This essay spends a bit of time trying to figure out whether we should discuss how "harmful" video games are vs. "how virtuous" they make us. The "opportunity cost" approach my parents had seems much more effective to me--"alright, you need to turn that off now. There are so many other interesting things you could be doing right now."
I think people are heavily biased towards what looks interesting to an outside observer. A child sat at a desk all day starting at a glowing screen looks like some kind of soulless zombie.
"Screens bad! Go outside and play!"
The child might be doing something mindless, or might be involved in something fascinating - creating or participating in elaborate and vibrant virtual worlds.
I think parents should seek a healthy balance for their children. But that means understanding what's happening and what it means and not trying to promote activities because of how they look on the outside. A child riding his bike around the neighborhood probably looks better to modern sensibilities than one staring at a screen, but I don't know why bike riding should be considered superior to building a world in Minecraft as an example.
> I don't know why bike riding should be considered superior to building a world in Minecraft as an example.
Nothing against fortnite, but we are animals with bodies, not brains in a jar.
This is why I'd say that riding a bike around¹ is more valuable than playing fortnite.
1: And bike riding can be a group thing as well. When I was a kid,we dirt jumped and mountain biked on the local trails a lot, which was immensely fun.
As much as we might like it to be different, the condition we keep our meat-puppets in and how vigorously we use them has great effects on the performance of our software.
Well, there is the physical health aspect, though the gradually increasing popularity of VR may help somewhat with that. Beatsaber is a heck of an arm workout, and VR shooty games involve a lot of squats to stay behind imaginary cover.
There aren't a lot of activities a person could, theoretically, engage in in public view without getting in some kind of trouble, that look as gross as staring at a screen alone. Any time I catch a glimpse of myself doing it, in a mirror in a video or whatever, I cringe. There's something really icky about it.
The key seems to be catching a view of someone at a computer or in front of a TV or whatever but not also being able to see what's on the screen. It's chilling and creepy for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. Maybe it is just the "zombie" factor, I dunno.
Dunno, I've seen the same reaction from a lot of people seeing themselves at a computer for the first time. A kind of frowny "ew." Those of us who use webcams a lot are probably getting over it, but I bet it's still a normal sentiment for everyone else.
> There aren't a lot of activities a person could, theoretically, engage in in public view without getting in some kind of trouble, that look as gross as staring at a screen alone.
Staring at someone staring at a screen? Yelling at someone staring at a screen?
Neither of those are technically alone, but that's the point: Bothering someone else is infinitely worse than... you know... not.
What? I'm considering why we find "screen time" especially distasteful. It just looks bad, for some reason. Worse than someone lounging and reading, worse than a person running or playing a sport, and so on. It's an unsettling activity to watch, and catching a glimpse of oneself doing it is particularly creepy. I don't think I wrote anything about yelling at people. Did I?
[EDIT] I think "using a computer" posture especially is the worst. Something about sitting upright at a desk or table using a computer is really weird. Like the person's body's subservient to the activity, while also being kind of absent from the whole thing. It's much worse than bending-neck-to-use-a-cellphone or slouching-on-couch-playing-console-games look.
Yeah, I realised that a big problem is that for a person next to me, I look the same whether I play a game, read a book, learn something, chat with someone... I'm pretty sure what looks like a generic "spends time on the phone" is not a great idea for kids. When I have mine, I'm going to have to make an effort to go back to physical books at least and do things like learning something on a big visible screen, rather than privately on a mobile.
The problem isn't so much the game itself, but the negative health effects from being sedentary and/or evading actual life responsibilities to play games (ie. choosing to not work and play games if playing games isn't providing income).
Also, there's the question of whether playing games provides any long term, useful skills which I'd argue they really don't. But I guess it depends on whether your career path is in gaming or not.
Sitting and staring at a screen all day is unquestionable bad for your health, from damage to your sight, to damage to your body, to hormone interference.
There is not much positive to say about sitting in front of a screen all day as a person, less so as a child.
