Transcript of Episode 480: The Pornography Crisis: How We're Accidentally Destroying Our Kids' Ability to Connect

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The average kid today sees less sunlight and daylight than a prisoner does. So your average kid today-Yeah, I saw that. Gets outside less than what our prisoners do. How crazy is that? They have two day... The prisoners have two times a day where they get to come out, take a walk outside, and do their thing, and they, on average, get more time outside than our children do today.

Here's another alarming one. You know what the average age of a kid who sees pornography on the internet is? What? Ten. Ten. That's the average age a kid comes across some nudity or pornography on the internet.

What was it 20 years ago?

Oh, I don't know. I don't know. But I mean, that's terrible.

Oh, it's...

Well, I was in high school when I saw my first Dirty magazine, I think. Yeah.

But we had like, when we were young, we had Playboy. That's what I mean.

That was all.

That was all you had.

But you had like five pages of the same. This kid, if they go on the internet, it's like infinite craziness.

Crazy stuff. And so we didn't earlier about this was when you guys were young, you guys had playboy, you looked at what? Some boobs and whatever. But now it is so nasty, raunchy stuff that people, guys now believe that's what's the norm. So when they actually meet a girl in IRL, in real-time or whatever, in real-life, their expectations are so outrageous that nothing will ever match that expectation. So they just rather go back to porn versus dealing with a girl and her issues and whatever stuff that she has to deal with.

It's classic. So it's actually worse than people realize because it has drug-like effects, but it's also acting on a very strong natural driver that we need to have. We're supposed to have this driver. So what it's doing is it's manipulating this natural driver and distorting it, and it's got profoundly profound negative impacts on our life. And the data on this now is becoming super clear on what it does. But what happens with all drugs, caffeine is an example. You have one cup of coffee, I'm zooming, three days later, if I drink it every day, I need another cup. Totally. So what's What's going to happen, and the stats and the data on this is really interesting, is that pornography has gotten more and more and more extreme to meet consumer demand because of the novelty effect. They got to keep going. And it gets worse worse and worse to the point now where it's some of the top viewed things are things that allude to in sexual relationships and stuff that is like, what is going on here?

Right, just to keep it as...

Vilence and... Yeah.

Because you're right, because you become so desensitized to whatever you are watching. It's like caffeine, like you said. It's like working out.

We're wired to seek novelty as creatures. We're wired to go out. If that's no longer novel of seeing gangbangs every day, it's like, I need the next level, the next novel thing. That's the natural progression. I don't think a lot of people... I think it's something that a lot of men are embarrassed about or don't share and don't talk about. I think it's even worse than what we realize.

I'm going to tell you right now. I am a grown man, okay? And I went off, I completely went off pornography over a year ago because I saw the data, all that stuff. Plus, had a spiritual conversion, went off it completely. It was actually great, but I remember trying to go off it before, and it was really challenging as a grown man. I I couldn't imagine being a 15-year-old boy with a smartphone. Couldn't imagine what that would have done to me as a 15-year-old boy with that access. That would have been, you might as well have handed me cocaine every day and said, Here you go, good luck. Let's see what happens. I can't imagine. And this is what's happening. When you're giving your kid a smartphone, you're giving them access to everything. The world. Not everything. All of its terribleness is in there. It's really, really crazy. It is.

I mean, are you guys... I'm optimistic. I feel like there's more and more TED Talks and books that are coming out and more and more parents. We have enough years now behind us, and we're seeing all these things unravel and get worse. And so I want to believe that we're in the thick of some of the hardest times when it comes to this, because I feel bad for parents like you guys who... I have a five-year-old, so I had already read the book Irresistible, Unplugged. I read those books before I had him, iGen. So I was very on top of that right away. Whereas I can't imagine if I had a 19-year-old or 15-year-old when iPhone was brand new and everybody was celebrating how great it was, not realizing. I don't think a lot of parents that have got teenagers right now were thinking about how detrimental this was going to be, where I think it's a conversation now. So I'm optimistic about where we're heading. I think that we're barely just starting to create a lot of awareness around it. I want to believe that society will figure it out. I think it'll become more common that when you go to a bunch of parents like that, they're going to...

