The core argument here is games provide a sense of achievement that you won’t get from passive entertainment like watching TV or reading, and since you feel like you’re going somewhere you don’t feel the drive to move out of your mom’s basement no matter how much she nags.
They can be social experiences too, if you play multiplayer games in a clan or get sucked into a MMO.
“We are losing our kids to Satan because of D&D” is bullshit, but if videogames are subjectively more attractive to young men than other real-world alternatives, and they make it more difficult to channel the drive to change one’s circumstances, then I think it’s reasonable to be concerned. Maybe aware is a better way to put it. Perhaps not as a society, but at least as a parent, especially if you don’t want Junior living in your house for a decade.
As a long-term optimist I don’t think there’s any reason to be worried. We’re probably in a social transition phase right now. Humans will adapt just fine.
Yeah, I didn’t say I agreed with that argument, just trying to clarify what they were saying.
Fact of the matter is every group of fuddie-duddies overreacts that kids are being destroyed by the boondoggle of the day, whether it’s TV, MTV, D&D, dancing, jazz, marijuana, sex-themed rubber bracelets, you name it and these people are concerned about it.
Beat me to everything I was going to say (and said I better than I, I’m sure). I concur completely.
I completely agree with your TL:DR.
I do think that low-cost and high-quality entertainment of video games PROBABLY contributed to the willingness of 20 somethings to work at entry level jobs. Which I think is a change from previous generations.
In truth, it has often been hard to find good jobs for young people. When I graduated in 81 unemployment was 7.5% a year later it hit 11% and un/underemployment rate for recent college grads rose to the 20%. I and pretty much all my fellow engineers and CS majors had no trouble finding jobs. But I knew plenty of folks from both Berkeley and Stanford who graduated in 1982 who had a real trouble finding their first good job and even a few STEM graduates.
Unemployment in Honolulu is under 3% and fast food/restaurant jobs pretty much start at $10/hr (that’s not enough money to live by yourself). and they are all hiring. A 30 something applied for one. When asked why “He said because my mom has been nagging at me to get a job”
Now last century, mom nagging at you plus general boredom (cause most fun things required money back then), would have been enough of an incentive to take a entry level job just to get out of the house and have some spending money. Now, I think for many 20-something it is not. The marginal utility of money from min wage job isn’t high enough.
Just raise the minimum wage to $50/hr and we’ll be able to pull those kids away!
I was going to make a joke about a game, but I’m not actually sure what people binge on these days post-World of Warcraft, if anything.
When I graduated from college, I had a job for 7 months, the recession hit and then I was unemployed for almost 2 years. I felt no gratification playing video games and just horrible depression and sadness because ignorant people kept telling me to get jobs that didn’t exist. Even the job fairs were full of companies with no openings. Anyone who graduated into that mess could easily be discouraged… but that’s not the economic situation of today. Despite all the rhetoric around the election, there are jobs to be had today although you might have to move to get to them. I’ve found a fair amount of younger people around here who seem unwilling to leave their friends to go find meaningful and financially viable work.
Moving ain’t cheap, either, especially if you’ve been unemployed since graduation with no credit to soften the blow of deposits and loan principles. If you graduated w/o the kind of degree that tends to net you an “all expenses covered! come on down” style hiring and haven’t managed to accrue sufficient experience to make up for that in the midst of a recession whose cessation has primarily benefited the ultra rich and at best just leveled off the damage to lower classes. . .
Even with experience I’ve had companies that end the conversation as soon as they find out I’m not local. Which puts you right back in the “move first and hope it all works out” camp and is an entirely needed source of stress as you count down the days until you can’t afford rent and that ridiculous student loan payment while still looking for a position.
My favorite was when a buddy of mine with a Logistics degree who’d picked up a DUI in college got hired across the country, was given an all-expenses move for him and his family, packed up his whole life, quit his job, canceled his rent, and drove to California from Tennessee. . .only to be told when he got there that they’d missed the DUI thing on his application, it had come up during the “routine, meaningless” background check, and that he was un-hired.
