"What these individuals [men in their 20s without a college education] 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. 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. 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."

Unemployed people might live with their parents?
People with more time out of work play video games more than those who work?
It's gotta be the video games themselves!

The writer seems to barely acknowledge the economical issues that have narrowed the job market for young people looking to enter the work force (and the shock that men in their 20s aren't being homeowners or living on their own), and in fact, implies that the job market is better than ever ("That was in 2015: when the unemployment rate nationwide fell to 5%, and the American economy added 2.7m new jobs. Back in 2000, less than 10% of such men were in similar circumstances.").

And then the writer heads overseas to a health-care contractor (in England) for his thoughts, and the guy spends a whopping 100 hours over the past year playing games.
He then gets the perspective of a 26 year-old whose parents not only funded his schooling (including graduate school training), but continue to provide financial support for him, and whaaa? The guy doesn't want to get a job? Jesus.

And I won't even discuss his implications about good gamers being held back by the way a game provides assistance to worse players as symbolic of the current state of society.

tl;dr. This is a pretty dang Retarded™ article, but thanks for the perspective, Kermit.

Interested in your thoughts, but hope we can stay off of the political rail.

As games improve, the terms of this trade-off change. Among those predisposed to the leisure-luxury life, better games mean people are quicker to swap working hours for gaming hours; given nes-era gaming technology, a twenty-something might decline an opportunity for overtime work to have a little longer with Mario and Luigi. Now, a part-time job might be all they are willing to do, so good are the worlds and characters waiting at home. For those with the means, any hour on the job is an hour too much.

This is curious because there are a multitude of other experiences that are far more engaging and rewarding than video games, yet people don't seem to be eschewing work to experience those.

It is either a misunderstanding of the actual problem, or the investment systems and fake achievement in modern video games is worse than we thought. Notice how he said Mario is not as appealing. Could it have to do with the fact that Mario has no investment system?

One hears this regret in talking to older gamers. “Of course gaming has interfered with any attempt to look for or do any serious work,” says Arturo, 29.

LOL. I wouldn't call 29 an older gamer. I'd put 29 firmly in the middle of the first standard deviation, certainly not "older".

I'm struggling to figure out how I feel about this article. Probably because the author wanders between a few different perspectives. But this whole thing gets at a central question in my life, that I think I made a decision about pretty early on. That is, how much time to dedicate to work.

In my view, there are 2 groups of people. Those who dedicate a large amount of time to work (working late evenings frequently, etc.), and people who only dedicate as much time as is strictly necessary. Maybe it's genetic, maybe it's the way I was raised (neither of my parents are what I would call "career people," and family time/church activities/seeing friends was always a bigger priority than promotions or buying a boat), or maybe I just watched "Office Space" too many times, but I've always looked at the former lifestyle as more of a dreary death sentence than a desirable existence. Not to disparage those people - I think it does work for some. But for me, if I'm working past 5pm, a little voice starts screaming "your REAL life is ticking away."

So in my case, I do play a lot of video games in my spare time. But if I'd never gotten interested in video games, I'm certain I would still be a person who works just enough to pay the bills and save for retirement, and I would have some other hobby or hobbies taking up my evenings. It's inconceivable to me that I'd be working late all the time or planning out career goals.

Note that I'm currently unattached to anyone else, so priorities for me right now really are a binary choice between work and play, unless some work needs done on the house. Shit, my garage door opener just broke (seriously). :(

I rolled my eyes a lot during the reading of that article. :(

This, to me, was the crux of it:

"Whether it is emptier and sadder than one spent buried in finance, accumulating points during long hours at the office while neglecting other aspects of life, is a matter of perspective."

(I'm not sure I agree with Korny's perspective of a completely negative-towards-young-gamers viewpoint... but the article was definitely slanted towards that argument, to the point where the paragraph about Dads of Destiny was a standout "here are good things that can come from gaming" bit.)

I think life is definitely harder for new-to-the-workforce people than it used to be, and I think games are definitely better than they used to be. I think, more critically to the author's point, gaming is probably the cheapest way to fill leisure time in large blocks for most people. (Reading is cheaper, especially if you use your local library - but there aren't a huge number of multi-hour-a-day, 7-days-a-week readers left any more.) That games are becoming more sophisticated at manipulating their players is an oft-heard argument around here, so that adds to things, too.

I dunno. I don't know a lot of people who've 'dropped out of life' to play games all day - and I know a LOT of gamers. ;) I think this article is more negative than it should be, in terms of what evidence it shows to back up its point.