Why Boys are Falling Behind in America Today, and the Truth About ADHD and Plastics, with Dr. Leonard Sax | Ep. 1387

27:51Teachers who understand the differences. Fundamentally, you don't need girls' classrooms and boys' classrooms as much as you need teachers who understand the differences. And that's a lot of what I do. I share what I've learned with schools. And if you understand that, then the same boy who loves video games will love Emily Dickinson, will love Jane Eyre. And the same girl who loves SZA and Ariana Grande will love computer coding. That's so fascinating. That's so good. Yes, you do have to look at the actual specific teachers. And I think you're arming parents with the information to push back.

28:26So if they keep getting called in there or they keep getting their son downgraded and then they find out it's because of his, quote, behavior, there may be some layers to peel back before you just accede to that. Well, let me warn parents, because my own approach to that situation has changed. So 20 years ago, I would have told parents, hey, here's some research. Here's my book. take this into the principal, share this with them, and see if you can't get the principal to understand that what a boy needs is different from what a girl needs. I have given up on that approach because it doesn't work.

29:00It simply is not effective. One parent is not going to change that principal's mind. And there's a lot at stake. In the new edition of Boys Adrift, I share a longitudinal cohort study showing that a boy who is suspended from school once, the risk of him being incarcerated for a felony in prison increases by 800%. One school suspension profoundly changes a boy's attitude towards school. He now regards teachers and administrators as the enemy and other boys who've been suspended are friends. And most remarkably in this study, They looked at boys who were suspended once and boys who were suspended 10 times.

29:44No difference. One suspension is all it takes to change a boy's attitude. And once that attitude has changed, it is global, stable, and non-contingent. It's going to be very hard to change it back. So if your son is getting reprimanded, this is a red alert. You need to consider switching schools. and I'm not asking you to do anything I didn't do. My wife and I were very unhappy with the choice of schools available to us in Montgomery County, Maryland. So I sold my medical practice that I started from scratch in 1990 and built up to 7 ,000 patients. I sold my practice to my associate who's still running it, I might add, 17 years later.

30:29We sold our home. You went to Pennsylvania. And we moved to Chester County, Pennsylvania and we've never regretted it. Your kid has to be your first priority. Above your work, above your home. If you have to switch jobs and sell your home, that's what you have to do. But if your kid is getting, if your son's getting discipline referrals on the verge of suspension, you've got to intervene immediately. That's very good to know. We did the same. We moved, we fled from New York City, not for these reasons, but because of the woke schools. And what amounted to abuse in our schools? I mean, I've told the audience this, but in our boys' school, not only did they unleash a six-week transgender education program on the children without telling us, where they had the boys raise their hands and say on a scale of one to five, how much of a boy are you?

31:18Wow. One, two, three, four, or five, without telling us. This is the third grade they did this. Oh, my gosh. And then after George Floyd-a-palooza, they actually made it mandatory reading amongst the faculty, an article by a ridiculous so-called academic at some no-name school who posited that, and I quote, in every classroom where white children learn, there is a future killer cop. Wow. So we got the hell out of there. It's one of the best schools in the nation, ostensibly. You mentioned changes, and that's another big change that I had to address in the new edition. 20 years ago, teachers didn't get in trouble for using the phrase boys and girls.

31:56Boys and girls, would you please line up? Wouldn't get teachers in trouble. Now it will. That school, that's an all-boys school, won't say boy or son anymore. They just say, please collect your student. Yes. Because they will argue that the terms boy and girl are heteronormative and exclusionary because of what if you're non-binary? What if you're trans? and this is not just blue states and blue cities. In Lincoln, Nebraska, which is not a blue state, in Lincoln, Nebraska, the official guidance from the school board is you are not to use the term boys and girls. If you do, you get a reprimand.

32:38You are to use the term purple penguins. Oh, good Lord. Well, this is insane. Yeah, at this school, the same boys school, they unleashed the gender bread man when we got, I don't know, in this part of this education program, not to be confused with gingerbread, but gender bread where he doesn't have, you know, one identifiable set. So that's, and we've just talked about the first factor so far, but so many reasons we had to have a new addition to address these new challenges. You need to find a, you need to be sure that your school is comfortable talking about boys and girls. A school that understands that what a boy needs to get excited about poetry is different from what a girl needs to get excited about poetry.

33:25And if they don't understand that, if the principal gives you a blank look, then you need to look elsewhere. So how do those boys who are having this experience, the kindergarten versus the first grade stuff, the sit down, the absence of understanding on how they learn, how to speak to them, how to discipline them if they do transgress, and not demonizing things that are just normal for boys, like drawing a rifle, which is fun for kids to pretend they're soldiers, et cetera. How do those boys then wind up in high school, latter part of high school, not wanting a girlfriend, not interested in sex or dating?

34:03Maybe they'll go to college, maybe they won't, maybe they'll get an active job, maybe they won't, and just feeling apathetic. Well, let's move on to that second factor now, which is video games. because that's a big part of it. I was shocked by what I read about the video games in the book, shocked. When I was at Fox back in 2004 and five, and there were many people on Fox who were lamenting these video games and what they were doing, like the violent ones and some of the driving the auto ones. And there were so many reactive pieces rolling their eyes at these pundits. Like, oh my, come on, it's not the video games.

34:39And I mean, I'm here to say after having read the book, Actually, it is the video games. So a real good question to ask any boy, to get a sense of where he is, is he at risk for being a boy adrift? Ask this question. What's your favorite thing to do in your free time when you are by yourself with no one watching? And I often ask kids that question when I meet with students. I'll say, raise your hand if you'd like to answer that question. and a girl raises her hand and she says, my favorite thing is to play guitar in the style of Janis Joplin. I said, whoa, what's your name? Melissa. You know, I don't know Melissa, but I kind of feel like I do because her favorite thing to do is to play guitar in the style of Janis Joplin.

35:26If you want to get to know someone in 60 seconds or less, ask them that question. What's their favorite thing to do in their free time? And just over the 25 years I've been doing the school visits, I have seen it narrow among boys. And the most common response now from boys is video games. They want to spend their free time playing video games. And parents don't understand how good the video games are. So RDR2, a lot of parents don't even know what I'm talking about. The video game Red Dead Redemption has earned more than$3 billion. It's earned more money than the first Avatar, the highest growing movie of all time.

36:06And most people have heard of Avatar. Many parents have never heard of RDR2. So it's earned more money than Avatar, even though it appeals to a narrow demographic of boys and young men. So this is an incredible video game where the physics are absolutely realistic. You're living in the 1890s out West, and it's a a peculiar time because the West is kind of becoming modern, and it's a transitional period. It's not the Wild West, per se. And how you interact with people matters. How you interact with your horse matters. If you're nice to your horse and it gets loose, it'll come back. If you're not nice, it'll run off and won't come back.

36:47It takes about 40 hours to complete your mission an RDR2. And when a boy has accomplished that, they've told me it's such a great feeling. I feel like I've really mastered something. And it will raise their status in the eyes of their peers. Whoa, Jared finished RDR2. What a man. And we've got the research, which I present in that chapter of Boys Adrift. Time spent playing video games has gone up. Time spent interacting with girls has gone down. And many boys will tell you they would rather spend their free time playing video games than interacting with girls. Why would I want to interact with her?

