The demise of Men?

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Interestingly, research shows that the frequency of teenage sex has gone down in the US; some interesting findings below:

http://www.medpagetoday.com/Pediatrics/GeneralPediatrics/29016

Of course, there are likely many causal factors associated with this finding.

The authors of the topic research are suggesting that the phenomenon is not only impacting social behavior, but reducing the ability to handle the pressures of everyday life, which include the reality of delayed gratification, which they suggest becomes more difficult to cope with, when instant gratification of stimulus is what the brain has become accustomed to.

The human brain is suggested as re-wired similar to the brain of a mouse that continuously presses a lever for stimulation.

I'm wondering, too.

Men seem to do more gnashing of teeth over lack of heterosexual companionship than do the ladies, at least in online comments.

Are women frustrated with men? Or, largely satisfied?

I think this has happened in human history before several times. Such as when the printed word became widely available and those grounded in oral tradition were upset at all these people staring into books all the time.

My simple guess is we live in a world that has no patience for thoughtfulness and quiet contemplation as well as very little tolerance for solitude.

Instead it seems to me, at least in America that I know of, we embrace and celebrate multitasking and work ethic. Work, even useless work, seems better then leisure. Even in video games you have scores and achievements or badges earned. Also I think even a video gamer is more engaged with the world even if it's a virtual one, while a person day dreaming seems disengaged.

I guess where I'm going with this is it feels like it's so easy to be captivated with the latest hi-tech craze or to be plugged into the electronic media world when we could all probably really benefit from slowing down.

Very nicely written.

It does not appear that you are alone in this experience, as if I remember correctly the attention span of the average American is now about 2.5 milliseconds, the blink of an eye, for a commercial advertiser to maintain the attention of the audience through a commercial, to arrive at an opinion of what they see to move on to the next "big thing".

As far as stress goes, animals and humans will adapt through repetitive "stimming" behaviors when overly stressed. Video games and pornography provide a source of stimming to accommodate uncomfortable stress. However, when the "self stimulating" behavior provided by those avenues goes to the extreme, per example of the south Korean video-gamers extreme "stimming" behavior, that perceived pleasurable stimulating stress becomes potentially deadly in physiological impact, in rare cases.

It can be hard to determine what is a special interest, obsession , compulsion, or addiction, but when there is deference over required subsistence behavior, like eating, in preference for the stimulation, it is similar to the rat pressing the lever for stimulation; it is a textbook definition of a behavioral impairment.

What can become lost is the potential for tranquility (sitting still). Or much worse, in the extreme examples.

Interesting. Literacy actually degrades mental faculties, in particular, memory - most people from oral cultures are easily able to memorize and recite very long passages, but most people from literate cultures are at pains to memorize much smaller amounts of text, and many cannot reliably manage more than a few phrases or short number sequences.

Things like Beowulf, the Iliad and the Odyssey, and the books of the Old Testament were originally passed down orally, with very very little corruption of the "text" in transmission. If you've ever read Beowulf you can quickly appreciate what a feat this is.

I find this very interesting, especially in the face of a society where many people want to preach abstinence. It's a mixed result but would they see success here if people are abstaining from teenage sex?

http://blog.heritage.org/2012/07/05/family-facts-of-week-the-abstinent-majority/

The drop in teenage sex has been attributed to abstinence education by those whom support abstinence education, per the link below when beliefs about sex are matched with overall statistics about people having sex.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/13/evangelicals-struggle-to-address-premarital-sex-and-abortion.html

But on the other hand, when the issue is pursued in more detail, although the evangelical group in the south surveys as believing that it is a sin to do it, they are evidenced as one of the highest demographic groups that do it, as well as not using contraceptives, and among the highest percentage of abortions for unplanned pregnancies.

Whatever is causing the reduction in the frequency of overall teenage sex does not appear to be attributed specific to abstinence education.

Sexting is evidenced in as much as 30% of the teenage population, provides a whole new alternative of virtual sex, that wasn't available before. Interesting though is that females that participate are more likely to engage in risky sexual behaviors than males.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/teen-sexting-really-does-mean-teen-sex.php

Videogames are really fun. And addicting. I do not currently have a game system because I can not control how long I would play it. I don't care for how video games are made to do that now. If you look at call of duty or all most any other big franchise- there are tons of hard to get achievement that have no applicable skill in the real world.