I just experienced this with my son. I told these guys on air the other day that we went up to our trucky place up in Tahoe, and we went with a couple that I'd never hung out with. It was my son's best friend at school. This is the first time I'm hanging out with them, so I don't really know the parents. I'm getting to know them. We're on the second or the third day, and I make a comment to the dad. I said, Hey, I notice your son hasn't asked for an iPad or anything this entire time we've been up here. He's like, Oh, yeah. No, he works for Netflix. And he's like, Oh, yeah. We won't even let him watch it or have it. We've not introduced it to him. I said, I love that. Really? Yeah. So it's so cool to meet other parents that are aware of that and just made the conscious choice to not even... And it's so cool because my son and him, they don't even think twice about it because we regulate that really closely at our house. And then here he is playing with another kid who doesn't.

So it's not a problem. It's not hard because he's with another kid who has parents. So I'm hoping that we'll see more of this.

Well, I think also to your point, Sal, about basically surrounding yourself with people who are like-minded, building that community is so important because it's very easy when you basically are peer-pressured into doing things. As a parent. As a parent. I also think it depends on where you live. Like Los Angeles versus living in maybe Kansas is very, very different in terms of different pressures, what you are around, you know what I mean? To me, that makes a major difference as well.

You're the belly of the beast.

You are the belly of the beast. I am. But what's going to say is what I actually find super interesting, too, is what you just said about the guy that you were with who works at Netflix. What I find super curious is why is it that people who work for Metta, who work for TikTok-Because they know. I was going to say, isn't that interesting? If you read that, they will not allow their kids on these things.

This is what blew my mind when I read Irresistible. It's a great book. Yeah, totally. By Adam Alter called Irresistible. I remember sharing it on the podcast years ago with these guys, and I was like, Dude, and the guys who created this tech don't allow their kids to use it because they knew how much they were making this to be addictive. They modeled it off for casinos. That they wouldn't even allow their own kids to use it. I said, What does that tell you if the creators of it-That's what I find to be so fascinating.

If the people who actually created it, it's actually what you were saying. It's true. What they do is they basically mimic slot machines in Vegas. That's how they created it. People don't realize this is... These things are not made for you and I, the users. It's a marketing machine. It's like, that's why the algorithm picks up and tracks what you watch to give you more of it so they can make money off of you. They didn't do this out of the goodness of their heart. They didn't create Instagram and TikTok, say, here you go, be entertained for 24 hours a day. They did it because they knew they can make money. They can sell you all sorts of stupid, random shit that you would otherwise never know about. And people just are not realizing this is not for them. That's why people who create and make their businesses on Instagram, the smartest thing you can do is take your audience and take them off of Instagram, get them into a different database. Because this is rent and not owned. You don't own Instagram. They're making money off of you, not vice versa.

I'm also hopeful, too. I'm not big on government policy, but if enough parents band together and actually start pressuring schools schools in a lot of these places where... Obviously, this is affecting kids to a degree where we saw the detriment of cigarettes, and we saw the detriment of alcohol, and we're like, Okay, we need more restriction and access here. So you I see a little bit of this in Florida where they're experimenting with an age for social media, at least. It seems to me that if this subject keeps coming up, we keep having these conversations, more people bring that awareness to it. It's like We need to all really start pressuring and affecting policymakers.

There's light at the end of the tunnel. So there's a small spike, or you're starting to see a small rise in kids who are getting flip phones. They're actually wanting them themselves.

You're seeing I thought. I posted about that the other day.

There's a rise in young men who are going off pornography. There's groups online that talk about this. And for the first time in I don't know how many decades, you've seen declining rates of church and Christianity, the main religion in America, has flattened out and started starting to reverse. And the largest growth is in Gen Z. The largest growth in that is Gen Z. And they're going for the more traditional Orthodox versions of Christianity, which to me points to the fact they need some structure. They're looking for structure and discipline because they're like, I can do whatever I want. This doesn't feel good. I feel like crap. I like going to this place that's like, Here's how we live. It feels much more secure and better, and I'm getting some purpose in my life. There is some light at the end of the tunnel.

There are There are some schools also who are becoming phone free. In Australia, they passed a law that you cannot bring a phone. There's some schools already in the US that have done that. But you know what? It's bringing awareness. The more you talk about it and the more we educate people on the actual true data and effects that this is having, hopefully, the more people will band together and do that.