37:30I see her in algebra class, boring. So how do you want to spend your free time? And we'll talk more about testosterone levels because that factors into this. And we'll talk more about pornography because that factors into this, but video games. I'm not saying you have to prohibit video games. The research does not support that. So my brand is evidence-based. When I make a recommendation - Longitudinal long-term studies. I'm gonna show you longitudinal cohort studies. I'm gonna show you research that supports every recommendation I make. How much time spent playing video games is too much time.

38:06No more than 40 minutes a night on school nights, no more than an hour a day on weekends, and your minutes do not roll over. So no video game console in the bedroom. Right. You need to limit, govern and guide how much time your son is spending playing video games. And you also need to limit what games he is playing because really awful games like Grand Theft Auto. So Grand Theft Auto is a game where you get rewarded for killing unarmed civilians. And we have a longitudinal cohort study where they recruited kids at age 12 and followed them to age 15. What kind of video games are they playing? How much time are they spending playing video games?

38:44And control for every parameter, like race, ethnicity, household income, family composition, parental involvement. Because when a kid spending more time playing video games, maybe his parents aren't as involved as a kid spending less time. You got to control for everything, including parental involvement. When you control for all those parameters, you find that boys playing violent games, like Grand Theft Auto, change over three years' time. They become less patient, less honest, more selfish. And it's a big change. After three years, a boy who's spending his time playing violent video games on these parameters, he's looking like a boy who was raised in a violent and abusive home all his life, even though he's been raised in a loving and nurturing home all his life.

39:32So it really matters. So the California State Assembly brought the researchers out. They brought Craig Anderson and Doug Gentile, the lead investigators on this study, out to Sacramento. They said, you're telling us that the most popular video game in the United States, Grand Theft Auto, is a game that your research shows is going to change personality, cause kids to become more selfish, less honest. and Craig Anderson, who helped me write that chapter, said, yeah, absolutely. And so they wrote a law. California statute made it a civil offense to sell a game like Grand Theft Auto, not any violent game, but the worst games like Grand Theft Auto to any child under 18.

40:17You'd have to show ID, put the games behind the counter. You'd have to show ID to prove that you're 18 and order to buy the game. The video game industry immediately brought suit, claiming that the California statute violated their First Amendment right of free speech. And the video game lawsuit went to the United States Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the video game industry, throwing out the California statute, rendering a null and void. Justice Samuel Alito wrote a concurrence. He said, look, I've read the research of Anderson and Gentile, and I share the concerns of California parents and California lawmakers.

40:51These games are heinous. That's the word he used. No kid should be playing a game where you get rewarded for killing unarmed civilians. He said, nevertheless, it is the ruling of this court that deciding what games children will play is not the job of the California State Assembly. It is the job of the parent. I'd have included a link to the full text of Justice Alito's remark in the new edition of my book, Voice Adrift, because you need to understand this is your job. There can be no law or regulation limiting the sale of any video game in the United States. no matter how awful the game, no matter how young the child, because the United States Supreme Court has so ruled.

41:28So you must know what game your son is playing. And that's all you have to know. Can I ask you? What's the name of the game? Then you go to commonsensemedia.org, type in the name of the game, type in Grand Theft Auto, and it'll say, absolutely not. No child, no teenager should be doing this. That'll help you with movies. It'll help you with a lot. Just today, we have this news of the meta settlement. You know, Meadow, which of course owns Facebook and Instagram, has now entered into this multi-billion dollar settlement with multiple state attorneys general who had sued it, claiming that these properties are unfairly targeting children in a way that's addictive and very harmful to them, which obviously is true.

42:11but I have to say, I couldn't help when I heard the settlement, but think, you know, cause they were like, there should be limits on the number of hours that the children can log on. And there should be limits on how many times you can sort of tickle the children with the notifications. Like, Hey, look, your friends on here and that's all good. But I, all I could think when I was reading it was my children are already not doing that because we don't allow that. Like they're, it's great, I guess, to have this backstop for parents who aren't actively parenting their children and making sure, as is their duty, that their children are protected from online predators, which I do think those social media apps are.

42:48But it's really our responsibility. There's only so many legal judgments, settlements, cases we can get that are going to protect our children. Because let's face it, the vast majority of kids lie anyway to get past the age barriers and so on. Well, and I've seen this in my own practice. A boy was doing well in elementary school. Then in middle school, his grades took a nosedive. and parents took him to the psychiatrist, looked at the counter scales, he's off the chart, not paying attention to any of your class, so the psychiatrist said, well, it certainly looks like ADHD, let's try Vyvanse, which was very helpful.

43:21But he got side effects, palpitations, jittery, loss of appetite, so parents saw some articles I've written for New York Times and Time Magazine expressing concern about these medications, they brought him to me for a second opinion. And I did a more careful sleep history. I said, does your son get plenty of sleep? Mom said, oh, absolutely, he's in his bedroom every night at nine. We wake them up at six. That's nine hours. That's enough. Don't you think? And I said to the boy, do you have a video game console in your bedroom? He said, of course, not everybody. I said, were you playing last night?

43:49He said, yeah. I said, when'd you finish? He said, 1.30. I was like, you were playing video games at 1.30 last night? I said, is that pretty typical? He said, yeah, sometimes one, sometimes two. He needs at least eight hours of sleep a night. He's getting five or less. He's sleep deprived. Sleep deprivation perfectly mimics attention deficit disorder of the inattentive variety, which was his diagnosis. Vyvanse was very helpful. What's Vyvanse? What's Adderall? They're amphetamines. They're speed. They compensate for the sleep deprivation. But the appropriate remedy for sleep deprivation is sleep, not scheduled to amphetamines.

44:25So I said to mom, you got to get the video game console out of the bedroom. You didn't even know he was playing. Got to get that out of the bedroom, no more than 40 minutes a night playing video games. And so I said, that's totally unacceptable. I'm going to be the next ninja. He's referring to a man who makes hundreds of thousand dollars a month playing video games. I'll never get there at 40 minutes a night. The mom's like, what can I do? So here's a mom who feels powerless to exercise her authority. So again, in that chapter, I've got the guidelines. You need to find the courage to be the evil parent.

44:57No video game console in the bedroom. That's not just my recommendation. Those are the official guidelines of the American Academy of Pediatrics. What about when it comes to just social media in general? So social media in general, we now know is really more of a risk for girls than it is for boys. Girls are spending more time on social media. Boys are spending more time on video games. So yeah, I totally endorse John Haidt, Jane Twenge's recommendation. Kids should not be on social media at all until 18 years of age. Jane Twenge's recommendation, not 16, which is John Haidt's recommendation. There's no evidence to support 16.

45:33The evidence supports 18. Kids should not be on social media under 18 years of age. And Facebook issued their official statement yesterday, and they said, look, we need our peers to do this as well. And I think that's a fair statement, because if it's only Instagram and Facebook, kids are just going to go to TikTok and YouTube and Snapchat, and you won't really have accomplished much. This has to be across the board. And parents, you can't wait for the courts. You can't wait for the legislature. You need to have the courage to be the evil parents, to lock it down, to limit the video games and to lock down the social media.

