I wasted so much time especially in my 20's racking up idiotic "achievements" that exist only in a Factorio savegame and other similarly irrelevant places.
Most people, opponents and supporters of video games alike, tend to discuss if the activity itself is harmful - does it make us desensitised to violence etc, but the real issue is what you are NOT doing when you play those games.
If a child doesn't have easy access to cheap thrills from a video game, she will start using her imagination, draw something, go to a friend, come up with some mischief.
Time is limited, and childhood is the most precious thing in the world, don't waste it.
I think there are also serious qualitative differences between games in the 90s/00s and mobile freemium games of today.
This is rather sad; would you rather have been prevented from them? What would you prefer to have been made to do?
Yes, playing video games occasionally with friends or watching the odd film can be good things but that's obviously not what we're talking about here.
I'm very happy most of my childhood memories revolve around tree houses, bicycles and gangs of friends roaming the streets.
You remember those old farts, annoying everybody with their sanctimonious imprecations about video games ? They were right.