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This comes to a just-about-tolerant conclusion, but is still full of the kind of finger-wagging what's-to-be-done bullshit which seems mandatory whenever the press covers video games. ft.com/content/d74207…
Maybe teens spend hours a day in these games because they like them. Maybe they learn things. Maybe there is socialising taking place, in a way you have failed to recognise.
Maybe the culture around that game - playing it, talking to friends as you play, discussing it in school, watching others play it, reading news and reviews about it - is like an art form and sport rolled into one.
No-one would talk about a kid being 'addicted' to ballet as if it was a problem, even if they practiced for hours a day. This is just snobbish, judgemental horseshit.
PS. A friend tried an experiment on me once, in an attempt to prove the importance of playing outside for children. He said: Close your eyes. Remember something from your childhood. Was it outside? Apparently it almost always is.
I remembered being about 10 & my friend and I organising our first protest. My mum had stopped us playing on the Atari ST and made us go outside. We made placards with the slogan Let Us Back In and marched around the house.
I'm not sure who won this thought experiment.
