extinction of a person as a species.

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Once upon a time, unlimited consumption of food or sex was an important evolutionary advantage. It can be formulated simply: "Come in while they give!" Wolves eat 10 kg of meat from each killed deer. During the mating season, all animals show increased sexual activity … but what if the mating season never ends?

From constant doses of dopamine, the FosB protein builds up in neurons, which leads to structural changes in the brain. At first, it becomes more difficult to enjoy the life around you. Then you only start reacting to porn - everything else seems dull and boring by comparison. Finally, your willpower disappears - and these are already changes in the frontal cortex of the brain. We have before us a mechanism for the development of any addiction - it does not matter, from sex, gambling, food or heroin.

But in the process of working with people who were addicted to Internet pornography in the past, psychologists made an important discovery. If a person stops using porn, the brain gradually returns to normal. There is already a control group: people who voluntarily stopped watching porn on the Internet. Wilson calls this discovery "The Resurrection of Men" - by analogy with "The Disappearance" of Zimbardo.

“You’re probably wondering why a normal man would decide to give up watching pornography,” Wilson grins. "The answer is simple: erectile dysfunction." The Internet is killing the potency of young people. This is confirmed by a 2011 study by the Italian Society of Andrology and Sexual Medicine. Even Viagra ceases to help them - if it ever helped them at all. Drugs for the treatment of impotence work only below the waist, but the problem is in the brain. The brain sends increasingly weaker signals to the genitals. It all starts with a weakening of the reaction to porn, then there is a general decrease in potency, and then the young man is generally unable to achieve an erection.

There are three lessons to be learned. First, the above shows the classic mechanism of any addiction. Secondly, Internet pornography and Playboy are different phenomena. Indeed, never before in the history of mankind has there been mass impotence among young men (even though Playboy has existed since 1953). Third, erectile dysfunction is the only way to get the porn addict to think and get on with the fix. Less significant symptoms are simply ignored.

For example, Wilson cites a 20-year-old boy who has met with psychologists and psychotherapists for the last 8 years. He was diagnosed with depression, anxiety disorder of personality, memory impairment and other mental disorders. He was prescribed psychostimulants, tranquilizers and antidepressants. He was expelled from two universities and fired twice from his job. He fought social anxiety by smoking marijuana. There were many women in his life, because he was handsome and moved in a respectable society. But they quickly disappeared due to the strangeness of his behavior. He was seriously addicted to Internet porn from the age of 14. From the age of 18 he began to try to change something in his life - and realized that all his problems rest on porn.

Two months before the conversation with Wilson, our hero completely stopped watching Internet pornography. Quitting was not easy, but he managed to do it. Since then, the young man stopped using all medications, his memory and attention improved, with potency everything became in order and he turned into a real magnet for girls. Wilson ended the soul-saving part of his speech by mentioning the group "Fapstronauts" on reddit.com, whose members have only one goal in life: to survive without masturbation for 90 days. At the time of the performance, there were 5888 people in the group.

Unfortunately, people in their twenties regain potency much more slowly than older men. If a fifty-year-old man is all right after a couple of months, then a young man may take 4-5 months to restore his mental and physical health. According to Wilson, the point here is that adults did not begin their sex life with Internet porn. They only started having sexual problems when they got a high-speed Internet connection.

Teens, on the other hand, start with the Internet, and at a time when their brains are capable of producing record amounts of dopamine. It should also be borne in mind that in adolescence in the brain, often used neural circuits are consolidated and unused ones are eliminated. By the age of 22, it can backfire if you've inadvertently watched a lot of extreme pornography or pornography that doesn't quite fit your current sexual orientation. “Fortunately, the human brain is very flexible and plastic. If a young man quits watching porn, sooner or later everything must return to its original biological state."