Some of it was my personality, some of it was how my parents raised me. Some was how that was juxtaposed against the culture/environment i was raised into.
My parents pushed a lot of sports and i grew out of it - favoring poetry ( that i didn't have thick enough skin to ever better myself at), dreaming of being a rock musician (see former), watching hours of scifi and fantasy.
And i dunno. Now I'm 40. And all my life i've almost prided myself on my introversion, my anti-social aspects, my quirky, sometimes cynical view of the world, my constantly ability to not want to be locked into the major binaries and choices society sets out for you.
And after coming down with severe anxiety.... something about it just flipped in me that made me realize how valuable human connection is.
how much family matters. How much connections with your community does. Not some online community of people who only get in contexts you can easily block or mute.
How much.. being outside in sunshine and nature and being active, matters.
I look at this boring cyberpunk world i was a part of, and there's nothing there but isolation and depression. There's nothing there but bad habits preventing you from being your best, healthiest, happiest, you.
And it's one of these things you don't realize....until something happens that forces you to need these things. Then you look back and be like.. would i ever be right where I'm at, right here, right now.. if i didn't do all this mentally unhealthy shit for 25+ years?
There's lots of reasons i wasn't positively engaged with my peers - there's blame to go around to me, my folks, and even externally to just the way society was and increasingly is, but I take responsibility for my portion and i say my reaciton to it all was wrong.
And don't want my kid getting lost in digital worlds (and jesus - it's so much scarier today that it was 20-25 years ago), hiding away, brooding to depressive and aggressive, mad-at-the-world music and basically being someone who's unreachable unless you're some underdog geek or "wrong crowd" peer.
I don't have the time in the day to find some happy center. I'm happy to cut out video games and wasting my time online except for the odd Hacker News break while I'm at work.
The pendulum might be swinging, but i have a lot less free time now than I used to and I chose to use it more precisely and with more conscious intent rather than just letting the hours waste away clicking around in a digital wonderland.
If i want to read - then i make time for that. I make time for alone time, exercise, being outdoors. I make family time. I do this around work, taking my kid to sports events, school drop offs and pickups.
I look back and see the 20k posts i made on Vbulletin forms and all the reddit accounts I had and all the hours logged on video games and it all just seems like a waste of life looking back..
When i think about the things that enriched me, these things did not.
40-50+ years ago, all the way back to the dawn of man - so most of human history, this conversation would be completely irrelevant.
Technology changes us an individuals and as a society, it's broken our bonds, ruined out communities, destroyed our connections to each other, increased rabid individualism - not just in the political sense but in the sense of consumer identities and lifestyle brands and hyper-specific cultural balkanization and what do we have to show for it?
mass increases in anxiety and depression levels.
The average high school student today has the anxiety levels of a person being seen by professionals for the disorder in the 90s.
As a parent... you are going to project one way or another. I'll project the way that'll more than likely build a stronger, happier, more resilient child.
This love affair with the people who give you likes and retweets being the only ones who really get you, is poison. Relating to digital worlds more than the real one - sitting around for hours upon hours "consooooomnig" digital goods from your phone or laptop, is not life.
I'd advise you to take a step back and unpack the baggage you clearly have around this stuff. Not just for your own sake.
I wish I knew the implications to such people when they are older. Is it a good influence? bad influence? doesn't matter? I don't know. Do you have any insights?
A lot of children don’t hermit up and play video games because it’s better than being with friends - it’s because they don’t have any friend options in real life.
Where I grew up, I was shunned, bullied, and neglected by pretty much everyone. It became apparent I was actually quite social, funny, and pleasant to be around when I was online. I made a lot of friends quickly when I was online playing games. But in real life I struggled because I wasn’t the right race, didn’t look the right way, wasn’t willing to throw out homophobic and racial slurs, and didn’t enjoy the same activities as everyone else.
I’m really surprised HN has such a myopic 80-year old take on video games. Must be because it’s early still…
I do empathize with you a lot having had a very similar experience in my youth. But ultimately finding people that were like me in real life was crucial.
Sometimes it's better to accept that those people don't exist where you live. Where I grew up - they really didn't exist. I'm fortunate now to live in SV where my interests and what not align more - but in rural America... I do not exist. (People like me leave that place)
I went to small schools (<100 people per grade, sometimes less than 60). If you didn't make your friends in that group - SOL. There weren't other schools to make friends at, social activities for kids, etc. You were stuck with what you had at school and that's about it.
It's probably because I'm younger than you but nowadays there are a lot more people like us thanks to the internet than there were before.
On the other hand, I've definitely seen an echo chamber effect where some people have negative growth socially due to the internet/gaming. E.G. The red pill or incel channels.
But I also know people like you describe, and I think that's perfectly legitimate too.
Of course, playing with a ball in a field might be better, but, covid.
I don't allow them to play single-player games so much, unless it's something original, story or experience-based. Undertale, Braid, Journey, etc.
Certainly nothing 'infinite scrolling', with in-app purchase level-ups, etc, which are obviously just calculated to be addictive.
But I would caution against being too picky about single-player experiences. The most meaningful games for me were not generally story-based, they were "play-based". Exploring mechanics, exploring a world, seeing what might be possible, what might lie out there to be found. Zelda, Pokémon, etc. A game doesn't have to be a work of literature to be meaningful and worthwhile; children in particular benefit from play. I would cite Minecraft as a good modern example of this ethos (which can of course be played either alone or with others, and is valuable in both modes).
I categorize this as "maybe". If you're a physically fit child with good hand/eye coordination, playing ball is fun. If you're not, due to genetics, weight, or illness, it's closer to torment.
Also, playing ball is almost always going to be competitive - there are no bots and only rarely cooperative objectives involved.
Depending on the kind of "ball", but your kid goes to school., no?
that's way more dangerous than playing outside in the sunshine. from a covid perspective.
> They were one of the few avenues I had for connecting with my peers
Three hours a week isn't much, but it doesn't have to be gaming to connect with people of your age, isn't it?
> It wasn't some waste of time that I regret when I look back as an adult.
I don't think it's what worries the Chinese government. Or me.
I'm quite sure that e.g. a 1 hr/day limit would be a good thing. You can say "parents", but at one point children stop listening. Then what do you do?
Reading decidedly did not do that for me. I didn't have the attention span for/interest in most books.
> but it doesn't have to be gaming to connect with people of your age, isn't it?
Socializing was always difficult for me. Gaming was one of the few things I could mention and my peers would say "oh, me too!"
> I'm quite sure that e.g. a 1 hr/day limit would be a good thing
That would be more than twice the limit described
> You can say "parents", but at one point children stop listening. Then what do you do?
My parents actually did limit me to 30m/day on weekdays (they took the limits off on weekends). I don't know why you suggest that I could've simply ignored them (but somehow couldn't ignore a government mandate?).
When I would reach my limit for the day I'd generally do what homework I had (fair enough), and then... do nothing. Mindlessly watch TV out of total boredom. Looking back, I'm not sure why they thought that was better.
Anyway: the common theme for this and all other totalitarian ideas is that individuals are different people with different needs, and what's best for one isn't best for others.
To put another way, they could limit reading to 3 hours a week for mostly the same reasons.