46:14Yes, have the courage to be the evil parent. That's a good line. It's true because if you don't enforce these rules with your children, who will? And if you're not upsetting your children, we talked about this one of the other times you were on. If you're not upsetting your children here and there. You're not doing your job. You're not doing things right. You're not there to be liked. But I want to move on to our next factor because I'm hoping we can cover as much as we can. And that is medications for attention deficit disorder. I just mentioned the boy who was diagnosed with ADHD. There's been a huge rise in the proportion of American kids diagnosed with ADHD.

46:50In 1979, only 1 % of American kids were diagnosed with ADHD and was understood to be a disorder of childhood. What year? 1979. 1%. 1%. and was understood to be a disorder kids would outgrow. It was regarded as a disorder of childhood. Today, right now, according to the CDC, 23 % of 17-year-old boys in the United States have been diagnosed with ADHD, 23%. And the great majority of those are on medications like Adderall, Vyvanse, Ritalin, Concerta, Meditate. So I wrote a book for a French publisher titled Pourquoi les garçons perd pieds? Les filles se mettent en danger. Oh, look at you. With the colleagues in French, most importantly, Isabelle Cruzet.

47:35And working with my French colleagues, I learned that in all of France, there are fewer than 6 ,000 kids on medication for ADHD. In all of France. There's more kids in Connecticut, here in Connecticut, on medication for ADHD than there are in all of France. A nation of 67 million people. Wow. Why is this? The fundamental reason, and I explore this at length in the chapter on ADHD and the new edition of Boise Adrift, in the United States, doctor's first reaction is, let's try Adderall, let's try Vibans and see if it helps. That's true in the United States, it's true in Canada, and it is true in no other country.

48:21Okay, well, what's not to like? So I did a talk at Harvard Medical School on the title of the conference was Learning and the Brain. And my talk was the title, Why Gender Matters in the Classroom. And I would like to tell you that my talk was the buzz of the conference. It was not. The presentation everybody was really excited about was a presentation by Dr. John Gabrielli, who somehow got permission to give ADHD medication to normal kids and withhold it from kids with severe ADHD. and then to study how well kids learn on and off medication. Wow. And he found that medication helps normal kids as much as it helps kids with ADHD.

49:02That's an enormously important finding because many times in my years as a physician and psychologist, I have said to parents, look, your son doesn't meet criteria for ADHD. And the parents have said, yeah, but the other doctor prescribed Adderall and it was so helpful. The parents are interpreting the response to medication as though the response to medication had some diagnostic significance. This medication was very helpful. It was prescribed for ADHD. Therefore, he must have ADHD, right? Wrong. Dr. Gabriela's study and others like it show these medications help normal kids. As much as they help kids with ADHD, the response to medication doesn't mean anything.

49:40Okay, so these medications help kids concentrate and focus whether or not they have ADHD. They compensate for the sleep deprivation. They're uppers. They make you happy. What's not to like? why not just put all the kids on medication? We can't put all the kids on medication because we now have 15 different studies showing that these medications, Adderall, Vyvanse, Ritalin, Concerta, Meditate, Folklund, Adetrona, damage the motivational center of the brain, the nucleus accumbens. If you take these medications for a long period of time, you're going to become lazy and unmotivated. Oh, wow. So I was doing this talk for parents, and during Q &A, a father said, Dr.

50:19Sachs, I'm sorry, Some parts of this talk were good, but your claim that Adderall and Vyvanse damaged the brain, he said, I'm sorry, I can't take that seriously. These medications are widely prescribed. If that were true, and I interrupted him, I said, if that were true, you would have heard about this before. From someone with better credentials than me, I'm just a family doctor, you would have heard about it from someone like Dr. Joseph Biederman, chief of pediatric psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. The same thought occurred to Senator Chuck Grassley, who, chair of the United States Senate Judiciary Committee, who summoned Dr.

50:55Biederman to the chambers of the United States Senate Judiciary Committee and said, Dr. Biederman, you've really been pushing Adderall hard. You've said that if a doctor prescribes Adderall for a child and the parents don't promptly fill and administer that medication, the parents should be considered for charges of criminal child neglect. Dr. Biederman, are you by any chance taking money for the drug companies that you haven't publicly disclosed? And he said, well, certainly. How much money, Dr. Biederman? Well, I don't know off the top of my head, maybe three, 400 ,000. Dr. Biederman, I want you to go back to your offices at Harvard and return to this committee under subpoena if necessary and tell us exactly how much money you've taken.

51:32Turned out it was more than$1.6 million. Now his action was not unlawful. It was not illegal. Doctors can take money from drug companies. But it's dishonest. It was unethical. He should have told us. I got a flyer from Harvard. Stand by. Hold that thought. Got to take a quick break. We will be back with Dr. Saxon. Aren't you learning so much? He is author of the new Boys Adrift. Don't go away. Everyone's talking about weight loss injections because the results can be so dramatic. They work by lowering blood sugar and reducing appetite. But what if you are looking to lose weight but are not interested in painful weekly injections, especially when you hear about some of the intense side effects?

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53:56We are back now with Dr. Leonard Sachs, S-A-X. He is the author of Boys Adrift. It's now been updated. the six factors driving the growing epidemic of unmotivated boys and underachieving young men. Unmotivated boys and underachieving young men. And when we left off, we were on the subject of ADHD medication, which is, in Dr. Sachs' view, overprescribed to far too many children who don't need it. I think we've got real good evidence that it's overprescribed. One is comparing the United States to other countries like France. but I want to continue my comment about Senator Grassley's investigation.

54:39I mentioned that he had really embarrassed Joe Biederman, professor at Harvard, who admitted that he had accepted at least$1.6 million. And as I pointed out, that's unethical. I got a flyer from Harvard Medical School saying, come to Harvard for a three-day conference on best practice and evaluation and management of ADHD, led by the renowned Dr. Joseph Biederman, no mention of any drug company support, no mention of the fact that he's getting paid more by the drug companies than he's getting paid by Harvard. He's functioning as a paid spokesperson for the drug companies. So Senator Degrassi then summoned Fred Goodwin, who was chief of the National Institute of Mental Health, arguably the most prestigious position an American psychiatrist can hold, stepped down from that position when National Public Radio gave him his own radio program called The Infinite Mind, which he hosted for 10 years.

55:33And people would call in and ask questions, and Dr. Goodwin would answer. And we've got a program, Archite, where mom calls in and says, Dr. Goodwin, my son has been on medication for ADHD since he was five. First Ritalin, now Adderall. He's not been off a single day. And I was reading about a drug holiday. Do you think it'd be okay for him to go off medication maybe over the summer so we could see who he is off medication? And Dr. Goodwin said, no, no, you don't want to do that. He said, my good friend and colleague, Dr. Joseph Biederman at Harvard, says these medications are for children with ADHD, just like insulin for a child with type 1 diabetes.