Kids thrive in an environment with a predictable, consistent structure, love, support, and empathy, and where you allow them in an age-appropriate way to overcome challenges and obstacles. If you do those three things, you've done 99% of all of it. If it's an inconsistent environment with no structure or discipline, you're going to raise a very anxious kid who doesn't know what to expect. If you raise a kid with no love, that obviously, I think everybody understands, that totally screws them up. If you don't let them encounter challenges and actually feel the struggle of the challenge, you're going to raise a kid that's fragile. And by the way, one of the ways that parents do this is you got a kid who's crying because they didn't get what they want. And one big mistake that parents made, I did this with my older kids, is you put on, Oh, stop, really? Let's put on your favorite show. And what you did is you taught your child to disassociate from the challenge. They're distracting themselves from whatever they're going through, and then they become adults that disassociate from challenges rather than letting them be uncomfortable, which makes you uncomfortable as a parent.

So you got to ask yourself, I do this all the time. Is it me? My kid's having a fit right now, and I'm having a problem with it, but I'm uncomfortable with it. So I got to let them sit through this. I'll be there with them, and I'll sit next to them, but I got to let them feel this. I know. I got to deal with my own uncomfortable feelings around it.

So a lot of this is actually training the parents to be uncomfortable with discomfort also, right? That's what I'm saying. It's very interesting because it's a dual thing here because it is very uncomfortable to watch your kid be uncomfortable and struggle. Nobody likes to see that. I'm a Jewish mom on top of it, so you can imagine. It's extra hard for me. It's extra, extra hard. But I mean, being cognizant of what the issue is and working through it, because like I said, it's very easy just to give in, right? And we've trained our brains at us to know better, right? And so we just have to apply that with our kids.

Yeah. And it's age-appropriate stuff, too, right? Like, your one-year-old throws food on the floor. Not a big deal. Your 10-year-old throws food on the floor, it's different. My four-year-old is a great example. Up until relatively recently, maybe a little while ago, every time we played a game, he would win because he doesn't understand losing. He just understands, If I win, I win, I win. But right around the age of three and a half or four is when they start to figure out, or they need to figure out that they can lose. So what do I do with them now? We play Uno, right? And so now we play Uno, and now every five games, I'll win. And he's, Oh, okay, I'll try again. Now, at two years old, he'll cry. He doesn't know what's going on. I don't want to play anymore. You crush your kid. So there's age-appropriate ways to allow your child to encounter challenges because you also don't want to do this. There's also the authoritative non-loving parent, which raises psychopaths. So it's the parent that raises the kid, No, no, do it this way, and that's it, and whatever. You raise a psychopath that way.

So there is a way to do this by figuring out the age-appropriate ways to... Like your kid cries because they fell off their bike, but they're five. Okay, that's fine. Your 15-year-old falls down and cries every time they fall off their bike. We're not going to have to talk about this, kid.

Exactly. But just what you just said, I never let my kids win at games. Ever, ever, ever. When they are one or two, I'll be like, Yeah, you won. But like-As they get older, they got to figure it out. As they get older, I play Rummy Cube with them. I play Uno with them. I play all those things. I'm trying. My kid beats me 9 out of 10 times because I've been trained to actually have to put effort in it because, again, that's a microcosm for life. They're not going to win at everything, and they're going to have to try. If I just allow them just to beat me every time, what am I really teaching them?

It's important to learn this stuff, too. The age-appropriate-Well, I didn't do that, too, but I'm sure as hell doing it at nine. Two or three-year-olds playing together. You're like, No, you need to share. Two-year-olds don't understand that. They don't understand. They play in tandem. They play on their own.

Parallel play, yeah.

Four, five years old? No. Now, you can't always play what you want. You got to play what other people want to. Then you start. It's age-appropriate is important because what can happen is you can get the parents that are authoritative and abusive who hear this like, Yeah, I smack them whenever they win. You're not doing the right thing either, buddy.

Do you guys I think that the traditional values around gender roles and moving away from that has played a role in this also? Totally. When I hear you guys, what we're communicating right now, too, there's a lot of qualities that mom just does a really good job of doing and the ones where dad... And it almost allows, you don't have to have this perfect balance. Dad could be the hard ass who's always doing that, maybe isn't the best at showing love and affection because mom comes back behind all the time and picks her son up and makes him feel loved.

