How Computer Games Are Sapping the Initiative of Young Men and Shrinking the Workforce
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3 responses to “How Computer Games Are Sapping the Initiative of Young Men and Shrinking the Workforce”
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Heck – if you want to talk about “electronic addiction” .. you don’t have to go any further than the smartphone these days.
It’s not Johnny in the basement… it’s Mom who can’t put the darn thing down even at 60 mph in her car. You pull up beside them at the traffic signal and the thing is right on their steering wheel…
Everywhere you go – and I mean EVERYWHERE – whether it’s the restrooms at McDonalds… or at the overlooks on Skyline drive or even at church there are people clutching their devices and staring at the screen!
I was just at the Nantahala Outdoor Center – where everybody and their dog get on the river in any and all conceivable type boat imaginable .. and I watched a group of rafters finish their trip and step out … then almost as if on cue – one by one they pulled out the ziplock bags and pulled out their phones to view the “latest” messages and info that they “missed”.
An Alarming 10% Rise in Traffic Deaths in the First Half of 2016
More and more the analysts think this is due to distracted driving and the use of phones…
so heck.. the real problem is not just teen boys frittering their lives away on worthless pursuits but their Moms and Dads killing themselves and others … by really stupid behaviors… that their kids emulate also.
What is wrong with people these days?
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This entire post is fraught with problems. Yes, the percent of all young men employed shows a decline after 2007 — hardly a surprise — but that does NOT mean that individual men who have found a job are working any less because of recreational gaming — or if still unemployed, that gaming has affected their job search any way but positively. Yet you conclude, “Many young men — enough to affect the workforce participation numbers — would rather spend their time playing games than getting serious about earning a living.”
I won’t argue with you on dopamine feedback loops except to note, recreation and relaxation comes in many forms. I have acquaintances who spend countless hours “tuned out” on the golf course, focused on rolling a ball with minimal strokes into a series of holes, with as least as little willingness to be sociable as an on-line gamer on his computer playing with/against friends scattered across the country. The only real difference, it seems to me, is, the extraordinary cost of a “golf habit” precludes the unemployed young man from that way of “wasting time.”
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My productivity problem is this blog….better (worse) than any game!
Games? Smartphones? Golf? How about, oh, I don’t know – drugs? Plenty of distractions. My thought is this is all of a piece with the low marriage rate, the fact that many women are concluding that a man in their life is unnecessary or even a negative, so many of these young men have no pressure to be providing for a family….
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