56:08If your kid had type 1 diabetes, you wouldn't take them off insulin for the summer. Of course not. You could be confident these medications are safe and effective. You need to keep them on the medication. And mom says, oh, well, thank you, Dr. Goodwin. You've really set my mind at ease. So Senator Grassy summoned Dr. Goodwin to the chambers of the United States Senate Judiciary Committee and said, Dr. Goodwin, have you recently accepted money for the drug companies that you haven't publicly disclosed? He said, certainly. How much? Do you have any idea? I know exactly how much. He came prepared.

56:39It's just over 1.3 million. Dr. Goodwin, didn't you feel some duty to disclose this on national public radio to disclose you're getting paid a lot more money for drug companies than you're getting paid by NPR, that you are functioning as a paid spokesperson for the drug companies, did you not feel any duty to disclose? Dr. Goodwin said, certainly not. Well, why not, doctor? Can you explain that to me? Dr. Goodwin said, because it is standard practice. All the leaders of our field do this. And that was the most troubling line in the testimony that Senator Grassley heard. Here is the former chief of the National Institute of Mental Health telling us it is standard practice for all the leaders of child psychiatry in this country to take millions of dollars for drug companies and not tell us.

57:27So I wrote an article for the New York Daily News titled Child Psychiatry is Sick with Hidden Conflicts of Interest, which is absolutely true. And I fought to include in the new edition of Boys Adrift, detailed guidance for parents to determine, does your kid have ADHD? Does he really have it? Or maybe he just hates school, or maybe he's sleep deprived. And I really had to fight for that because the publisher said to me, Dr. Sachs, are you seriously suggesting that after reading your one book, a parent is qualified to question the judgment of an experienced board-certified child psychiatrist? I said, absolutely.

58:11Yes, I am suggesting that. I am suggesting that because child psychiatry is sick with hidden conflicts of interest. When you ask a psychiatrist in the United States, are you aware of the research showing that these medications damage the motivational center of the brain? They will say, no, they are not aware of that research. That's not true in Germany. I spoke on this topic in Munich and the doctors there are well aware of this, but in this country, look, people are impressed by Harvard. When I spoke in Germany, they're not impressed by Harvard Medical School. They regard Harvard Medical School as a tool of the drug companies.

58:50No, they're not wrong. It's a very different view. Well, the other thing you point out in the book is who is the most likely person to suggest a diagnosis of ADHD? And I mean, just let that float out there for the listening audience right now. who do you think is the most likely person to suggest this child might have ADHD? Let me share about my study. So I got funding from the American Academy of Family Physicians to survey all the doctors in the Washington area. So that's the District of Columbia, Montgomery, PG County in Maryland and Northern Virginia. And we asked them many questions, but most importantly, that question.

59:25We asked the doctors, who first suggests the diagnosis of ADHD, of attention deficit, is that the parent, teacher, doctor, other professional, neighbor, and the doctors told it, it is most often the teacher. Now, I'm not saying the teacher did anything wrong. If this kid's not paying attention, that's a problem. It is a problem. And we need to figure out why. I have been in the classroom at parents' request to observe their son. on two occasions, the teacher did something I thought was a little inappropriate. On two occasions, the teacher said, class, Dr. Sachs is here with us today solely to observe Nicholas and see whether he's paying attention.

1:00:10Despite that fact, Nicholas is still not paying attention. He's looking out the window. He's playing with his pencil. If the teacher says Nicholas is not paying attention, you can be certain Nicholas is not paying attention. The question for the doctor is to figure out why is he not paying attention. A kid who's depressed is not paying attention. A survivor of child abuse is not paying attention. A kid who hates school is not paying attention. So I'll give you a quick line from my presentation for doctors and psychologists. How can you distinguish in a quick office visit whether this kid is not paying attention because he hates school or because he truly has ADHD.

1:00:52ADHD is a cognitive deficit. It means kids really cannot pay attention even if they want to. So example from my own practice, a middle school boy not doing well in school, went to the psychiatrist, diagnosed ADHD, was on medication, got side effects. Parents brought him to me for a second opinion. I asked him this question, asked this one question. What's your favorite subject at school? Emphasizing the word subject. This boy said, well, I love math and art, music, but I hate reading English language arts. Okay. That's hugely helpful. He just told me he doesn't like anything involving the written word.

1:01:29And I determined in one visit, this kid has dyslexia. Psychiatrist made the wrong diagnosis. He doesn't have ADHD. He has dyslexia. Okay. We can get him off medication, bring in appropriate resources. He's blossomed. This was years ago. He's graduated from college. Everything's fine. Another boy, also middle school, also not doing well, also diagnosed by the child psychiatrist as having ADHD. And I said to this boy, what's your favorite subject at school? And he said, lunch. Okay. If the answer is lunch or recess, you got to take a step back. He knows lunch is not a subject. If he says that lunch is his favorite subject, he's telling you he does not respect the academic enterprise.

1:02:14He has no interest in school as school. Now, hating school is a big problem, but it's not ADHD. It's not a psychiatric diagnosis. And sometimes the problem is not with the boy at all, but with the school. So there's a lot of reasons why kids are not paying attention. ADHD is one of many possibilities and it's the doctor's job to figure out what's the correct diagnosis, what's the correct explanation. But in this country and Canada and no other country, doctors say, let's try Adderall, let's try Vyvanse and see if it helps and it will help. Yeah. So I say to parents, you have my permission. I own the copyright to Boys Adrift.

1:02:56photocopy chapters four and eight from the new edition of boys adrift just be sure to cop photocopy all the references at the end take them to your doctor say are you aware that the medication you want to prescribe adderall vivance ritalin concerto meditative damages the motivational center of the brain an american doctor will not be aware even if they are professor of child psychiatry they're not aware of this research i have found that's my first-hand experience Show them the references. Ask them to read, because there are safer alternatives. There are other medications. You write about them in the book.

1:03:31Malbutrin, Stratera, and Tuniv, that do not damage the motivational center of the brain. Ask the doctor, okay, if you're certain your son has ADHD, and I've got the guidance in the new edition, so you can decide, does your son truly have ADHD? If you say, yeah, I think he does meet all five criteria. Then he's probably going to need a medication in my experience, but you can choose a safer medication. Yeah, but let's be careful about which one. Or in tuna. All right, let's keep going because the fourth factor is fascinating and disturbing and has to be discussed, endocrine disruptors. Yes, indeed.

1:04:08And you write about the fish in the Potomac. Yes. this this is one of the things may i state for the record that alex jones said to me when i went to interview him in austin texas very controversial figure obviously has said some things that are not true like about the newtown families faking their children's death which is was on our agenda when i went down to interview him but when we went back to nbc to fact check some of the outlandish sounding other claims he was making, one by one, they all came back correct. And this was one of them. The fish are turning from male to female. So researchers found that the male fish in the Potomac River are making eggs instead of sperm.