Oddly enough I'm really on the verge of dumping an MMO I've played for at least a year on and off.

It does relate to what Delphiki is talking about. I would like to game but I'm after something more simple. Not all this leveling, or forming teams, or especially gathering trinkets for crafting/inventing.

It's so weird because I do sort of enjoy a game where a character progresses but it turns into grinding and I'm sick of it.

I can still remember the abilities some of my older relatives had for story telling that was amazing. And, in talking to my 94 year old great aunt some years ago, before she passed away, she said that was what people did for entertainment; tell each other stories, well before radio and TV were widely available. That feat likely took more effort than participating in a watching/listening room as opposed to a living room or front porch.

And, when TV first came out, people went to the furniture stores gathering around to watch the first examples of black and white TV, which reminds me of the days at Best Buy when the first $10,000 HDTV's became available and everyone gathered around them in awe, and envy to have one.

I got a similar thrill with my first color TV at age 16, and before that indoor window unit air-conditioning at about age 7.

My great Aunt got her next big thing, with the availability of toilet paper, instead of the Sears Roebuck Catalog, along with inside toilet facilities.

Now the next big thing happens hundreds, maybe even thousands of times a day for some.

For me at about age 6 it was turning the pillow over and over looking for the cool side of it, with no air-conditioning.

Now when children are born it is handed to some, on one platter at one time. It is particularly, a different experiment for a young child, with a developing brain, as two decades ago, the same potentials for stimulation did not exist.

Where are the limits in human adaptation? What are the warning signs? And who are the canaries in the coal mine that test those limits first?

It seems like there may be some that visit here. And if one is not held captive through employment there are options to turn much of it off. But, how does one have a reference point, when that is what they have known almost their entire life.

For many years I thought life was like TV, but for a large portion of my life, TV was virtual life.

I had what was referred to as a crazy old science teacher where it was reported her husband took the TV in the back yard and blasted it with a shot gun. That was in the 70's. At that point in time, it appears her family were related to the canaries in the coal mine.

I loved TV, I thought, wow they must be crazy, how could anyone live like that.

I agree, this doesn't appear to be a new phenomenon, just an expanded one.

And wow, I just told a story, that wouldn't be possible for me without this adaptive communication device through talking through my fingers. I suppose there are some that measure life, and some that live it. The living part is more fun, when one is part of it. Seems like that is part of what has been lost. But I suppose a keyboard and a screen, is more evidence of life, than other forms of virtual reality. But, never quite the same, as the organic form.

I played an MMO just once, for about a year and a half. It was an interesting experience for me in a social sense, and I don't regret it, but I wouldn't play something like that again, for the same reasons as you. There is nothing more to learn from it than I did.

True. But have you ever wondered who Grendel really was? Would you or I have been Beowulf, or him? I am not so sure we are less alive than he was. Perhaps I am just measuring, but he measured too, and he was measured. And in both respects the measures were more terrible than any we might make, I think.

PC gaming for me did not come about until I was fairly stressed at work, for me it was literally a stim, as I would only play the same mindless racing games to escape stress, where there were only three options moving left and right and straight ahead. We had the video arcades when I was in college, but college was complicated enough without adding any more variables for me. I hated joysticks, keyboards were easier for me to use; probably why I never played until PC gaming came along

However what I noticed though, as a collector of PC gamer magazine, was that in the mid-nineties, there were many mindless games, that morphed into what became killing games for more adrenaline charged interaction somewhere close to the year 2000, that required a great deal more mental focus. I kept collecting those free trial version games on CD's and DVD's, and thought I would eventually gain the patience to play them, but I never did, and eventually lost the patience to play the mindless games, or perhaps it was the pleasure that they once gave me that was lost

Broad band pornography provides that avenue at a level never seen in the history of mankind. There is no more powerfully non-substance dopamine stimulating influence for many in the male of the species, and among some females as well. Almost the equivalent of free crack cocaine for the masses. It requires little strategy, little thought, just a mouse, google, and a keyboard to type in a keyword for an image search in an endless ocean of novel stimulus.

Not everyone has the skills or the focus to play the more addictive online games, but most anyone can engage in this addictive activity. It has to be changing the way many view and experience the world.

