The Shocking Difference Between How Boys & Girls Use Technology - Jonathan Haidt

Duration: 13:38 2801 transcript words EN summary

Video summary

Jonathan Haidt argues that a fundamental psychological divergence between boys and girls in their use of technology stems from two primary motivational drives: agency and communion. While all individuals possess needs for both, boys generally exhibit stronger agency motives—the desire to be an agent who causes things to happen—leading them toward activities like knocking over block towers or engaging in simulated warfare such as paintball. Conversely, girls tend to prioritize communion, the need for connection and group belonging. This distinction is physically manifested in social interactions; Haidt cites Robin Dunbar's research showing that women stand perpendicular (180 degrees) when talking face-to-face, whereas men adopt a "bladed" stance at approximately 120 degrees, reflecting an evolutionary history where direct confrontation between males implied either fighting or mating. The impact of digital technology on these gendered motivations has created divergent mental health trajectories since the early 2010s. Girls gravitated immediately toward visual social media platforms like Instagram and Tumblr around 2012–2013, leading to a sharp increase in depression linked to seeking validation through strangers' comments on their images. In contrast, boys have been progressively withdrawing from real-world efforts since the 1970s and 80s as schools became more structured toward female learning styles. Consequently, while girls experienced an immediate mental health crisis upon entering social media, boys face a gradual but steep rise in depression and anxiety starting around 2009–2010, driven by their retreat into video games, YouTube, and pornography which offer high agency without real-world payoff. Haidt introduces the "male sedation hypothesis" to explain why young men are exhibiting higher rates of loneliness, risk-taking behavior (such as arson), and violence despite not engaging in mass shootings at expected frequencies. He posits that social media, gaming, and porn act as a form of digital anesthesia that dampens status-seeking and reproductive impulses without satisfying them sufficiently for happiness or fulfillment. Unlike girls who were helped by the rise of technology to catch up with boys academically, boys are finding their traditional avenues for mastery—hunting, fighting, hunting trophies in sports, and dating women—dismantled or replaced by virtual alternatives that generate no tangible value in reality. To address the high anxiety men feel regarding approach behaviors like flirting, Haidt suggests a potential solution involving advanced virtual reality technology to simulate practice environments similar to how athletes use video games for tennis or pickleball. He envisions AI-driven avatars capable of natural language processing and consent programming that could allow boys to safely level up their social skills at home before applying them in the real world. However, he expresses significant concern that this approach might instead encourage a "bed women" mentality focused on conquest rather than partnership, or lead users to design idealized female partners who never get mad, ultimately reinforcing unrealistic expectations and further disconnecting men from genuine human connection.

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talk to me about the sex differences in technology how do boys and girls use technology differently sure yeah so the master variable here I believe is is a set of motivations uh that we've talked about psychology for 50 years um called um agency and communion so everybody has needs for agency to be an agent to make things happen you know a child knocks over block tower it's thrilling I did that I caused that to fall so that's agency and then communion is connection being part of a group being welcomed and embraced and and connecting um uh so everyone has both motives but on average boys have stronger agency motives and when you let boys and girls choose what to do the boys are going to gravitate more towards games that allow agency and so fake war is one of the best examples they want to practice their skills boys I think are evolutionary programmed for hunting and War to enjoy hunting and War I found this out when I was 29 years old and for the first time in my life played uh paintball with my buddies and hunting each other we were mixed in with other other people but hunting each other in small groups and shooting guns to try to hit each other was the most thrilling thing we'd ever done that'll get you yeah yeah yeah so that was really cool like wow there's like a room in my heart for being a hunter and a warrior like I didn't really know it was there but it was so anyway boys choose to pursue ageny motives girls choose to pursue more communion motives they talk more with each other as Richard Reeves this you wonderful wonderful British man who has this uh who's been been making the case for boys have you have you had Richard on the show of course yeah he's great back on again soon yeah his new initiative that the center for boys and men American Institute for boys and men yeah thank you uh that sounds awesome I I'm fully Richard Reeves pilled I'm on board with all stuff me too we're all Richard Reeves pilled yes um so Richard points out uh uh girls like to do things face to face boys like to do things