Social media might not be as dangerous for boys as it is for girls, but that doesn’t mean the internet is a good place for young men.
“For boys, don’t keep your eye on social media. For boys, keep your eye on anything that’s like a stimulus, response-reward thing,” Dr. Jonathan Haidt said on “The Mel Robbins Podcast,” adding, “It starts with video games,” which provide a quick hit of dopamine.
He told parents that, “if when you take something away, the kid is very upset, that’s a definite sign of dopamine adaptation. That is, their brain has gotten accustomed to a lot of quick dopamine [hits] that when you take it away, now their brain is in a deficit state.”
“It takes a couple of weeks….to sort of get over that, for the brain to restore itself,” Haidt explained.
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While video games might seem harmless in the short-term, Haidt drew a line from video games to “the short videos, and the memes, and then when it gets a little older, it’s the porn, and then it’s the sports betting.”
These short-term hits of dopamine can damage young men’s brains and create problems when it comes to their own ambition. For example, if they constantly get dopamine rushes from tasks that provide little-to-no effort, why even try when it comes to a harder problem?
“That’s how you learn, is by trying and failing,” Haidt explained. “And then, when you finally succeed, it’s amazing! And yes, it’s dopamine, but it’s also a deep feeling of satisfaction. And so, if boys have that over and over again, they try, they struggle for something, they get it, they get the pleasure of success — that’s how you make a man.”
Haidt is a major proponent for keeping kids off of social media and other technology and has recently been speaking about how the internet negatively affects young men and boys.
“With gaming, the clearest problem is that between five and 15% of boys have problematic use, essentially addiction,” he told The Times. “It’s changed their reward systems so that everything else is boring.”
Haidt added, “They’re essentially lost. To lose five to 15% of our boys is a gigantic cost to them, to their families, to society. If there was some disease taking away that proportion of boys, we would be freaking out.”
He has also praised Gen Z for wanting to make positive changes surrounding their tech use.
“This is one of the great things about Gen Z is that they see what’s happening,” he told Impacto. “They are not in denial. They feel trapped. They’ve said this for years. We don’t like this, but we have to stay on it because everyone else is on it. So I think we are seeing a big increase in young people joining the movement…So I think we are seeing not just high school students or older teenagers. I think we’re beginning to see 9, 10, 11-year-olds advocating for more independence and more free play.”
Haidt’s comments are helpful for parents who are wondering where to start when it comes to fighting back against technology in their sons’ lives.
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