Porn, video games delaying manhood (OneNewsNow.com)

Porn, video games delaying manhood (OneNewsNow.com)

onenewsnow.com

Research: Porn, video games delaying manhood

Bill Bumpas - OneNewsNow - 6/7/2012 3:50:00 AM

An advocacy group for parents is expressing concern about how addiction to video games and online pornography is contributing to the downfall of young males.

CNN recently featured a commentary on its website from authors of a new book called The Demise of Guys: Why Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It. They say video games and porn create "arousal addictions." And Melissa Henson, director of communications and public education with the Parents Television Council (PTC), tells OneNewsNow research backs that up.
"What researchers have found is that they trigger the pleasure centers of the brain and cause the release of dopamine," she details. "So, in effect, it is creating the same sort of addiction that you would experience with a narcotic."
And some businesses, she explains, are taking advantage of vulnerable males. "The people in the pornography industry have a business model set up where they give you a certain amount to get you hooked, and then they make you pay for the rest," says Henson. "So they're becoming immensely wealthy by creating and feeding on these addictions."
The PTC communications director laments that these video and porn addictions are prohibiting a generation of guys from taking the next step toward manhood.
"What we're seeing is that they are developing an inability to create monogamous, committed relationships with real, live women," she notes. "They are unable to function well in the work place, [and] they're falling behind academically."

She says these addictions are hurting men in ways many fail to recognize.