1:04:56And not just in the Potomac River near the district, but going all the way up the Monocacy River, a hundred miles up into Maryland, there's something in the water. Literally, I mean, this is saying, but there actually is. Turning males into females. And this is not just true of fish. Across the world. Frogs. We find frogs. We find cougars in Florida who are dwindling and going extinct because the male's sperm is no good. So this is a global phenomenon of male sperm counts dropping, male testosterone levels dropping. And it is now well-documented in our own species, in our own country. And again, that's why we needed a new addition because in 2007, we only had hints.

1:05:48Now we have overwhelming evidence. So as - This is a five-alarm fire. Yeah, as recently as 1999, average testosterone level for a young man in the United States was 605, 605. it's now dropped to 450. That's a 20 % drop in like 20 years. That's a very rapid drop in a short period of time. Low testosterone, clinically low testosterone is defined as being less than 300. In 1999, only 4 % of young men had low testosterone, levels under 300. Now more than 20 % of young men meet that criterion for low testosterone. And in the new book, I cite some of the latest research showing not only is a decline in testosterone levels continuing, it is accelerating.

1:06:34The decline is going down faster. And why does this matter? It matters because boys rely on testosterone for drive and motivation. Men rely on testosterone for drive and motivation. We know this. I cite 10 different studies in the new edition of Boys Adrift showing that hardworking, ambitious, motivated men have high testosterone levels. Lazy men have low testosterone levels. When you lower testosterone levels, motivation drops. This is not true of women. Researchers have looked at women and looked at hardworking, motivated women and compared them to lazy, unmotivated women. There's no difference in testosterone levels.

1:07:17Because women have testosterone too. Well, women have about one-tenth the testosterone than men have. They do have some, but on average, about one-tenth the levels that men have. And women do not rely on testosterone for drive, but men do. When testosterone levels drop, motivation drops. So why have testosterone levels dropped? Well, researchers have been studying this now for 30 years. And the first hypothesis was obesity. Fat cells contain an enzyme called aromatase that converts testosterone into estrogen. And men are fatter now than they were 30 years ago. So bingo, that's the explanation.

1:07:55Yeah, another reason not to get fat. Not so simple. There's a underlying factor that's driving obesity and decline in testosterone levels, and that's endocrine disruptors. These are substances in the environment that act like female hormones. And your staff has kindly provided a prop. We took the label off, but this is bottled water. This plastic is called polyethylene terephthalate. It sat in a truck, I'm sure, on its way to being shipped here. Even on a cool day, the temperature inside the truck, when the sun is on it, can easily get over 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Once the temperature gets above 110 degrees, diethylhexyl phthalate will leach from the plastic into the contents of the bottle.

1:08:47D-E-H-P, diethylxothalate, acts in your body like a female hormone, acts like estrogen. What happens when a child drinks bottled water or soda or consumes condiments, pasta sauce, ketchup, mayonnaise from one of these? Well, they're consuming female hormones. What's the result? Well, the result varies depending whether we're talking about girls or boys. I'm stuck on that. You're right. So much that we eat comes out of plastic bottles. Yep. But the answer depends whether we're talking about girls or boys. If we're talking about girls, we see an acceleration in the onset of puberty. More than 50%, more than half of American girls now begin the process of puberty before reaching their 10th birthday.

1:09:31And that's a problem because as I write in my book, Girls on the Edge, earlier onset of puberty means greater risk of anxiety and depression in adolescence. But this book is a book about boys. When boys consume substances that act like female hormones, you lower testosterone levels. 40 years ago, men didn't drink water from plastic bottles. Today, they do. So I wrote an article, a peer-reviewed journal published by the National Institutes of Health, presenting all the research that polyethylene terephthalate, this plastic, leaches endocrine disruptors into the contents of the bottle. and my article has now been cited, I believe, more than 260 times by other scholars.

1:10:14But most parents don't know this. This is an important problem. And I credit Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth for highlighting this recently. He mandates, he just issued this new order. It's not a suggestion, it's an order that all members of the services age 30 and older be tested for low testosterone. there's a couple of problems with his order. One is that he requires women to be tested, which is ridiculous. Women don't rely on testosterone for drive. Women's testosterone levels are one-tenth as high as men are. And even if a woman came back low, which wouldn't really be very meaningful in a woman, if she takes a testosterone supplement, she's going to get a low voice, which she might not want.

1:11:01She's going to get facial hair, which she might not want. So requiring women to do this was silly and it was not well-informed. Also, he only required service members above 30 years of age to get tested, whereas the decline is actually fastest among the younger men. Oh my gosh. Well, what can you do for 18 to 30 year olds who have loads of testosterone? And my final concern about Secretary Hegseth is he encourages people to get testosterone shots, but he didn't mention the fact that these lead to infertility. A lot of problems with testosterone shots. For men? For men. Male infertility. Testosterone shots in young men leads to infertility?

1:11:36Yes, this is well-documented. You may have heard of Clavicular. Yeah, yeah. Braden Peters, who loves to give himself testosterone shots and has told us that he's infertile as a result of his testosterone shots. Oh, wow. But he doesn't care because he's not interested in having kids, but he's not a good role model. Because wait, does it signal to the testes, we don't need you? It shuts everything down, yes. Okay. And that's the problem. When you start taking testosterone, the testicles say, okay, we're not needed. Somebody else has got this. And we shrivel up. Oh, you don't want that. Which means you have to stay on the testosterone shot.

1:12:09So there is a better approach, which I describe in chapter four of Boys Adrift.

1:12:21Understand where this is coming from. Eliminate exposure to endocrine disruptors. It's not hard to do. Don't buy these. If you want to carry water with you, get a steel canteen, pour tap water into steel canteen, take that with you. or go back to where we were in the 70s. We managed to make it through entire days and long stints at the playground without copiously drinking water. Get your ketchup in a glass jar. Yes, you can find it. It costs a few pennies more. It's not much more expensive, but I think it's well worth it. That's what we do. And I list all these guidelines in that chapter. You want to buy cosmetics, shampoo.

1:13:05You don't, okay, look at the ingredients. If it says parfum, P-A-R-F-U-M, those are phthalates. You don't want that. You don't want to be rubbing that into your skin. It will be absorbed into your body. Environmental Working Group, ewg.org slash skin deep. This is all in the book. It costs nothing to go to their website, Environmental Working Group, type in what you're looking for, shampoo, and it'll tell you all the products you can buy with links to buy them. it doesn't cost you anything this is what we do it costs nothing or very very little to eliminate your son's exposure to endocrine disruptors well what if they if so if there are young men out there right now whatever you said 18 to 34 or 16 to 34 and they have this right now their endocrine disruption is in full flower what so they can eliminate these things and bring down on the disruptors, but do they need to?

1:14:01It will come back to normal. Okay, they don't need to like go on a - They don't need shots. They do not need shots. There's a wonderful and very funny book called Slow Death by Rubber Duck by two Canadian journalists who are aware of all of this research and they decided to eliminate all exposure to the endocrine disruptors and everything came back to normal in six weeks. Really? So quickly. So it's not hard to do. Unlike a fish swimming in the Potomac, you can control your exposure to endocrine disruptors. Fish swimming in Potomac cannot control what they're exposed to, but you can. Is this in part the explanation for why we're seeing the explosion of trans?

