8 ms·

Study finds young men are playing video games instead of getting jobs

41 points by sandmansandine 10y ago

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
irrational 10y ago
The left out the porn. "When I watch porn, I know if I have a few minutes I will be rewarded," he said. "With a girl, it's always been up in the air with the amount of work I put in and the reward."
toodlebunions 10y ago
How do they support themselves? Parents basement?
- kkarakk 10y ago
  yes that was the point of the article(that you obviously didn't read), young men aren't going out and doing the low level jobs that would lead to career advancement. they're doing them but at later ages, leading them to miss the cutoff for advancement and being stuck in lower level roles
spectrum1234 10y ago
"That's a big chunk of labor that could be used for something, and we're not using it," said Greg Kaplan, an economist at the University of Chicago who was not involved with the new research. I'm also an economist and this guy is not smart. Others will rush in the fill the void. Marginally there will be almost no difference. This guy is forgetting that directly below this group of men who now play video games is a nearly equal capable group who now has better job opportunities. This logic continues to ratchet all the way down.... This isn't rocket science. Only if there was never a poorer group could this be true
- ProxCoques 10y ago
  I think he's referring to "cognitive surplus", not opportunity cost as you seem to imply. So for example, if these guys were paid to play games which solved problems for other people, or were given jobs that used similar skills they have been cultivating while playing these games. Think perhaps a form of Mechanical Turk or SETI@home.
- csallen 10y ago
  I don't see how your statement contradicts his. The fact that other people will rush in to fill the void doesn't change the fact that tons of people will still be sitting at home playing video games. Hence his statement about a big chunk of labor remaining unused is still true. Also, there's absolutely no guarantee that job opportunities will become more attractive at a rate that matches the attractiveness of video games. It's not hard to imagine a world 20 years from now in which millions of people spend 12+ hours a day in what essentially amounts to the Matrix, slaying dragons, shooting bad guys, and saving princesses. You might say to them, "Go out and get a job! There's no competition! You could make great money!" To which they could very logically reply, "Why would I need lots of money for? I'm perfectly happy right now."
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    Ready Player One comes to mind.
  - Teever 10y ago
    But are they really a chunk of labour? Like if people that chose to not work and play video games are a chunk of unused labour than so are unemployed alcoholics. It's kind of a self-selecting thing, do you really want the people that don't want to work?
    - csallen 10y ago
      If the economists in the article are to be believed, these aren't simply "people that don't want to work." They're people who ordinary have always worked, but are now being actively persuaded not to by this new force known as video games. So it's not analogous to alcoholics being alcoholics. It's better compared to the introduction of a wholly new drug into society, which has subsequently altered the behavior of a heretofore normal, hard-working, non-addicted segment. Secondly, while it may seem appropriate to deride these people as useless and lazy ne'er-do-wells, that characterization isn't apt. It's not as if they're living lives of misery, unable to overcome some base desire to pull themselves out of it. Quite the contrary: they're happier than the rest of us. They're looking at the options that society has presented them with, and making a perfectly logical choice to spend their days engaged in meaningful, rewarding, social, challenging, and fulfilling activity -- in a fantasy world. Why would they go to work at dead end jobs if they have the option not to?
spectrum1234 10y ago
"That's a big chunk of labor that could be used for something, and we're not using it," said Greg Kaplan, an economist at the University of Chicago who was not involved with the new research. I'm also an economist and this guy is not smart. Others will rush in the fill the void. Marginally there will be almost no difference. This guy is forgetting that directly below this group of men who now play video games is a nearly equal capable group who now has better job opportunities. This logic continues to ratchet all the way down.... This isn't rocket science. Only if there was never a poorer group could this be true
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
medymed 10y ago
Stimulant of the masses
XorNot 10y ago
This article is a pile of just-so bullshit designed to appeal to baby boomers so they can convince themselves that voting against unemployment benefits isn't going to directly screw over a whole bunch parents and children from all over the social strata.
- automatwon 10y ago
  In order to qualify for unemployment benefits, one needs to have been employed.
- jomamaxx 10y ago
  Facts are not BS.
  - XorNot 10y ago
    Data is also not the plural of anecdote. Stitching together a bunch of statistics with anecdotes is not research, which is what the article does whereas the actual source is as yet still unpublished. Of course the article is somewhat worse then that: the anecdotes pretty clearly paint a picture of a poor job market with few low-skill opportunities for advancement. But speculates wildly that it must just be video games.
nercht12 10y ago
What jobs? All the ones I know of are for people with "experience" with XYZ. Pardon if out of the bazillion candidates in this world, biz's can't find that oxymoron of a candidate: the perfect, outgoing socialite whose as good at brown-nosing as he is on the PC. You could roll the dice to go to school and end up stuck in debt over your head (btw, loan defaults are ever on the rise). There's more to this story than just the problems of getting a job. Society has become very digitized, and more and more, I'm seeing children play LESS because of busy schedules, so it gets replaced by the next most convenient addicting thing: video games. Result? - Loss of imagination. When I hear of schools "bringing in technology", I can only cringe at how insert explicative the administration must be to not realize that technology is not a solution, it's only a tool. Kids aren't getting smarter (in fact, I only hear it's getting worse), they are becoming less inspired. Some guys I know got their degrees and only looked for work because they knew they needed it, but they had effectively no passion, no dream at doing much in life, and the fun they had was primarily from gaming. As someone who dreamed of doing big things, I found myself rather lonely in my objectives. (Needless to say, I don't play video games.) Anyone else felt this way?
