Carole Hooven, Ph.D.

I'm not gonna take your fruit, I'm subordinate to you.

So you can get along as a group.

Yes, there's infighting just like humans have, but humans have dominance hierarchies also.

And if you don't learn how to compete physically with other males,

As a kid, this has been shown in non-human animals, and there's some evidence for this in humans, that you have more trouble.

Sorry, it just occurred to me that this is obviously happening with social media.

People are using their iPhones to compete instead of getting out in the yard and play fighting or fighting with other boys.

That's actually healthy because it ends up reducing aggression.

It helps children.

especially young boys and young men, learn their place in the hierarchy, what they're capable of physically, how to be threatening and when to be threatening, when to signal that they're submitting.

All of that happens and it's fun.

So they're driven to do it because it's adaptive for them evolutionarily.

So I just wanted to throw that in.

And females tend to have more nurturing play.

I had three older brothers.

I was climbing trees.

I was wrestling with them.

But the girls almost never play by choice just with each other.

Like they don't have a play date where they're tackling each other.

My son is 16 now.