Philip Zimbardo - Man, Interrupted: Why Young Men are Struggling & What We Can Do About It

Praise for Man, Interrupted

With this title, Zimbardo and Coulombe not only prove that men are struggling in the dark and falling through cracks on the floor, they also help us turn on the lights and show us how to start fixing the floor.

Foreword

In this entertaining, sobering, and thought-provoking book, Dr. Zimbardo bravely and wisely calls attention to the spreading crisis afflicting many of America's young men.

Roy Baumeister, author of Is There Anything Good About Men? and Willpower

Man, Interrupted is the most important book I've read in years, given that it is thoroughly researched, well organized, beautifully written, and outlines a problem that effects at least half the population of the country, if not everyone. Even more, it identifies the causes and suggests practical solutions. This book should be read by legislators, judges, politicians, parents, spouses and, well, men... all of them.

Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine; columnist at Scientific American; and author of The Moral Arc

... a compassionate look at the phenomenon of young men disappearing into the virtual worlds of video gaming and pornto the detriment of everyone. Authors Zimbardo and Coulombe don't simply supply evidence of the risks and benefits of today's hyper-alluring technologies. They also tackle contributing factors, such as absent dads, failing schools, environmental toxins, economic realities, etc., and offer a range of suggestions for parents, media, governments, men, women, and schools.

Gary Wilson, author of Your Brain on Porn: Internet Pornography and the Emerging Science of Addiction

This edition first published in 2016 by Conari Press, an imprint of

Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

With offices at:

65 Parker Street, Suite 7

Newburyport, MA 01950

www.redwheelweiser.com

Copyright 2016 by Philip Zimbardo and Nikita D. Coulombe

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. Reviewers may quote brief passages. Previously published in 2015 as Man (Dis)connected by Rider, an imprint of Ebury Publishing, ISBN: 9781846044847.

ISBN: 978-1-57324-689-7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Zimbardo, Philip G., author. | Coulombe, Nikita D., author.

Title: Man, interrupted : why young men are struggling and what we can do about it / Philip Zimbardo and Nikita Coulombe.

Other titles: Man (dis)connected

Description: Newburyport, MA : Conari Press, 2016. | Previously published in 2015 as Man (Dis)connected by Rider, an imprint of Ebury Publishing.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015048616 | ISBN 9781573246897 (paperback)

Subjects: LCSH: Men. | MenSocial conditions21st century. | MenIdentity. | MenPsychology. | TechnologySocial aspects. | BISAC: PSYCHOLOGY / Mental Health. | PSYCHOLOGY / Developmental / Adolescent.

Classification: LCC HQ1090 .Z545 2016 | DDC 305.31dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015048616

Cover design by Jim Warner

Cover photograph fStop images / Twins

Interior by Jane Hagaman

Typeset in Bembo and Benton Sans

Printed in Canada

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To my grandchildren,

Philip (Panda) and Victoria Leigh (Bunny)

Philip Zimbardo

To my husband, Chris, and three brothers: thank you for your support

Nikita D. Coulombe

Many trends are born and magnified in the tech-heavy San Francisco Bay area, which is where we both lived when we started writing this book. There wasn't one event that inspired the book's creation; rather it resembled a light rain that slowly turned into a torrential downpour. While one of us had started clipping articles out of the newspaper about boys' poor academic performance and noticing the dwindling number of male graduate students in his class, the other had started to notice her male peers crowding around computers and video games at parties, rather than having conversations. We began to wonder why more young men didn't care about getting their driving licenses, or moving out of their parents' homes, and why they preferred to masturbate to porn than be with a real woman. Down the rabbit hole we went.

Around the same time, I (Phil) was asked by the TED organization to give a five-minute talk on a topic of my choosing. I wanted to discuss what we were observing. At the end of my short but provocative TED Talk in 2011, I made clear that my primary goal at the conference was to raise awareness and even alarm people into action about an impending disaster. After the talk was greeted with much enthusiasm, Nikita, already familiar with the issues as my assistant, came on board and together we wrote a short TED eBook inspired by that talk in 2012 called The Demise of Guys. Demise was a polemic meant to stimulate controversy and conversation around these topics and encourage others to do research on the different dimensions of these challenges.

Man, Interrupted is an elaboration of Demise that delves much deeper into this important discussion about young men and the complex issues and challenges they face. Man, Interrupted has also been restructured by symptoms, causes, and solutions, making the issues easier for readers to understand and navigate.

We felt it was important to approach the topics from multiple angles. This book weaves together the perspectives of a young female, Nikita, who, as a millennial, has grown up in the thick of changing technologies, and an older male, Phil, who has an abundance of life experience, along with the views of many young men and women, making it a unique collaboration. In order to challenge our personal views, we developed a detailed online survey with a host of questions that touched on different aspects of Demise. We created a survey related to this topic and posted it alongside the TED Talk, asking questions such as, How would you change the school environment to engage young men? and How can we empower men in safe, pro-social ways?

Remarkably, in barely two months, 20,000 people took the short survey. About three-quarters (76 percent) of the participants were men; more than half were between eighteen and thirty-four years old. But people of all ages and backgrounds and both sexes shared their thoughts and feelings about these issues and their subplots. In addition, thousands of respondents were sufficiently motivated to go further by adding personal comments, from a sentence to a page long. After reading all of the replies, we followed up with some of the respondents for personal interviews, and their opinions and experiences will be shared later on. You can find more highlights of the survey in of this book. We also encourage you to look at the additional supportive statistics that can be found in the endnotes.

Furthering the conversation with new information and collective dialogue is our ultimate aim. Our book is presented with the intention of discussing mankind's continual adaptation to technology, finding solutions to the problems we highlight, and also inspiring young men, and those who love them, to find their voice and create positive social change in their lives and the new world that surrounds them.