The time I spent in virtual worlds as a child remains one of the most cherished experiences of my life. They brought me happiness at times when nothing else did. They stoked my imagination and gave me a sense of wonder. They were one of the few avenues I had for connecting with my peers. It wasn't some waste of time that I regret when I look back as an adult.
I spent a lot of time hiding away in my room - up late on the internet, playing video games, reading books, listening to music - often the kind aimed at the alienated. I felt alone, like i didn't belong.
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 spent 25 years online. I'm now 40 with a family of my own.
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.
If they didn't enrich you then they didn't enrich you, but don't overly project your own experience onto others. Many (not all) video games have been enriching and/or healing experiences for me personally.
Human beings are social creatures and it's a psychological need whether people recognize this or not - and this is still considering some of us are introverts and it takes more out of us to be social.
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'm just saying bud, you're voicing some really black-and-white views that paint in broad strokes and are pulling together some pretty disparate things under an oversimplified umbrella. Good as your intentions may be, extremes and dogmas rarely help anyone to be happier or more resilient, especially children.
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 feel the opposite. I'm a very social and active person but recently I've realized I don't enjoy it. I have been wasting my life on stuff I don't care about. Now I just want to sit inside and dive deep into this "boring cyberpunk world". I wish I came to this realization sooner.
I don't think it's helpful to "take pride in" introversion any more than it is to demonize it. Human connection is important, and so are many solitary activities. They aren't mutually-exclusive. And each of them can take many different forms.
That is interesting. I have a family friend, 20-years old and in college, who has maybe 1 or 2 friends in real life. All others are online gaming friends that he's had for years. Never met them. Of course he's gaming all the time because of that social network.
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…
Well yes that's true. But at the same time a lot of your potential real life friends are also going to be playing video games instead of being sociable in real life.
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.
> 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.
I was in a very similar position. I didn't grow up in SV either and I went to an elementary school with 400 students over 7 grades and a high school with 700 students over 5-9 grades).
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.
While it's hard to make large generalizations, some people just don't make friends easily in real life and gaming/the internet give them a means to be themselves without having to worry about being awkward so taking that away is almost the same as telling them to not make any friends.
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.
It wasn't even online for me as a child, it was just a common ground I had with others at school that served as an avenue for friendship (such avenues were uncommon for me)
But I also know people like you describe, and I think that's perfectly legitimate too.
The famous Rat Park [0] studies imply that addiction is caused by an unfulfilled life, not substances. Why ban video games or drugs when the thing that leads to addiction isn't being addressed? Treating a symptom won't solve anything.
I'm quite happy for my kids to spend hours playing online when they are playing together with friends. They start up discord audio rooms or whatever and play as a team.
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.
I would probably ban my kids from playing anything with those gambling-style mechanics, yeah. I think it's a disgusting trend that's turning a wonderful medium into digital cigarettes. I might make an exception for something all their friends were playing together, but I wouldn't pay for any loot boxes.
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 agree, I'm happy with Minecraft, though again they usually play cooperatively either to build things, or to fight/capture-the-flag in teams. Similarly with many Roblox games, but in that case they most enjoy making games themselves. And a lot of time on Scratch - I'm quite impressed with some of the games and interative 'skits' they make.
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.
For me it was just always boring. I played pee-wee sports for a few years and I spent most of the practices and games staring up at the sky daydreaming. I couldn't relate to my peers over their interest in it (though I did relate to some of them over Pokémon when we had water breaks)
I'll agree with this. Being in left field was bo-ring. It was being up at bat, and knowing that I was going to rack up an "out" for our team, which was agonizing.
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.
I assume a government mandate would be controlled at the ISP level. Most parents aren't tech savy enough for that. As a child, I was easily able to hide playing games.
Reading books is not all that different from gaming from the point of view of value to a child's development. It's escapism, it's a much more solo activity than many online games today, and the primary skills it encourages - reading and imagination - is available in most games to one degree or another.
To put another way, they could limit reading to 3 hours a week for mostly the same reasons.