That seriously knocked that dude back on his ass for like 3 years putting his life back together.
I won’t disagree with you that moving is expensive and not an option for everyone, but sometimes to get your foot in the door, you have to live somewhere for awhile you might not be super happy to live. My company does pay for relocation and has a real estate agent on staff to assist employees and future employees with moves.
My favorite was when a buddy of mine with a Logistics degree who’d picked up a DUI in college got hired across the country, was given an all-expenses move for him and his family, packed up his whole life, quit his job, canceled his rent, and drove to California from Tennessee. . .only to be told when he got there that they’d missed the DUI thing on his application, it had come up during the “routine, meaningless” background check, and that he was un-hired.
Did he disclose this? I had a background check for my current position, and they asked about anything that would be on there first. I am not trying to dig into personal business, but many companies will ask for and fire for something that wasn’t disclosed while some others will ask but specifically exclude driving related incidents as a disqualifying factor if they don’t plan on you driving a company vehicle.
According to him, he disclosed it in the initial application, but didn’t make a point of bringing it up during interviews or anything. Obviously, I wasn’t there the day he filled out his app, nor the day they canned him, and can only go on his word, but he’s a pretty on-the-level guy. It just seemed like a screw-up on all corners (company for not being more diligent, background check org for being slow, friend for, you know, driving under the influence).
Yeah if they knew about it ahead of time, more than a low move from the company. He probably had legal discourse. I don’t consider DUI’s minor things, even with literal alcoholics with DUI’s in the family (multiple). For the most part, I think it’s unfortunate for most companies to consider them for hiring though, unless there is a company vehicle involved. Another one I hate, not hiring someone due to their credit. That’s just past history on their ability to manage their money, not any future behavior with the company’s or customer money.
Credit reports are a real catch 22 for people who have trouble finding a job for a long time. Your credit sucks because you haven’t had an income for an extended period and now you can’t get an income because your credit sucls. It’s illegal here in Oregon for most positions to do credit checks now, but I did lose out on a job last year because it was for a company that did financial stuff even though I would have been working in a totally different branch of the company.
Oh did that pass? I remember them bringing it up, but I didn’t realize we passed it. I work remotely for a company out of state, but it’s good to know. Every job I’ve applied for since college has had background checks, fingerprinting, credit reports… just an endless amount of checking. But I work with everything. PHI, billing, medical history, and a couple of clicks could bring the whole system down… I still don’t think a DUI or bad credit should automatically make this position unavailable though. People can walk, bus or remote to work and there is a ginormous difference between being bad or unlucky with money and stealing.
I doubt anyone would argue that video games make a great distraction, and also help people suffering from things like depression. It is a natural fit to passing away time, as are other non-vice and vice related activities that people have been doing since the beginning of time. Too much of almost anything can be unhealthy and lead to ruin.
The boat I think that is missed in articles like this, as they show a lone tween gamer praying to some mysterious glowing screen, is that the world is not passing the gamer by, it is passing the dinosaur reporter by. Games nowadays are more social than ever. When kids come home from school and hop in the xbone, they are not playing in solitude. They usually are not even playing with strangers. They are playing with their friends. One could even hazard to say the are more social now than they have ever been. They communicate in by streaming, speaking on audio channels, tweeting, making videos, etc. They are in both coop and competitive events with others. They build relationships.
In the case of kids, they are still exposed to the same things the past kids learned on the ball field. Who’s an asshat and who has it together. Who does stupid stuff and who can be counted on. And they learn to positives and negatives in being those things themselves.
Gaming is no longer a solitary concept. It is an advanced social one in many aspects.
Money is power. If you don’t work people with money (and thus power) may kick you to the curb.
If people from 60 years ago would know how many hours the average person watches tv per day, they would write articles saying ‘we are going to lose the next generation to television!’