- andrewstuart 10y ago
  There's jobs for people who work hard. The vast majority of people don't want to do the hard work required to get a job. A sense of entitlement for a job won't lead to anything except sitting at home playing video games wondering why no one has recognised the game players genius. It's easy to overcome lack of experience - at least in the field of software development - by using your time not playing computer games but by programming and writing code for a well-known open source project. People don't want to hear this advice though - they want to know if there is an easier way.
  - fjjrxcbdhx 10y ago
    >There's jobs for people who work hard. So let's think this tautology through. It's difficult to get a job -> person is not able to get employment -> person becomes unemployed -> only lazy people are unemployed -> lazy people don't want jobs -> therefore everyone is employed
rumcajz 10y ago
This is the demographic that's traditionally fueling crime/war. You can give a positive twist to the story by rephrasing the title "study finds young men are playing video games instead of shooting people."
- bendbro 10y ago
  Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I think men are obsolete. Men are responsible for forcing all the natives out, setting up the government, constructing nearly every piece of infrastructure and creating nearly all technology. Not to minimize the potential of women (patriarchy really, really held them down), just highlighting that these male flavored contributions to society are really not needed anymore.
  - foxfaction 10y ago
    The most needlessly sexist thing I'll read today.
  - erklik 10y ago
    Is this sarcasm by any chance?
lgas 10y ago
For a potential solution, see "15 Million Merits", the second episode of Black Mirror. :)
- whamlastxmas 10y ago
  Such a depressing series
jimmywanger 10y ago
Often, getting a job is a stepping stone to impress a woman, get married, and have children. That takes a long time, and women these days usually work, making your job a lot less attractive to them. Why not play video games at home? At least then you'd know you'd have some fun.
- koder2016 10y ago
  Marrying an overweight/tatooed/feminist older woman is not much fun!
im4w1l 10y ago
There are many companies (should be familiar to anyone in tech) and well funded organizations working hard to give more opportunities to women. Well, they succeeded and this is what success looks like. Their work hasn't stopped either, so expect even more success in the future.
sturgill 10y ago
I had two thoughts as I read this: - Lots of talk about how the happiness of this group of people was higher, but no numbers on the happiness of their parents. I have three kids. I love them immensely. I don't want them living with me in their 20's. Especially spending all day playing video games while I work to pay the bills. - I wonder what proponents of Universal Basic Income would say about this. Turns out that when there's less incentive to do things, less gets done. Which seems to run contrary to the narrative of "if only I didn't have to worry about bills, I could do something meaningful." At least for me, I find providing for my wife and children quite meaningful. What job I choose to do that is almost secondary.
internaut 10y ago
Two words. Real wages. They are at historic lows. > Turns out that when there's less incentive to do things, less gets done.
- sturgill 10y ago
  Real wages didn't get higher when they got kicked out of the basement. The difference is they had to do something in order to feed themselves. I think a 20 y/o who lives with their parents so they can play video games is a sloth. I fully intend to teach my kids the same. I expect them to leave and take care of themselves even if the only opportunities available to them are blue collar / manual labor that pay very little. The decrease in real wages lowers the incentive to work. But so does a society that views playing video games in your parents' basement in lieue of entering the workforce as acceptable. That probably sounds harsh, but (at least from the article) it seems like these people haven't had difficulties getting jobs when they're in their 30s with equally poor experience. They're just ten years behind the earnings curve.
  - internaut 10y ago
    I don't really disagree. Some of it is attitude. That and what the book the Millionaire Next Door referred to as Economic Outpatient Care. It is just that in the past the standard of living also was raised, and the market had to bear higher costs to motivate people to work. If you examine the pay of our grandparents and parents you see they experienced very considerable wage growth in their lifetimes while the standard of living was rising, like by a factor of 10. Roofing contractors were paid a dollar a day in 1900! That impetus is missing from the labour market today. It is partly that some of the people mentioned in the study feel like they have better things to do, but a lot of it has to do with the trajectory and speed of wage growth. When you feel like your prospects are 'capped', you're bound to be less motivated. I've heard employers whining they can't find the right people in the WSJ and NYT for some time now (subtext: at subpar rates of pay) and I think this should be treated with the same reverence given to lazy bones on the coach there. None.
shenanigoat 10y ago
IRL, rewards come slowly, if ever. Setbacks can cost years of loss of 'progression'. We are mostly, by definition, average, without much agency, without much optimism, without much opportunity. Video games provide the shortest path to a rich, rewarding experience for our minds. Platitudes about hard work aside (for they are for the exceptional), we are helpless in our pleasure seeking, pain avoiding minds. The disappointing mundanity of the 'real world' cannot compete.
Balgair 10y ago
Where is the link to the actual study? I could not find it in the article. Anyone have the actual journal article?
undersuit 10y ago
I took a long drive on Saturday, and on the way home I travelled past my old place. I got hit by a wave of nostalgia as I went past. When home I found a Reddit post by a guy who overlays the Guild Wars maps on the Guild Wars 2 map[1]. Wave of nostalgia... followed by a realization, I can still play Guild Wars. I cannot go back to my old house and relive my memories, but I'm a quick download from remembering similar memories made in that same house while playing Guild Wars. That's powerful. It's the same reason my parent and grandparents made photo albums and home movies. I can literally play a game to help me relive my memories and it's not just me grasping for moments in my head, but it's literally the same experience. When I'm old and dying I'll have the chance to start up a video game and get my nostalgia fix with far more satisfaction than if I was telling a story of my childhood to any of my future grand children. [1] http://guide.thatshaman.com/ http://guide.thatshaman.com/