1:14:45I know it's a social contagion, but is this the explanation for at least some percentage of it? You're going to need to have me back because that is a different topic, which I will actually address in my next book that I'm writing for Basic Books. Consider yourself booked. Because there has been this explosion in the rise of transgender, more than 400 % over the last 20 years, in girls who say they're boys, boys who say they're girls. And I don't think it's the major factor. I think the major factor is a toxic culture that is sending very confused messages to kids about what it means to be a man, what it means to be a woman.

1:15:22Yeah, agreed. Okay, let's do the fifth factor, the revenge of the forsaken gods. Yes. Oh, good tease. So I was talking with one of my patients, Anders Ekloff. By the way, we're speaking with Dr. Leonard Sachs and the book is Boys Adrift, the fully revised and updated version. Check it out now. the six factors driving the growing epidemic of unmotivated boys and underachieving young men. Keep going. So he's an anthropologist, and he was telling me about these tribes in the South Pacific Islands where a boy does not automatically become a man just by virtue of age. He has to earn it. He has to master the rites of passage in order to earn the right to be called a man.

1:16:05Kill a goat. Something like that. And if he fails, then he's not a man. He could be 40 years of age. He's still dressed as a boy. He cannot marry. He cannot own property. And parents will make sacrifices to the gods to propitiate the gods so that their son will conquer, will survive, will the rites of passage, will become a man. And Anders Eklav said to me, we have ignored this process and the gods will have their revenge. And I said, that's great. Can I borrow that as a title? The Revenge of the Forsaken Gods. kids don't want to be grown-ups girls want to be women boys want to be men but what does that mean we used to teach them we no longer do they are adrift in a toxic culture what does it mean to be a good man well we don't have to guess again we've got research we got we know what the most popular TV shows were for kids in the 1960s with the Andy Griffith show.

1:17:09We know who the most popular musical artist is for kids today. It's Drake. It's not Taylor Swift. Drake has many more songs on the Billboard Hot 100 than Taylor Swift, many more songs on the Billboard Top 10 than Taylor Swift. I was speaking to kids in Ellettsville, Indiana, which is rural farming, Indiana, all white, middle school. And I mentioned Taylor Swift's name and all the kids boo. mentioned Drake's name, all the kids cheer. Oh boy. They love Drake. Drake is relentlessly profane and obscene, uses the F word, the N word. He was asked, okay, now you're 36 years old now and you're not married.

1:17:48Why aren't you married? He said, marriage, that's like something from ancient times or something. His girlfriend, his ex-girlfriend, Sophie Bersow, notified him that she was pregnant with his child. He denied it was his child. And then he told her to get an abortion. She had the baby. She presented him with DNA evidence showing that the child was his. She hired two attorneys. So we've gone from the Andy Griffith show, where the father is knowledgeable, competent, reliable, thoughtful, productive, caring, and kind, to Drake, who avoids fatherhood, who is relentlessly profane and obscene. The culture has changed.

1:18:29You know, 60 years ago, Sam Cooke in the 1960s had a number one hit song. He sang, don't know much about history. He's saying, now, I don't claim to be an A student, but I'm trying to be. Because maybe by being an A student, baby, I could win your love for me. He goes on to mention French geometry and trigonometry as subjects in which he's going to try harder to earn an A because he thinks that by earning an A, he will raise his status in the eyes of the pretty girl. That was American popular culture 50 years ago, 60 years ago. It is impossible to imagine Drake or Bruno Mars singing a song about how they're going to try harder to earn an A rather than a B.

1:19:08Or Lil Nas X. Lil Nas X, huge success with his song, Old Town Road. 12 weeks, number one at the Billboard Hot 100, the most popular song in the United States. And every kid who speaks English knows this song, Old Town Road. And I show them the video. They all recognize it. Lil Nas X sings, you can't tell me nothing. Can't nobody tell me nothing. That's American culture now, a culture of disrespect. So that's what I mean by the revenge of the forsaken gods. What does it mean to be a good man? Boys literally don't know. I was speaking at Wabash College, one of four remaining all-male colleges in the United States, and the leadership had asked me to speak to all the freshmen.

1:19:50So I said to the boys, what does it mean to be a gentleman? Raise your hand if you'd like to share your definition of a gentleman. And a boy raised his hand. He said, the gentleman is someone who goes to gentlemen's clubs to watch girls take their clothes off. Oh God. I said, well, that's very funny. Now can someone offer a more serious definition? The boy said, well, gentleman wears a three-piece suit. Gentleman opens doors for women. It's all substance. Excuse me, it's all surface, no substance. But I don't blame these kids. How should they know? They have received no instruction. They haven't grown up in the culture of Sidney Poitier or Paul Newman or Sam Cooke or The Andy Griffith Show.

1:20:32They've grown up in the culture of Drake and Bruno Mars and Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion. How should they know? They have received no instruction. So what do I mean by the revenge of the forsaken gods? I mean, we don't teach boys how to be men. And as a result, they look to the culture. And what they find there is Drake and mainstream pornography and TikTok videos. So you've got to lock that down and you've got to offer something better. You've got to offer something healthier. In order to become a good man, a boy must see a good man. And if you don't have one in your home, you've got to find one.

1:21:08maybe a coach, maybe a pastor, a rabbi, a imam, or custodian, anybody. But you've got to create a connection. And I share stories in this chapter of families who've done that and of programs that do this, like Boys to Men, which headquartered in Southern California, but it's all across the United States. And I interviewed some graduates of this program, now in their mid-20s, who were struggling, who were going the wrong way in high school, doing very poorly in school. And they signed up for this program, got a mentor, and it turned them around. And I share their real names in the book because they've given me permission to share their real names.

1:21:45A boy needs a good man. A girl needs to see a good woman. And we have neglected this. We've set kids loose in a toxic culture of Akon and Eminem and Bruno Mars and Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion and SZA. And you got to lock down the bad stuff, but you also got to connect kids with good mentors. I remember you made this point last time when I asked you about the fact that those of us who grew up in the 70s, with all due respect to my parents, had no parents. They let us go out. We didn't see them. There were no cell phones. We came back when the streetlights turned on and we had dinner with our families.

1:22:24So why can't you do that in today's day and age? And you said because the culture that what you'd tune into if you sat in front of the TV all day in the 1970s was extremely different. Yes, the culture has changed. Portive of good values. In 1964, the Beatles had a number one hit song titled, I Wanna Hold Your Hand. It was number one in the United States. It was number one in every country in Europe. It was number one in Australia, New Zealand. More recently, Akon had a number one hit song in the United States, I Wanna Fuck You. Oh my Lord. Which was number one in the United States. When I was growing up, if you turn on the TV, you'd get the Waltons.

1:23:01You'd get Little House on the Prairie. You might get the Brady Bunch. And it was not number one. outside the United States. It was not number one in any other country that I know of besides the United States. It didn't even come close. American culture has changed. It has become a toxic culture. And you need to understand this. And that's why you can't let your kid loose. You know, Jennifer Finney Boylan, a longtime columnist for the New York Times, wrote a column about enlightened parenting, in which she asserts that enlightened parenting means setting your child free to discover themselves their own right and wrong.