shoulder toosh shoulder like we're next to each other but we're doing something in I've got it I I need to bring this up so in in a robin dunbar's book friends which came out maybe 18 months ago he got this phenomenal study so the next time that you're at a party look at the angle of the feet that women have when they talk to each other and look at the angle of the feet that men really like what what do you mean what do you what do you see women will talk uh perpendicular 180 degre they'll be pretty much straight on like this oh men talk at about 120° oh that's fascinating so they blade and the reason being that this is a bit of sort of evolutionary bro psychology coming in but I think it's true if you if even try it you can try it the next time that you you're at a party just you know you'll be stood sort of like this with a guy just blading on and just turn yourself so that you're actually straight onto them and there's this just Rises up inside of you because really the only time that two guys would do that is if they were going to fight or they were going to kiss and if you don't intend on doing either of those things and you just feel you're like this feels right there's something about that angle it's like two magnet two North Poles of a magnet they kind oh good example div it away they don't want and yeah dude look at it 120 degrees for men 180 degrees for women it's and it you can't not say it once you see it you can't unsee it it's so I will look for that and actually that this could suggest a really cool difference between real and virtual you know virtual interactions are not embodied like you we can see you know we can see each other's upper bodies here but but I think what we would find because I don't at all feel freaked out by you you know your face on to me on my yeah but I don't at all feel like oh we've either got to kiss or fight like because we're virtual well we wait until we finish yeah yeah you know you are you are pretty handsome I must say um so so again something you know we are embodied creatures we're physical creatures we're animals we evolved Outdoors you we we we had fights we had hunts we're physical creatures and when we interact now virtually we have only it's you know it's like the white rice thing we have just like a little few of the nutrients but we're missing most of them um so anyway on to boys and girls sorry I'm taking too long on this but the the point is boy so when when uh you know laptops and then especially smartphones come out all the kids love them all the kids gravitate all the kids are on them the boys head straight for video games and YouTube um the boys are spending more time on video games than YouTube and porn um the girls go straight for the visual social media platforms especially Instagram uh Tumblr Pinterest in the early days uh and so what are the effects the girls are now on these platforms that are all about I post a picture of me and my life and then I wait for strangers to comment on it and that's really really bad for mental health and that I think is why the girls as soon as we hit 2012 2013 the girls have very sharp elbows in the graphs very hockey stick lines in the graphs um boys on the other hand um they're playing video games especially video games aren't making them depressed now the boys are getting more depressed and anxious they are roughly twice as depressed and anxious as they used to be but it's more gradual it starts a little sooner it starts more like 200920 and it and it's more gradual so I think what's happening and what you know what Zach rush and I concluded in in in the book and here we draun Richard weaves is you know for girls boom they get on social media they get depressed for boys they've been withdrawing from The Real World since the 70s and 80s you know it used to be a male World there used to be a patriarchy I you know but boy has it been dismantled and as everything shifts towards girls and as schools get more and more structured towards girls and girls needs and girls ways of learning and as we all freak out about gender gaps and we think that it's the girls we have to help in the 90s which wasn't true girls had already passed boys um boys are finding that they don't do well in school they don't like school but man these video games are just getting better and better and and you know it's it's hard to approach a girl but man the pornography is getting better and better um and now you've got AI girlfriends and soon AI girlfriends will be put into incredibly sexy robots so what we're seeing is the progressive withdrawal of boys from effort in the real world that will pay off in the long run and instead boys prodigious energy and their desires are being directed into a virtual world that generates nothing absolutely nothing of any value in the real world yeah the audience is going to know what I'm going to bring up but I'm going to do it again it's my I've only had two citations ever in Academia and this is one of them so um you'll be aware of young male syndrome uh no tell me what just that they're you know more violent and yes correct yeah High proliferation of young sexless men high tea high risk taking they set on fire and push over Granny it's not good totally agree we have the highest rates of loneliness and sexlessness amongst young men at least in the modern world maybe ever apart from in maybe some like crazy gerontocracy style like tribal 10,000 years ago um where's all of the incel violence like