You have an inconsistent environment when one person does both. Is mom going to act like a dad or mom today? Is she hard or she soft today?

That's very true. You know what's interesting? When I tell my kids not to do so, I'm like, Don't do that. Or if I'm yelling my kids, but if my husband says it, they listen. They buck up really quickly and they'll listen. And I get so annoyed as a mom. Why would I say it? No one pays attention. But when you say at one time, kids are naturally more scared of their father than they are of their mom when there's two parents like that. It's true. Because I feel like naturally, there must be an instinctually, moms feel more safe and comfortable. The dad, they can't get away with it.

I brought up a stat. I told the guys the other day where a kid, they did a study with teachers, mom, dad, grandma, all these people. Who do you think the kid, and they said, is most likely to misbehave in front of? So think of every parent. So mom, dad, grandparent, teacher, all these people. And they studied all these kids, thousands of kids. And there was one of them that stood out more than any of them that the kid was more likely to misbehave in front of. The mom. Yeah, 900% more. 900%? 900% more. But that was the reason why. It was because the kid-Feel safe. Feels safe. We're comfortable and safe. And he can challenge boundary. That's part of life is kids are... Part of raising kids is learning what I can and can't do. They feel the most safe and protected with mom, and so they're going to stretch those boundaries. Dad is not that way. Dad is more the authoritarian, more the disciplinary, more that person. And so that's the same thing in my household, too. Katrina will drive her crazy. She's reminding him to do something like that, and then all I have to do is step in and said, Max, listen to your mom.

And then they listen.

Yeah, and then he gets right up. And she's just like, I just said that to him seven times, and then you come over and do that. So It's crazy.

It's 100%. I didn't know it was 900%. That's crazy.

900% more likely to misbehave in front of mom. Yeah.

Wow. I think the challenge with why the gender role issue has caused such an issue isn't because... It's two reasons. One, we devalue the strengths that each person has, and we pretend like there are no weaknesses sometimes in either side. We overvalue sometimes mom or dad, depending on the situation, and we don't realize Because they both have value. They're both very important. How many times have moms told dads, Don't wrestle with the kids before bed. You're going to rile them up. No, don't rile them up. What are you doing? Do you know how important it is? How valuable it is that dad gets to do that with their kid, the skills that they learn? Or the dad to the mom, Oh, come on. Stop coddling when he's crying. That's important that mom can provide that. It's okay because you provide the other side. Yes, there's a balance.

Yes.

That's my point of why do you think I believe that it's played a role, and I know that's a It's an controversial thing to say because we've tried to eliminate traditional gender roles, but there's something to be said about how valuable, how organically it used to happen because dad just was that guy. Dad didn't have to be better about coddling and empathy and doing those things because mom was so good at it. And so he could get away with being dad who works all day long, and then he just comes around and he disciplines all the time, and they still raise a decent kid. Well, yeah, that's because mom did such an organic job, great job of balancing that out and vice versa. She didn't always have to be the one who's hard, disciplined all the time because she knew her husband could come in and do that. And it's unfortunate that we have shamed people for so long about following these traditional values and gender roles when there's a lot of value that comes from that. It's not to say that you can't have a dad who has more empathy or a mom that has more discipline.

That's not the point of this conversation. It's just that we've eliminated that so much or we've shamed that so much that, Oh, my God, that traditional is so old school and so bad, and we point out all the bad, and it's like, Well, okay, there were some really good things that used to happen when mom had her role and dad had his role because we are different, and we have different strengths, and those strengths feed and play into raising a kid.

And by the way, everything we've just talked about on this show, there are gender roles, in my opinion, for a reason. I feel like the world works better when that's the case, even when it comes to dating, when it comes to socializing, when it comes to raising a child. That's why it's a natural instinct. And what we're trying to do is eliminate their natural instinct and create this other form of being because it's more progressive. And to me, that's when we've had this demise in every way, like walk of life. We've had this demise in raising children. We've had this demise in dating and cohabitating. We've had this in relationships, we've had this demise in work, life, in work, in professional. In every way, there's been a demise because we're trying to create this other instinctual way to be, which is impossible. And this is not me being this super hard core, right wing, traditional. No, I'm super malleable in a lot of ways. But I do believe that there are roles For a reason, for a reason. For women, we talked about this last time, was even on the podcast. There's certain traits that women should have, and there are certain traits that men should have for the world to work better.

