
All iLive content is medically reviewed or fact checked to ensure as much factual accuracy as possible.
We have strict sourcing guidelines and only link to reputable media sites, academic research institutions and, whenever possible, medically peer reviewed studies. Note that the numbers in parentheses ([1], [2], etc.) are clickable links to these studies.
If you feel that any of our content is inaccurate, out-of-date, or otherwise questionable, please select it and press Ctrl + Enter.
Men will become extinct from video games and pornography
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025

A renowned Stanford University professor claims that humanity will not end due to a giant asteroid strike, a deadly tsunami or irreversible climate change. It will be due to excessive addiction to computer games and online pornography, he writes in his article.
Philip Zimbardo, a 79-year-old psychologist from Stanford, California, believes that people who regularly play computer video games are doing their bodies more harm than they realize. Zimbardo: “Young people are spending too much of their time in the digital world – playing video games, watching porn, texting online, watching sports – and all of this alone.”
Gaming, as well as an addiction to pornographic resources, which abound on the World Wide Web, are creating a “generation of male losers.” These hobbies, according to Dr. Zimbardo, lead young men to “digital isolation,” due to which they are unable to function normally in the real world and develop healthy relationships with women. Remaining alone, men die earlier, the psychologist writes.
A Stanford psychologist said in a TED talk that the sad data is backed up by medical data from the Annual Public Health Survey: increased aggression is becoming an inseparable companion of people addicted to violent video games.
By becoming regular consumers of online pornography and video games, men become accustomed to loneliness, lag behind in development and cease to cope with real life, which is unthinkable without relationships with people, not to mention communication with the opposite sex. Man is a social animal, Zimbardo reminds us, and is doomed to extinction because he loses this characteristic.
The lives of a generation are becoming “out of sync” – in school, at work, in romantic relationships – as virtual reality arouses excitement, the professor writes.