One of the things that's different about modern videogames is that it's better to be at home with your own Xbox or PlayStation or PC if you want to play with your friends.

We have 4 Wii controllers because when the kids were younger they could play with friends and the games didn't take a lot of explaining.

Going further back, you needed an opponent, probably because the systems were doing all they could to keep track of the action and couldn't generate an opponent, too.

A couple of times my son has had a friend bring an Xbox and monitor over to play in the same room at the same time. Given that most Xbox's are connected to big (and fragile) TVs, a "LAN party" would be quite a feat.

on one hand, i think the death of couch coop & splitscreen has had a deeply underappreciated impact on how kids choose to recreate & interact, otoh i remember all the elbows thrown over screen cheating or the crummy madcatz controller and can't help but think that kids today are probably having a far more harmonious bonding experience.

I remember a distinct evening where I got in trouble because I was at a friend's place and playing Super Mario Kart on the SNES for too long instead of coming home. Had we had an opportunity to play online it wouldn't have been a problem.

I don't really know, I am old enough to have experienced this, and LAN parties in the late 90s were indeed fun, but they took a lot of planning, expenses, and parents driving you there. I've been online since I was 15 and when we finally didn't have to pay by the minute everything was a lot better. No more coordinating for a full weekend, etc. That said, I have zero negative memories of splitscreen, except that the person who owned the game/console was always a lot better due to more practice...

That said, I would say my nephew is significantly more social than most people in my generation were, because he is able to get in 5 hour calls with his friends every night, whereas that might happen only once every few weeks in my case, at best. He's learning and socializing way more than even my most social peers were able to growing up.

But that’s unfortunately a rather useless form of socialization, as most of his life interactions will be face to face. Job, romantic life, etc.

My experience has taught me this is just untrue. My various jobs have been 100% remote for the last 6 years, so being comfortable with video and voice calls is essential to that.

Going back to when I was a high schooler, I was closeted and in boarding school, which admittedly had a significant built-in social life (that was of little interest to me), but I was also able to have a long distance close friendship for years thanks to Google Talk. I dare say some of my most important and formative social moments in my high school years were over Google Talk with my small group of friends. Sure we had antics in the dorm at my boarding school etc., but these were minor and fleeting interactions versus the deep and meaningful relationships I had over Google Talk, and anyone I actually cared about at boarding school also interacted with me that way, a good bit.

there's nothing wrong with online from my perspective, but there is when it's the only form of interaction. If you only spend time online with your close peer group you're never exposed to content far outside of the norm, and you don't get a diversity of communication mediums. You are literally handicapping your ability to communicate.