Have video games become a substitute for real life?

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Netherland Antilles Laurence Drake
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Have video games become a substitute for real life?

Post by Laurence Drake »

Over the last 15 years there has been a steady and disconcerting leak of young people away from the labour force in America. Between 2000 and 2015, the employment rate for men in their 20s without a college education dropped ten percentage points, from 82% to 72%. In 2015, remarkably, 22% of men in this group – a cohort of people in the most consequential years of their working lives – reported to surveyors that they had not worked at all in the prior 12 months. That was in 2015: when the unemployment rate nationwide fell to 5%, and the American economy added 2.7m new jobs. Back in 2000, less than 10% of such men were in similar circumstances.

What these individuals are not doing is clear enough, says Erik Hurst, an economist at the University of Chicago, who has been studying the phenomenon. They are not leaving home; in 2015 more than 50% lived with a parent or close relative. Neither are they getting married. What they are doing, Hurst reckons, is playing video games. As the hours young men spent in work dropped in the 2000s, hours spent in leisure activities rose nearly one-for-one. Of the rise in leisure time, 75% was accounted for by video games. It looks as though some small but meaningful share of the young-adult population is delaying employment or cutting back hours in order to spend more time with their video game of choice.


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Re: Have video games become a substitute for real life?

Post by noissance »

If that's the case, then wouldn't the devs or the hackers be the gods of the second life?
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Re: Have video games become a substitute for real life?

Post by JakeyBoyTH »

Couldn't it just be more people are going to college?
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Re: Have video games become a substitute for real life?

Post by Laurence Drake »

JakeyBoyTH wrote:Couldn't it just be more people are going to college?

That's not how employment figures work
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Re: Have video games become a substitute for real life?

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Re: Have video games become a substitute for real life?

Post by vardar »

Well, I mean, there is truth in what the passage says. I have friends and family members that are basically addicted to video games and it is definitely not a healthy habit. In moderation, video games are wonderful but they can take away time that could be spent elsewhere.
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Re: Have video games become a substitute for real life?

Post by lejend »

It's because there are no coming of age rituals anymore. the life of the average 16 y/o is barely different from a 31 y/o's. Even college is basically just extended highschool. Let me look for this Metis story to make my point.

EDIT:

In fact, my grandpa was the only one who brought home meat to eat after his father died when he was 11. I recall one story he told about hauling trees all day and being paid enough to buy one shotgun shell. The next day he went out and found a covey of quail all bunched up. That one shotgun blast was enough to kill six of them but the seventh flew off (this was in the days before game regulations). My grandpa said that he cried all the way home because he knew that although his six sisters were going to have a quail to eat he was going to have to do without.
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Re: Have video games become a substitute for real life?

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Post by Laurence Drake »

if metis released a book of short stories i would totally buy it
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Re: Have video games become a substitute for real life?

Post by Laurence Drake »

kami_ryu wrote:i always like it when people who aren't into video games like to make comments on them

yep:

Mullings’s friends invited him to join them in playing Destiny, a “massively multi­player online game” (meaning that lots of different people around the world simultaneously play within the Destiny universe) and a “first-person shooter” (meaning that most of the gameplay involves the player looking out through a character’s eyes and shooting stuff).
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Re: Have video games become a substitute for real life?

Post by Dolan »

I wished I had more time to play games. I barely play any.
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Re: Have video games become a substitute for real life?

Post by Laurence Drake »

i would play but esoc has taken up my life unfortunately
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Re: Have video games become a substitute for real life?

Post by milku3459 »

I have an uncle who played so many games through university he failed.
But now he lives in Canada and has a wife and kid, looks pretty happy to me. Don't know if he still plays games or not.
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Re: Have video games become a substitute for real life?

Post by deleted_user »

lejend wrote:It's because there are no coming of age rituals anymore. the life of the average 16 y/o is barely different from a 31 y/o's. Even college is basically just extended highschool. Let me look for this Metis story to make my point.

