How porn and gaming sapped young men of their desire to work

Yahoo

7 days ago

'I am 22 and unemployed,' one person writes on the question-and-answer website Quora. 'I am wasting [my] entire day watching porn and browsing Facebook. What should I do in my free time which is more productive?'
The answers from well-meaning strangers are telling.
Do a course, join the military, or learn to code so you can create fun apps for all the other bored 20-somethings out there who are watching porn all day.
'Or try going outside,' jokes another. 'I heard there's stuff to do out there. Supposedly, there are people and places outside that you can interact with.'
Such complaints are growing increasingly common.
Since Covid, Britain has been plagued by a worklessness crisis that is dragging down the public finances and creating a headache for ministers.
Many believe that mental health is to blame, with easy access to online pornography and video games keeping young people stuck indoors.
According to the latest figures, more than 900,000 16 to 24-year-olds are not in education, employment or training (Neets), the highest level since a decade ago when the jobs market was still recovering from the financial crisis.
Most of those are men, with almost half a million male Neets compared to 425,000 women.
Economic inactivity among young male Neets – which covers those who are not studying or working and are not looking for a job – has also risen by 48pc since the eve of the pandemic. The equivalent figure for young women is up by less than 10pc.
The scale of this gender divide has captured economists, politicians and teachers alike, with some claiming that technology is responsible for driving young men away from work and into the online world.
'This is a secondary problem which came out of Covid, as a lot of work has been distributed online and education has become more device-focused,' says one senior secondary school teacher, who did not wish to be named.
'That means more people gaming, and porn is almost entirely online given that lad mags have died a death.
'We've surveyed parents who say they feel their children are online too much and children who say parents worry too much – there's a disconnect about what 'too much' is.
'Children are now digital natives, but their ability to calculate risks isn't fully formed yet. We do see students whose relationship with the online world has become unhealthy.
'Some [are] as young as year seven, who see their relationship with forums as being a real-life interaction worthy of pursuing at the expense of other things.'
This can leave students feeling so disconnected from real life that they lose interest in work or further study, the teacher suggests. As he puts it, the online world is a 'synthetic replacement for real-life interactions'.
This frequently sparks mental health issues down the line, experts say, which in turn damages prospects for employment.
A US study in 2017 warned that young men were spending more of their free time on video games 'and other recreational computer activities'.
The economists behind the report said the increased time spent gaming had fuelled a drop in working hours for young men between 2000 and 2015.
For some, the rise of easy entertainment online has made the idea of employment seem like a lot of effort for little return.
Graham Cowley, who works with unemployed young men in Blackpool, said last month that there are 'kids on the internet 24 hours a day, and they don't want to work for anything less than 40 grand'.
As evidenced by the figures, this problem is disproportionately skewed towards boys.
Some believe that issues start at an early age, particularly as almost all children own a smartphone by the age of 12.
This has fuelled concerns that boys are being influenced by porn, gaming and toxic online role models.
For example, in 2023, the third most Googled person in the world was Andrew Tate.
The virtual world is reshaping real-life behaviour.
Around 90pc of those using the National Centre for Gaming Disorder, which was set up in 2020, are male. And a report published earlier this year by the Centre for Social Justice warned that men aged 18-29 were far more likely to watch porn every day or most days than women (25pc compared to 2pc).
In education, an increasing number of female teachers and pupils are also reporting sexual harassment from male pupils in school.
Men who have been unemployed for years and now feel trapped in a digital world are searching the internet for signs of hope.
A 29-year-old man seeking support on online forum Reddit writes how he is jobless, isolated and has had an addiction to porn since the age of 12. 'I have no motivation to do anything,' he writes.
He is not alone. A 2023 study published in the US Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease found that anxiety and depression were 'strongly related' to problematic pornography consumption.
Last year Mel Stride, then the work and pensions secretary, blamed porn and video games for the surge in jobless men.
He argued that technology had a different impact on boys' and girls' mental health, with women more likely to suffer because of unrealistic ideals portrayed on social media platforms such as Instagram.
'For boys … things like gaming, and certainly pornography and things like that, are a more prevalent factor,' he told the work and pensions select committee.
Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has made that point in the past, claiming boys invested more of their time in computers and video games during the early stages of the technological entertainment revolution. That was before social media drew girls in in the late 2000s.
He once argued that as the virtual world becomes more enticing for boys, the 'real world, and especially school, becomes more frustrating: shorter recess, bans on rough-and-tumble play, and ever more emphasis on sitting still and listening'.
But not everyone agrees that online porn and gaming is to blame.
Some argue that it's little wonder young men seek solace online when faced with the depressing reality of unemployment, the exhausting cycle of unsuccessfully applying for low-paid jobs and living at home.
After failing to find a job, some may conclude there is no point even bothering.
Lord Elliott, the former Vote Leave chief who now runs the Jobs Foundation, argues that 'blaming worklessness on video games and porn is a sound-bite diagnosis of a serious issue'.
'Rewind several decades – there were more opportunities for solid, rewarding jobs, and the property ladder was in reach for everyone,' he says.
'Good jobs are still out there, but the jobs market is less easy to navigate than it used to be, and buying a home is increasingly beyond reach.
'Since the global financial crisis, we have seen GDP per capita decline in the UK. People are, on average, poorer than their parents were, which is creating a sense of helplessness.'
He adds that the 'root cause of worklessness is a wider malaise, which has grown over the past few decades'.
In essence, he claims online addiction to porn or gaming is the result of the void left by unemployment.
Maxwell Marlow, director of public affairs at the Adam Smith Institute, agrees. 'People are on video games at home because they can't find any work – it's what people do when they don't have a job,' he says.
And what about porn? 'That's up to them – the state has nothing to do with that.'
But addiction is powerful – a Cambridge University study found in 2014 that porn triggers brain activity in sex addicts in the same way that drugs trigger drug addicts.
The research also found that the younger the user, the greater the neural response to porn.
Jobless men write online about feeling stuck in a loop, turning to porn or gaming simply to stave off boredom. However, they often know that finding work could break the cycle.
'I remember my therapist asked me if I have a job and I answered 'no' – he told me that a job will fix almost everything f---ed up in my life,' one Reddit user writes.
'It will force me to sleep and wake up at the same time every day, get out of my parents' house, make friends and get in a relationship.'
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