this isn't a request but why are we not seeing more mass shootings why are we not seeing that's a good point so it's my contention that men are being sedated out of their status seeking and reproductive seeking Behavior through a combination of social media video games and porn so they're not given a sufficient dose to make them happy or satisfied but it is enough to dampen down and Nerf that um that impulse so and this is what I've called the male sedation hypothesis and this is being studied uh so why have we not got this uh yeah I'm a legitimate illegitimate academic now um but this is and there's there's a question to be asked there but you know everything you're talking about there that it's triggering it's playing off the back of this desire for them to um work together as a team to have intertribal Warfare to uh create Mastery to increase in status to be able to accomplish things okay but it's within the virtual world and you can become an e- gamer and so on and so forth but H how much can you cash out that status into the real world but then a more interesting question comes which you know the game is very well made do and say well if I'm enjoying it why do I need to cash it out into the real world what is real and what isn't why you why is there this sort of weird axiomatic value judgment about the fact that the real world is better than the virtual world it's all part of a world it's all just dopamine serotonin ticking around in my brain who cares same thing goes for porn you know I I worried about getting me toed or I don't have the this thing or whatever whatever whatever like all of these things allow them to do that couple of white pills that me and a friend William Costello think with regards to the AI girlfriend virtual relationship thing uh first one being dating and flirting is something that is incredibly anxiety-inducing for men the guy that created CBT made it so that he could overcome approach anxiety I don't know if that's oh really that's supposedly this Aaron Beck or was this the other guy the other dude um oh right what's his name I forget the name yeah David David bu told me about him it was created to to help with approach anxi maybe Aaron back was it too I everyone just has approach I don't think so yeah um but the uh the primary challenge that you have in dating is that there is no such thing as practice dating if me and you want to get better at pickle ball we can go to the local pickle ball court and you can just hit drives at me and I can practice my drop volley right I can't it is one of the few things where you practice in public You Learn out Loud uh so there's always this high pressure to to to not fail and what that means is that men often have really really they never get Beyond they never go zero to one they never actually get that step so me and William think that a really phenomenal and this you don't even need to wait for the sex robot thing or whatever the imperson robot you could do this with Apple's VR headset if it was sufficiently well trained on a good data set so you have a virtual interaction with a woman like a computer game and in this virtual interaction the Avatar is able to see your movements they can hear what you're saying they use natural language processing to work out the intonation and and you know they're able to go back and forth and they can you know you can program in like consent and you can program in like uh flirting and and and I want to you know increase the difficulty the disagreeability of this girl I want her to make me work and you level up and level up and level up and if you can form that on actual human psychology you can have guys practice playing the video game in the safety of their own home and then go and deploy this in the real world it's like you know tonal one of these like at home gym things okay it's like or wi sports right like you know you're playing a video that's a better example you're playing wi Sports at home you're playing tennis or whatever and then you go into the real one you're like hey I played a video game but I'm kind of fitter and this is the same I I played a video game but I'm kind of better at flirting yeah I think uh uh um I think having practice flirting in the virtual world is actually a great idea I think um you're right that it I remember you know when I was in seventh grade and the adults would organize a dance it was terrifying you know and occasionally I would ask a girl to dance and either she'd say yes or no but it was terrifying but again that's that like fear and thrill when she does occasionally say Yes um I I agree that in theory we could do that that the headsets that the virtual reality you really could give boys practice flirting with realistic girls and the difficulty level could get harder and harder now how would this actually play out in the real world um I fear that it's not really going to be hey let's try to make you into the best possible romantic partner likely to find a really wonderful woman and they get happily married I fear that it's going to turn into either here's you know the game is to get the woman in bed and then move on to the next woman and here you know we'll learn teach you how to how to bed women um or it's going to be design the woman you want and you're goingon to you know let's make her even Lovelier let's give her an even better sense of humor How about if she never gets mad at me you know you 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