The Demise of Guys: Why Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It Read Online Free PDF Page A

Life, it’s reported that there are over 20 million accounts with more than half of those being active gamers. … There are people making significant amounts of real money by providing a virtual escort service, some are making six-figure incomes. By day, a woman could become a mom, lawyer, or other professional. But by night, she is the voice behind an avatar that charges twenty dollars an hour for a man to have a virtual companion and virtual sex. 84  
    Eroticism and motivation are both fueled by arousal. If there is lust, arousal veers in a sexual direction, and if there is a need to triumph, arousal sends one down the path of goal setting and long-term success. Real life is competing with digital alternatives for nearly every aspect of existence; since porn and video games are readily accessible, burden free and fun. The choice for lots of young men is often the digital alternative.
    Though nearly every social need in reality now has a complement in the digital world, it is unclear whether the digital alternatives satisfy those needs in the same way. In Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, physiological and safety needs must be met in physical reality. Is it possible, however, for the top three needs in Maslow’s hierarchy — belongingness, love and esteem, and self-actualization — to be met in digital reality? Could a person be just as, if not more, fulfilled in digital reality? The answer is yes and no; some needs can be achieved in the digital world, but because these needs are met without risk of consequence, and frequently in social isolation — as if in a dress rehearsal — a person may be able to achieve their esteem needs yet completely bypass belongingness and love needs. Therein lies a major problem: entitlement without the ability to relate to others. Furthermore, self-actualization could not be reached without the fulfillment of the other needs, so a lack of intimacy and appreciation for others creates a distorted sense of potential and actualization not based in shared reality.

    It’s unclear how well kids can move between reality and digital worlds. Katie Salen, director of design at the Quest to Learn school in New York, says, “People talk about this distinction between the virtual world and the real world, and there’s concern that there is an inability on the part of young people to separate the two. I actually think that that distinction is a very adult idea, an idea that has come from a generation of people [for whom] virtual didn’t exist and it was something new that was then added to the real world. But kids have that ability to move kind of seamlessly between the digital and the real.”
    Jeremy Bailenson, director of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford University, says, “The distinctions between real and virtual world are becoming blurred, even interchangeable.” In the documentary Digital Nation , Bailenson makes a realistic-looking avatar of host Douglas Rushkoff:
    In one study, we made you 10 centimeters taller than you actually were and had you conduct a negotiation with someone. Having 10 centimeters difference in height from your normal self causes you to be three times more likely to beat someone in a negotiation in virtual reality. … Regardless of our actual heights, you’ll then beat me face to face when we have a negotiation. … A small exposure inside the virtual reality carried over to their behavior face to face. … We’ve done studies with children [in which] they see themselves swimming around with whales in a virtual reality; a week later, half of them will believe that they swam with whales. 85

Dynamics of porn
    Woody Allen once said, “Sex without love is an empty experience, but as empty experiences go, it’s one of the best.” Or is it?
    One high-school-age guy from our survey commented, “I think the on-demand pleasure, gratification, control and stress release of pornography and video games reduces our patience, makes us hold ourselves to