Young Men – Quote Catch

Alma 53:20-21… And they were all young men, and they were exceedingly valiant for courage, and also for strength and activity; but behold, this was not all—they were men who were true at all times in whatsoever thing they were entrusted. 21 Yea, they were men of truth and soberness, for they had been taught to keep the commandments of God and to walk uprightly before him.
“And what about preparing for the real world? In the real world—unless you’re a fighter pilot or a Marine sniper—being able to push a button 0.02 seconds faster than the other guy isn’t such a valuable skill. Preparing teenagers for the demands of real-life requires skills quite different from the cognitive and visuomotor skills required to master video games. Imagine a young father, in his twenties let’s say, trying to comfort his crying baby daughter. There are no buttons to push, no photon torpedoes to fire. The right thing to do may be simply to rock the baby and hum a lullaby. The chief virtue required may not be lightning virtuosity with a game controller, but merely—patience. If you need to get along with a belligerent coworker, the chief virtue you need may not be lightning speed. In most video games, the best way to deal with difficult people is to vaporize them with photon torpedoes. In the real world, what you need is not high-tech virtual weaponry, but patience.” Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (Leonard Sax) Page 66
“Researchers at Yale University recently reported that playing violent video games such as Doom clearly and unambiguously causes young men to have a more violent self-image and to behave more violently” Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (Leonard Sax) Page 67
“A comprehensive review of the research on video games recently demonstrated that playing violent video games leads directly “too aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition, aggressive affect, and cardiovascular arousal, and to decreases in helping behavior.” The linkage between the violent game and the boy’s antisocial behavior is unequivocally cause-and-effect, these researchers found; the end result is that boys who play these games are more likely to engage in “serious, real-world types of aggression.” The more carefully researchers control for all the variables, the larger the effect size, suggesting that previous studies “underestimate the true magnitude of observed deleterious effects on behavior, cognition, and affect.” Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (Leonard Sax) Page 67
“Moreover, researchers have found that playing violent video games has a substantially more toxic effect than watching equally violent television programs, probably because when a boy is watching a violent TV program he’s watching someone else commit the violent act, but when he’s playing Doom or Grand Theft Auto or Halo, he’s inflicting the death and destruction himself.” Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (Leonard Sax) Page 67
“In my judgment, though, the research clearly indicates that boys who spend many hours each week playing violent video games are at greatly increased risk of disengaging from the real world.” Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (Leonard Sax) Page 68
“Professor Anderson also notes that the controversy now surrounding video games is reminiscent of the controversy surrounding cigarette smoking in the 1960s or lead poisoning in the 1970s. After all, most people who are exposed to cigarette smoke will never get lung cancer. And some people who get lung cancer are not smokers and have never been exposed to cigarette smoke. Likewise (Professor Anderson would argue) not all boys who play video games twenty hours a week will disengage from real life, and not all boys who disengage from real life are video game players.” Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (Leonard Sax) Page 68
“So what rules should you lay down for your son? Professor Anderson has provided some practical guidelines based on the published research.28 He recommends first of all that you either play the game yourself or watch it being played. Then ask yourself these questions: • Does the game involve some characters trying to harm others? • Does this happen frequently, more than once or twice in thirty minutes? • Is the harm rewarded in any way? • Is the harm portrayed as humorous? • Are nonviolent solutions absent or less “fun” than the violent ones? • Are realistic consequences of violence absent from the game? If you answer yes to two or more of these questions, then Professor Anderson suggests that you reconsider whether your son should be allowed to play the game.” Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (Leonard Sax) Page 69
“Boys prefer video games over girls? In the summer and fall of 2006, the New York Times published a series of front-page articles entitled “The New Gender Divide.” One of these described how many young men seem more interested in playing their video games than in being with their girlfriends. The reporter interviewed one young woman at college who had broken off her relationship with a young man, “in part out of frustration over his playing video games four hours a day. ‘He said he was thinking of trying to cut back to fifteen hours a week,’ she said. ‘I said, “Fifteen hours is what I spend on my internship, and I get paid $1,300 a month. That’s my litmus test now: I won’t date anyone who plays video games. It means they’re choosing to do something that wastes their time and sucks the life out of them.’” Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (Leonard Sax) Page 70
“Nevertheless, as the New York Times reported in a recent front-page story, college administrators are reporting that more and more young men show no interest in meeting young women (or meeting other men for that matter). They don’t want to meet anybody. They just want “to stay in their rooms, talk to no one, [and] play video games into the wee hours. . . . [They] miss classes until they withdraw or flunk out.” Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (Leonard Sax) Page 71
“Family comes first; schoolwork comes second; friends come third; video games are last. If your family is one of the fortunate few in which most family members still sit down to share a common evening meal, then sitting down to dinner with the family is more important than playing a video game, more important than talking on the phone with a friend, more important even than finishing a homework assignment. Homework is more important than talking with friends or playing a video game. Taking a phone call from a friend should be a higher priority than playing out a video game, though.” Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (Leonard Sax) Page 72