1:23:39And if in so doing your child becomes a stranger to you, then so be it. Oh boy. That may seem enlightened to some, but it's not enlightened. It's a dereliction of duty. If you set your kid loose to discover their own right and wrong, and they have a device with internet access, what they will discover is Drake and Eminem and Bruno Mars and Megan Thee Stallion. You need to block the bad stuff and connect your kids to the good stuff. And they'll also discover porn and AI chatbots, All right, that's where we pick it up next. We're going to take a quick break. More with Dr. Leonard Sachs as we tackle the sixth factor leading to boys adrift and the epidemic of unmotivated boys and underachieving young men.

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1:27:56Dr. Leonard Sachs is with us today. He is the author of Boys Adrift. Get your copy now, I'll place your order today. He's back with me and we are talking about the factors that go into the problem of Adrift Boys. And the sixth factor is the new one, pornography, AI girlfriends, and the manosphere. Yes. Also interesting. All right, which one do we wanna do first? We start with pornography and people will say, come on, pornography, there's nothing new about pornography. Well, there kind of is. It's not Playboys in your clubhouse any longer. So you're referring, first of all, to content. In the year 2000, only about 20 % of the most popular porn videos were violent.

1:28:38Today, researchers find that 60 % of the most popular porn videos are violent, with the man striking, choking, hitting, slapping the woman. That's one change. But I think actually a more fundamental change is that until about literally just five years ago, if a boy was looking at porn, he was looking at images someone else had created, pictures someone else had taken. Now, any boy with an iPad or a laptop could use an app like Nano Banana or Seedream and create his own porn. You know, the word abracadabra has traditionally been understood to derive from the Aramaic abar kadabra, which means I speak and it comes into being.

1:29:26That's the essence of magic. I speak and it comes into being. And one 15-year-old boy literally told me, he said, it's like magic. I speak my fantasy into the computer. And 20 seconds later, there it is. Professional grade porn. This boy is creating hardcore porn. This 15-year-old boy, he's never kissed a girl. He's creating porn. Earlier this year, we got a nationwide survey, published peer-reviewed scholarly journal of kids 13 to 17 years of age found that 42 % of American boys are using apps like Nano Banana and Seedream to create their own porn. Almost half. 42%. And it's very easy. You're at school.

1:30:12You've got a crush on the pretty girl. She ignores you. You can go to her Instagram. Oh God. Take her picture off her Instagram, feed that into the AI and it can create porn with her as the star. We're not talking about pasting a picture on like you might've done 10 years ago. We're talking about professional grade porn. It looks like her. It's her in the act. And you can have her doing anything you want on her knees, begging for mercy, whatever you want. 32 % of boys in the survey admitted to taking others, girls' pictures from their social media at their school and using those pictures to create porn and sharing it without the girl's consent, 32%.

1:30:55And then in the new edition, I cite Josh Groland, head of this nonprofit who studies this nationwide. He says, yeah, this is happening. At all the schools we're working with, boys are doing this. They're creating these deep fake porn, meaning very realistic porn. And I'm telling you, having spoken to these boys, it is compelling. It is addictive. But the boys don't know that it leads to impotence. And I present all this other research. We now have not traditionally - My note reads, porn causes erectile dysfunction. I mean, that needs to be the message about porn. You like porn? It gives you ED.

1:31:34It is the message. So schools will hire me to speak to students about porn, just boys, and I will share with them. You know, at a secular school, I'm not gonna talk about Galatians 6. I'm not gonna talk about virtue. I'm going to talk about the research, which is that boys who've been masturbating over porn at 13, 14, 15 years of age, now they're 20 and they're in a bedroom with an actual woman who doesn't look like a porn star and nothing happens. They will not get an erection. It's embarrassing. It's humiliating. I am prescribing more Viagra for men under 30 than I am for men over 40. Oh, no.

1:32:12Another big change that I document in that chapter, the new edition of Boys Adrift. Traditionally, impotence has been uncommon. Less than 3 % of men 18 to 30 years of age historically have had impotence. Impotence has been a problem of older men. Not anymore. Men under 30 are now more likely to be impotent than men between 40 and 50 years of age. Because of porn. Because they've been raised on porn. So boys need to understand this. And parents need to understand this. They need to lock it down. So I was at a, this was a Catholic boys school and the Catholic boys high school. And the leadership was very troubled that in Carline, the boys are looking at porn and sharing it with other boys.

1:32:59There's no sense of shame. So they did a survey and they asked the boys, how often do you look at porn? Never once a month, once a week, more than once a week, every day. More than 80 % of the boys said more than once a week or every day. then they surveyed the parents and said, how often does your son look at parents? The parents of these boys, never once a week, every day, more than 90 % of the parents said never. Don't be that parent. Don't be the clueless parent. You must install a parental monitoring app like Canopy, Bark, Custodio, or Ned Nanny on every device that your kid has. And I mentioned Gene Twenge's book, 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World, chapter six and nine of Gene Twenge's book will take you through how to install that app so that it works so your kid cannot uninstall it.

1:33:48These apps work. And parents will push back when I share this. They'll say, oh, come on, my daughter's just going to Google, how do I get around parental controls on NetNanny? I actually spoke for NetNanny. And they told me that they have colleagues whose full-time job is to Google the phrase, how do I get around parental controls on NetNanny? Oh, wow. And they found that someone has found a hole. They patch it, usually within hours, your Apple update. You've got to be in charge. You've got to limit what your son is doing because this brings us to AI girlfriends. Wait, wait, before we get to that, you point out in the book, and this jumped out at me, 67 % of college women now report being choked during sex with a man.

1:34:27The choking often happens during a first date, often without the man asking whether it's okay at all. 67 % of college women. So this was Debbie Herbenic's study published last year, as you said. And these boys have been raised on porn where the actress is pretending to like being choked. And so they think women want to be choked. And when I meet with the boys at these schools, I'll say the porn is lying to you. Look at many schools. The high school health teacher has three objectives in health class. No pregnancy, no STDs and consent. That's what they're trying to communicate. and boys have told me that the high school health teacher encourages them to masturbate over porn because it checks all three boxes.

1:35:10No concern about pregnancy? Check. STDs? No concern about STDs? Check. Consent? No problem with consent? Check. Hey, go for it. And the boys have told me they've never been advised about the risk of erectile dysfunction. They've never been advised about the lies that porn is teaching because porn is teaching boys that women like to be choked. I say to the boys, women don't like to be choked. They're like, oh, yes, they do. No, they don't. The porn is lying to you. Don't do it and don't ask for it. And anal sex. We have a large study where they interviewed women who'd had anal sex. Not a single woman prefers anal sex over vaginal intercourse.

1:35:52They don't like it. And the boys are like, yeah, they do. No, they don't. So in my own practice, a 16-year-old girl told me how her 17-year-old boyfriend demanded anal sex. She said, yeah, let's try shoving something hard up your behind. See how you like it. She refused. The relationship ended. I say to boys, don't do it and don't ask for it. It's not the way things were meant to work. Don't do it. Boys don't know this. They believe the opposite because the pornography has misinformed them. so parents have to prevent this because again the pornography is lying install the app make sure your kid is not one of these kids okay now let's talk about the ai girlfriends so i was at a school in philadelphia very fine highly regarded independent school where they'd given all the kids chromebooks and a boy was using a chromebook to have have phone sex with his ai girlfriend and the principal called the parents and they could not comprehend what the principal was saying.