And anywhere one goes in US culture there are behavioral triggers associated with it. The firefox ad-block add-on removes about 90% of the triggers as it seems if google determines one is a male, they get a healthy does of images for advertisements, as porn and advertisements on the internet provided for a male seem almost one and the same, even if one never searches for a porn image.

A sign of how much more powerful it is in marketing and addictive properties, is that one rarely sees videogame clips used as advertisements. Sex is the proven ultimate marketing tool, second to food.

while there are things we should all be carefull about i think one has to be very carefull of drawing conclusions with limited facts.

as i mentioned in the adult equivalent of this thread the study itself is of a somewhat limited scope, it will never work alone.

we as humans(and all other species for that matter, even learned skills) evolve over time, it happens everywhere and there is nothing unnatural about it, it will have both good and bad consequences as any evolution does, be it social or biological, it is impossible to stop.

something tells me people were sceptic of the first fire as well

you say new experiences come every day, but they have been doing that since neolithic times, for any observer there will always be a horizon and what lies beyond that qualifies.
or horizons have certainly widened, this has lead to external memroy tendencies and a focus on finding the answer instead of knowing it, that is a big change but not neccesarily a bad one.

i also think one should be wary of using ones own experience as a sole descriptor of human behavior, especially if on the spectrum, i have sen people on the spectrum addicted to things others wouldnt believe.

yes there is potential for issues, yes there is changing behavior (something that over the years have led to remarkable living standards in some places over the years)
but we cant simply point at a risk and shout at it, we have to put it into context of what actually happens in the world, especially when talking in the wide brush strokes of this thread.

when you say video games how is that defined? again would there be any difference between a puzzle game a storytelling adventure game and a shooter?(read of course there would, huge difference, probably with a larger variance than do's/dont's)
this applies to most subjects, then comes the variable of frequency, personal importance, purpose and a host of other variables we have just begun to shed light on.

the point of all this is that i find the sensationalistic scare tactic and wording in here to show a picture the original article quite simply doesnt justify.
so instead of discussing if it happens (because it does, its experiences, they affect us) we should discuss to what degree and what the actual tangible real world effects are, preferrably with data and not speculation.

I would have likely never made in that time and place where Beowolf and the old testament was being passed down through oral tradition, as modern culture provided me adaptations that were not available then, likely that have gained me the longevity that I have experienced.

I was fortunate to keep the type of social connections I had as a child through much of my life through school and work, the neighborhood disconnect was no big issue as I was full of human connection from the workplace, sometimes more than what I wanted.

I won't give up my toilet, hot shower or air-conditioner to live in those times, of oral tradition, particularly born without much advantage in potential verbal abilities.

Perhaps I am more impressed with talkers than most, because it was an area where I sorely fell short.

But, what I mean by organic connection is that of which is opposed to machine interface and virtual reality. There are some feelings and experiences that only the interaction among organic beings can be felt, both good and bad.

Some of the measures today are the number of friends one has on face book, material accomplishments, and a focus on me. Which I have been part of in one way or another.

I no longer have those human connections that I had before; I was spoiled because I had a humble life of thousands of good connections, based mostly on service and listening to someone else talk. There was TV where I worked but the difference between the actual connections and that virtual world could never be equaled as far as what seems like living to me.

If it had not been for my work, I'm not sure I would have experienced anything close to that human connection. Nor would it have likely been possible in any other time or place in human history for me as an individual. As computers came along I became attracted to that stimulation instead of organic human connection; my life became closer to a digital one rather than an analog one.

I didn't care much for computers in college, programming didn't interest me, but I remember the one class I took, in the computer lab, where a sign above the computer said, don't forget you are human. I was too far removed from machines then to have any idea that was close to possible, I thought it was just a joke.

The graphic user interface developed was close enough to human to bring me comfort and stimulation. But still, only an approximation of the organic form, more predictable and easier to understand, but never the same as the feelings provided that human beings can bring.

Modern technology both prevents and enables one to miss the full potential of that connection. On the other hand it provides some the ability to make a connection, that would have potentially otherwise made little to no connection.

It depends on who one is and where one is at in life, to gain that perspective. There was a time when I feared being in an office stuck alone with a computer, and then later came a time when I wished I could close the door with my computer and block everyone else out. It was fun being able to deal with hundreds of people and still have the energy to do it another day.