How weak correlations and scant research were spun up into an argument about how videogames and porn are leading to "the demise of guys."

People playing the game Overkill (Reuters).

If the name Philip Zimbardo rings a bell, you may have read about the famous study he ran called the Stanford Prison Experiment -- a groundbreaking study that showed how assuming a given role could change people's behavior toward others based on the power relationship they shared with them.

Forty-one years later, the former Stanford professor has co-authored an essay arguing that video games and pornography are to blame for what he calls "the demise of guys." The op-ed stokes fears of a testosterone-fueled implosion among young men -- the kind of apocalyptic emergency that threatens the country's future if society doesn't act right now.

The gist of the piece is this: violent and sexualized digital media are addictive. Consuming too much of it, as young Americans are doing, risks turning them into vegetables incapable of negotiating the real world. From this, we can conclude that an entire cohort is slipping down the drain as we speak.

The problem is that the assertions outstrip the evidence and research. The framing and argument are flawed from start to finish. Here, we break those problems down in detail.

Zimbardo and his co-author open with a rhetorical question:

As a psychologist, Zimbardo ought to know better than to prime his readers to accept an affirmative answer in the first sentence without being shown any evidence.

He continues:

Curious. Perhaps the research is coming, you think. Wrong. The first study isn't mentioned for another seven paragraphs. When Zimbardo does bring it up, it turns out the experiment was carried out in 1954, was performed on rats, and merely proved the existence of the brain's pleasure center (a major discovery at the time, but hardly the resounding proof that Zimbardo needs for his human addiction thesis).

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The Anatomy of a Videogame-Scare Story