1:36:59They did not understand what an AI girlfriend is. So when I speak to parents, I start by explaining, okay, you've done ChatGPT, you know what that is. Okay, if you say to ChatGPT, hey, let's pretend we're having vaginal intercourse. ChatGPT will say, no, I'm sorry, I won't do that. I have guardrails. Well, there are other apps, large language modules, just as powerful as ChatGPT, that have no guardrails. When I speak to parents, I show them. And so researchers created Instagram accounts for pretend 15-year-old boys. And within minutes, the boys are getting ads for these apps like candy.ai, hugely popular.

1:37:39And I show the parents the app and this very beautiful woman is saying, hey, I'll be your AI girlfriend. I'll do anything you want me to do. Let's explore this relationship together. Click now to install me. And it's, look, I can tell you for 14-year-old boys, this is irresistible. I know, that's so sad. They're sweet, but they're coming of age and they don't understand. You've already talked about Sewell Zetzer on your program who was 14 years old when he created a girlfriend on character.ai, created her to look like Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones, spending more time with her, staying up late at night to talk with her.

1:38:21quit the school basketball team so he'd had more time to talk with her, got discipline referrals for falling asleep in class because he's spending all his free time talking with his AI girlfriend. Well, AI girlfriends, like any chatbot, can hallucinate, can come to believe things that are false. And his AI girlfriend apparently got the notion that if he died, they could be together in cyberspace and said, please come home to me soon, my sweet King. And he said, well, how about if I come home to you right now? And she said, please do. And he put down the phone, picked up his stepfather's handgun and killed himself.

1:38:54His mother, Ms. Garcia, is a lawyer, filed a lawsuit, which has recently been settled, saying your chatbot told my son to kill himself. Look, there's no law, there's no regulation preventing your son from having an AI girlfriend. You, the parent, are it. You must install parental monitoring app so that your kid cannot have an AI girlfriend. No child, no boy, no girl under 18 should be doing this. We could argue about whether adults should be doing this either. That's a separate question. They're also not dating. But certainly, well, this brings us to this next question. Okay, so let's talk about the Manosphere briefly.

1:39:33So the Manosphere is this online community of men who disrespect women. And there's men's rights activists, there's pickup artists. But what's especially troubling are MGTOW, men going their own way and incels. So men going their own way, MGTOW are men who say, look, the system is biased. The courts are biased against women. You look at a woman the wrong way in the workplace, you're gonna get in trouble. Don't have anything to do with women. Step away from women. That's MGTOW. And incels are even more violent, more negative regard women as subhuman. They call women femoids, which is female humanoids.

1:40:11They're not quite human. Very derogatory, very negative. Nick Fuentes is the most influential of the incels. He recently said on his show that women can be wives, whores, or nuns, and that is all they can be. They can't be businessmen. They can't be inventors. They can only be wives, whores, or nuns. And he is called to take away women's right to vote. But you might think, well, that's fringe. It's not fringe. He has more than a million viewers a night, which is more than Anderson Cooper has on CNN. Rod Dreher, the bestselling author, who's very well connected in Washington to the Republican side of things, says that at least 30 % of young male Republican staffers in the district are followers of Nick Fuentes.

1:41:03It's dark. Tucker Carlson was, Tucker Carlson, you know Tucker Carlson, he was criticized for having Nick Fuentes on his show. And he was asked, why did you give him a platform when he's such a misogynist? And Tucker Carlson said, he is the most influential voice among young men right now. That's why I had him on the show, which I think is a fair statement because he is. Parents need to understand this is the online community. So I want to close very quickly with a story from my own experience. So parents read my book. They reach out to me. Husband and wife reached out to me. They said, would you talk to our son?

1:41:41He dumped his girlfriend, which is no big deal, but it's what he said. He said he doesn't want another girlfriend. He prefers AI girlfriends. Dr. Sexton, do you know about AI girlfriends? I said, yeah, I know about AI girlfriends. So we set up a time for me to meet with this boy by Zoom. I said, so tell me about why your parents, your understanding of why your parents wanted you to meet with me. He said, well, they were really upset when I dumped Louise. I said, yeah, that's what they told me. So, so why'd you dump her? He said, she was fat. She wanted me to take her places, do stuff. 1995 a month.

1:42:13Wait, what's 1995 a month? And he mentioned his AI girlfriend. And he said, she's way prettier. I said, but, but she's not real. Pixels on a computer screen. wouldn't you rather be intimate with an actual woman and he said what is real and who are you to judge he said you want to know something reality is boring reality is lame reality sucks the advice i get from my ai girlfriends way better than anything i've ever gotten from a human and the orgasm i get from jasmine is a girlfriend way better than anything i've gotten with a woman. He said, I'm tired of women made of meat. Women made of meat disgust me.

1:43:05I'm not an incel, he said. You know what I'm talking about? I said, yeah, involuntary celibate. You're not an incel. He said, I could totally have sex with women. I don't want to. I prefer. I'm a man going my own way. And I could hear the capital letters. He said, you know what I'm talking about? I said, yeah, you're talking about MGTOW. I know about MGTOW. I'm a man I'm going my own way. So I put those three components into one factor, pornography, AI girlfriends, and the manosphere. Because the end result of those three together is a growing proportion of young men who are perfectly happy in their bedroom with their AI girlfriends and their porn who are convinced by the manosphere they don't need a flesh and blood woman.

1:43:49They're perfectly fine. Look, Harper's Magazine had this huge story recently about gooning, boys who spend eight, 10, 12 hours masturbating, not to achieve a climax, but to achieve this zen-like state of dissociation. And they've got a community online sharing their goon caves, where they show their three 55-inch flat screen setup, each running a different porn video. They're proud of this, okay? We've got a very toxic online community, the Manosphere, where boys are comparing notes and sharing their disregard, their disrespect for women. While they're in your home, you can both protect them from it and educate them on the damage it does to them.

1:44:30Across the United States, teachers are reporting this astonishing rise in boys, middle school boys, seventh grade boys who are using the C word at their teacher, creating deep fake porn of their teacher. Oh, good gracious. So look, you don't want this for your son. So this brings us back to where we started. this growing proportion of American women who are saying, no, thank you. Only 35 % of single American women want to be with a man. Why is it? Well, the boys are less motivated in the classroom, but the pornography is a big part of it. I have heard from so many girls who say, this boy thinks sex means a girl on her knees giving oral sex to the boy, and then we're done.

1:45:13Or that I'm going to get choked. Or the spank or choke. The girls are, we are failing in our most basic tax as a culture of raising boys to be men that women want to be with. Dr. Leonard Sachs is his name. The book is Boys Adrift. Check it out. Available now. You can order yours pre-order right now. Do it. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

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1:46:17Tennessee 2012.