“Some of us remember David as a shepherd boy divinely commissioned by the Lord through the prophet Samuel. Others of us know him as a mighty warrior; for doesn’t the record show the chant of the adoring women following his many victorious battles, “Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousand”? Or perhaps we look upon him as the inspired poet or as one of Israel’s greatest kings. Still, others recall that he violated the laws of God and took that which belonged to another—the beautiful Bathsheba. He even arranged the death of her husband, Uriah. I, however, like to think of David as the righteous lad who had the courage and the faith to face insurmountable odds when all others hesitated, and to redeem the name of Israel by facing that giant in his life—Goliath of Gath.” Meeting Your Goliath (Thomas S. Monson) Kindle Loc. 40-45
“…There are more outstanding young men and women among our people at present than at any other moment in my lifetime.” (James E. Faust, Ensign, Nov. 1990, 32)
“A smaller and smaller proportion of boys are going on to college. Right now, the student body at the average university in the United States is 58 percent female, 42 percent male (with similar numbers in Canada and Australia).3 And going to college doesn’t guarantee any positive result, particularly for boys. In fact, college is where the gender gap in motivation really shows up. Most girls who enroll in a four-year college will eventually earn a degree. Most boys won’t.” Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (Leonard Sax) Page 8
“Here are the numbers for the male proportion of students enrolled in four-year colleges and universities in the United States, 1949-2006: 1949: 70 percent of undergraduate students were male 1959: 64 percent were male 1969: 59 percent were male 1979: 49 percent were male 1989: 46 percent were male 1999: 44 percent were male 2006: 42 percent were male.” Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (Leonard Sax) Page 8
“Girls are more likely to affiliate with the adults. They are more likely to share common aims and values with the grown-ups. Boys and young men, on the other hand, are less likely to be sympathetic to adult aims and values and are more inclined to engage in delinquent behaviors such as smashing mailboxes, street racing, mooning police officers, among others, than girls are. A boy who smashes mailboxes “just for the fun of it” will raise his status in the eyes of at least some other boys. A girl who smashes mailboxes just for the fun of it is unlikely to raise her status in the eyes of most of the other girls. Girls are more likely to listen to what the grown-ups are saying and to do what the grown-ups ask, particularly if there are no boys around. (If boys are around, some girls become more likely to misbehave, perhaps because they perceive that disrespecting the adults will raise your status in the eyes of at least some of the boys.” Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (Leonard Sax) Page 25
“It’s easy to see how these sex differences are relevant to education. Girls will do the homework because the teacher asked them to. Boys are more likely to do the homework only if it interests them. If it bores them, or if they think it’s “stupid,” they are more likely to ignore it. Researchers have consistently found that girls are significantly more likely than boys to do the assigned homework, in every subject. Even the highest-achieving boys are significantly less likely to do the homework than the comparably achieving girls. Girls at every age get better grades in school than boys do, in every subject—not because girls are smarter, researchers have found, but because girls try harder. Most girls would like to please the teacher, if possible. Most boys don’t care much about pleasing the teacher or about getting straight A’s—and boys who do try to please the teacher and who do care about their grades will lower their status in the eyes of the other boys. Girls are more likely to assess their work as their teachers do. Boys are less likely to care what the teacher thinks of their work. That divergence leads to an enduring paradox: at every age, girls do better in school, but are less satisfied with their achievements, compared with the boys. In 2006, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania reported that girls’ greater self-discipline and self-control—perhaps deriving from their greater motivation to please the teacher—appears to be a key distinguishing factor that has enabled girls to survive and thrive in the accelerated world of twenty-first-century education.” Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (Leonard Sax) Page 26
“Nature is about smelling, hearing, tasting,” Louv reminds us.34 The end result of childhood with more time spent in front of computer screens than outdoors is what Louv calls “cultural autism. The symptoms? Tunneled senses, and feelings of isolation and containment . . . [and] a wired, know-it-all state of mind. That which cannot be Googled does not count.” Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (Leonard Sax) Page 30
“The first thing that happens when you ask kids to do stuff they have no interest in doing is they stop paying attention.” Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (Leonard Sax) Page 34
“The second thing that happens when you ask kids to do stuff they have no interest in doing is they get annoyed. They get irritable. They withdraw.” Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (Leonard Sax) Page 35.
“For many boys, failure is a spur to work harder.” Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (Leonard Sax) Page 50
“If you tell a boy who has a generous dose of this kind of motivation to sit down, he’ll stand up. If you tell him to stand up, he’ll sit down. He doesn’t care so much whether he’s standing or sitting. But he needs to know, and he needs you to know, that he’s in charge of whether he stands or sits. He doesn’t want you to tell him what to do.” Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (Leonard Sax) Page 56
“Secretly, these boys often believe that they are special, that they are unique, that they have a destiny that will be revealed in time. As a result, they believe that rules that apply to ordinary people don’t apply to them. Their “destiny” matters more to them than friendship or academic achievement—more than happiness, for that matter. They often do not expect other people, including their parents, to understand them. They may not even want other people to understand them, because they sense (correctly) that their worldview, with all its megalomania, will appear puerile and egocentric to most adult eyes.” Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (Leonard Sax) Page 57