> 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.
Yes, that's very clear from many surveys & studies.
> 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.
Ok, so people are playing more video games. That makes sense, not only as they become more ubiquitous and engaging, they take up new forms of media and are easier to acquire. There's even products marketed to people who never played a video game before. More people are gaming, and existing people are playing more. That's logical enough.
They also mention that at the same time, working hours dropped. Sure, in the 2000s we had a massive recession on the heels of a new generation about to join the workforce. Perhaps there were reasons other than gaming that people worked less hours. They don't speculate on that.
> 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.
Uh.... What?
They go ahead and interview a handful of more people who have a story about how they like to game more than they like to work, or how it affected their life. This is anecdotal, cherry-picking, speculative fiction. And this is the only evidence they propose.
Why else would a young adult delay employment or cut back hours?
1. There aren't any jobs.
2. People are getting horrible loans they'll never pay back and can now afford a home with much less money (or none?), so their kids can stay at home longer and don't need to get a job yet.
3. There aren't any jobs.
4. There are less hours available to work, because the economy is crashing.
5. There aren't any jobs.
With those "opportunities" to stay at home, without a job, of course they're going to play video games. What else are they going to do, dig ditches? Go outside and play? These are millennials we're talking about.
The circumstances are new, and the scale of those circumstances is new, but there is no trending ramp in people not working in order to play video games. This isn't Japan.