EDIT:

In fact, my grandpa was the only one who brought home meat to eat after his father died when he was 11. I recall one story he told about hauling trees all day and being paid enough to buy one shotgun shell. The next day he went out and found a covey of quail all bunched up. That one shotgun blast was enough to kill six of them but the seventh flew off (this was in the days before game regulations). My grandpa said that he cried all the way home because he knew that although his six sisters were going to have a quail to eat he was going to have to do without.


Nonesense; It's just that coming of age today means less about dropping out of high school to slave labor your way into supporting six siblings and more about taking on an abhorrent amount of crippling debt for a piece of paper in order to pay for the nonlinear increasing rent prices.

I suppose alcohol abuse as a means of coping with financial strife is yet one thing all generations share with each other, though.
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Re: Have video games become a substitute for real life?

Post by lejend »

deleted_user wrote:
lejend wrote:It's because there are no coming of age rituals anymore. the life of the average 16 y/o is barely different from a 31 y/o's. Even college is basically just extended highschool. Let me look for this Metis story to make my point.

EDIT:

In fact, my grandpa was the only one who brought home meat to eat after his father died when he was 11. I recall one story he told about hauling trees all day and being paid enough to buy one shotgun shell. The next day he went out and found a covey of quail all bunched up. That one shotgun blast was enough to kill six of them but the seventh flew off (this was in the days before game regulations). My grandpa said that he cried all the way home because he knew that although his six sisters were going to have a quail to eat he was going to have to do without.


Nonesense; It's just that coming of age today means less about dropping out of high school to slave labor your way into supporting six siblings and more about taking on an abhorrent amount of crippling debt for a piece of paper in order to pay for the nonlinear increasing rent prices.

I suppose alcohol abuse as a means of coping with financial strife is yet one thing all generations share with each other, though.


But people who go to college or complete college still are "mentally" the same as teenagers. What exactly is the difference between a 26 y/o and a 16 y/o? They go to school/work for 8 hours and,6 the rest of the day is exactly the same.
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Re: Have video games become a substitute for real life?

Post by deleted_user »

That's a grossly simplified, over-assuming statement.

I don't really want to get into it, though.
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Re: Have video games become a substitute for real life?

Post by lejend »

It's a generalization but mostly true. There is no reason for people to give up a young lifestyle in their 20s anymore.
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Re: Have video games become a substitute for real life?

Post by Goodspeed »

lejend wrote:It's because there are no coming of age rituals anymore. the life of the average 16 y/o is barely different from a 31 y/o's. Even college is basically just extended highschool. Let me look for this Metis story to make my point.

EDIT:

In fact, my grandpa was the only one who brought home meat to eat after his father died when he was 11. I recall one story he told about hauling trees all day and being paid enough to buy one shotgun shell. The next day he went out and found a covey of quail all bunched up. That one shotgun blast was enough to kill six of them but the seventh flew off (this was in the days before game regulations). My grandpa said that he cried all the way home because he knew that although his six sisters were going to have a quail to eat he was going to have to do without.

/r/thathappened
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Re: Have video games become a substitute for real life?

Post by fightinfrenchman »

Goodspeed wrote:
lejend wrote:It's because there are no coming of age rituals anymore. the life of the average 16 y/o is barely different from a 31 y/o's. Even college is basically just extended highschool. Let me look for this Metis story to make my point.

EDIT:

In fact, my grandpa was the only one who brought home meat to eat after his father died when he was 11. I recall one story he told about hauling trees all day and being paid enough to buy one shotgun shell. The next day he went out and found a covey of quail all bunched up. That one shotgun blast was enough to kill six of them but the seventh flew off (this was in the days before game regulations). My grandpa said that he cried all the way home because he knew that although his six sisters were going to have a quail to eat he was going to have to do without.

/r/thathappened


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Re: Have video games become a substitute for real life?

Post by Laurence Drake »

Metis is love. Metis is life. Praise Metis.
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Re: Have video games become a substitute for real life?

Post by momuuu »

I feel like real life is becoming a substitute for video games atm.
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Re: Have video games become a substitute for real life?

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