In order for a woman to be attracted to a man, men have to have certain traits beyond just being tall. And like you were saying, bravery. Leadership. Leadership, confidence, strengths. Security. Security. Like, duh, who wants a weak guy? I don't really care what you say, right? And women, no matter what, women should have to have some sense of softness, some nurturing, some maternal instincts. You don't have to be a total like, Stetford wife. Obviously not. Do I look like a Stetford wife? No. But there are certain things that are, I think-The world's lied to us a lot, and it's sold us a lot of lies.

And what it's done is it's glorified the attributes that men provide, and it's completely undervalued. I'm talking about the world, right? Society. Undervalued the attributes that women provide. So it's like, let's celebrate the first woman to build a skyscraper, first female astronaut, first whatever. And so it's celebrating these big conquests. Meanwhile, moms that raise incredible children, build incredible communities that provide emotional support, which women do exceptionally well. All great people were raised, probably by a great mother to an extent, or there's a great mother there. We've undervalued that. And now I think it's It's starting to change, but it's to the point where my wife stays at home with the kids. She doesn't hear this so much, but I remember my mom will stay at home. She almost felt embarrassed saying that when people would ask, What do you do for a living? Oh, I'm just a homemaker because it was so undervalued.

I love that. I'm just a... It's crazy. It's crazy. It's like, by the way, I'm obviously not a homemaker by any stretch, but I will tell you that's the hardest job in the world. Because when I have to stay home for two days with my children alone, I I'm running back to work.

There's nothing more challenging.

It's the hardest thing in the world. To raise a good human being, it's incredibly difficult.

Is there anything more important?

No, there's nothing more important.

No, there's nothing. That's what I'm saying. I work so that my wife can raise my kids, most importantly, and my work can change. I'm not going to switch my kids out for better kids or whatever. That's the most important thing. But my point is the world's lied to us, and it's lied to us, and it's undervalued what we tend to do best. There's nothing wrong being a little more masculine, a little more family, whatever you want to label it or whatever. There's nothing wrong with that. But there are tremendous values in these things that we provide, especially as parents, especially as parents. And that's why I think single parents have it real tough. Because you're trying to figure out doing both, and it makes it a bit inconsistent. I got to be a little bit more like that. But traditionally, it's the dads that provided a lot of that discipline, a little bit of that challenge, the rough and tumble play, the tough it up a little bit attitude thing, typically came from dads. And when dad's not there, mom's got a real difficult choice. Okay, who am I going to be? And she's probably She's probably going to default to the thing that she's best at, which is not those things, which is more of the safety and comfort nurturing, which can become by itself without the other side of it, a little toxic in the sense that now my kid, I fix every problem.

I talk to every that my kid has a struggle with. I don't like, oh, they're crying.

Just like what would happen if the opposite was true. If the dad with just the discipline and the get up, you're fine attitude with no empathy.

Yeah, a bunch of psychopath kids. They're both extremely valuable. They just have way more single moms and single dads because dads tend to bounce. But that's the case. Anyway, good time.

Yeah, good time.

We'll see how controversial this podcast is. You always have controversial.

I don't know what happened.

I'm curious. But I love talking to you about it because you're not coming from the traditional right wing, Stepford mom. You're this businesswoman, like badass, and you work your ass off. And so coming from you, it's such a good person to talk about it because It's not like you're over here trying to say, too, Oh, me just being a mom, staying home is more important to all these women that go out and work. It's like, No, listen, I crush work. I love business. I do all that stuff. But I also recognize these traditional values that we've had with the way the woman run the house and how the man would run the house and why we need each other.

And also, thank you. I appreciate that. And I think that's why it's really important, right? Because I'm not a stay at home mom, as you said. And I think that these are challenges that most people in the world face, right? Because most of us have to work, unfortunately. And I'm not saying I'm perfect. I struggle with these things every day. So if I feel I'm struggling, I'm sure a lot of other people are struggling, which is why I think it's important, like I said, for us to band together and educate and tell people and build a community around what's really happening so we can better it later on.