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

The left out the porn. "When I watch porn, I know if I have a few minutes I will be rewarded," he said. "With a girl, it's always been up in the air with the amount of work I put in and the reward."

toodlebunions 10y ago

How do they support themselves? Parents basement?

kkarakk 10y ago
yes that was the point of the article(that you obviously didn't read), young men aren't going out and doing the low level jobs that would lead to career advancement. they're doing them but at later ages, leading them to miss the cutoff for advancement and being stuck in lower level roles

spectrum1234 10y ago

"That's a big chunk of labor that could be used for something, and we're not using it," said Greg Kaplan, an economist at the University of Chicago who was not involved with the new research. I'm also an economist and this guy is not smart. Others will rush in the fill the void. Marginally there will be almost no difference. This guy is forgetting that directly below this group of men who now play video games is a nearly equal capable group who now has better job opportunities. This logic continues to ratchet all the way down.... This isn't rocket science. Only if there was never a poorer group could this be true

ProxCoques 10y ago
I think he's referring to "cognitive surplus", not opportunity cost as you seem to imply. So for example, if these guys were paid to play games which solved problems for other people, or were given jobs that used similar skills they have been cultivating while playing these games. Think perhaps a form of Mechanical Turk or SETI@home.
csallen 10y ago
I don't see how your statement contradicts his. The fact that other people will rush in to fill the void doesn't change the fact that tons of people will still be sitting at home playing video games. Hence his statement about a big chunk of labor remaining unused is still true. Also, there's absolutely no guarantee that job opportunities will become more attractive at a rate that matches the attractiveness of video games. It's not hard to imagine a world 20 years from now in which millions of people spend 12+ hours a day in what essentially amounts to the Matrix, slaying dragons, shooting bad guys, and saving princesses. You might say to them, "Go out and get a job! There's no competition! You could make great money!" To which they could very logically reply, "Why would I need lots of money for? I'm perfectly happy right now."
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  Ready Player One comes to mind.
- Teever 10y ago
  But are they really a chunk of labour? Like if people that chose to not work and play video games are a chunk of unused labour than so are unemployed alcoholics. It's kind of a self-selecting thing, do you really want the people that don't want to work?
  - csallen 10y ago
    If the economists in the article are to be believed, these aren't simply "people that don't want to work." They're people who ordinary have always worked, but are now being actively persuaded not to by this new force known as video games. So it's not analogous to alcoholics being alcoholics. It's better compared to the introduction of a wholly new drug into society, which has subsequently altered the behavior of a heretofore normal, hard-working, non-addicted segment. Secondly, while it may seem appropriate to deride these people as useless and lazy ne'er-do-wells, that characterization isn't apt. It's not as if they're living lives of misery, unable to overcome some base desire to pull themselves out of it. Quite the contrary: they're happier than the rest of us. They're looking at the options that society has presented them with, and making a perfectly logical choice to spend their days engaged in meaningful, rewarding, social, challenging, and fulfilling activity -- in a fantasy world. Why would they go to work at dead end jobs if they have the option not to?

spectrum1234 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

medymed 10y ago

Stimulant of the masses

XorNot 10y ago

This article is a pile of just-so bullshit designed to appeal to baby boomers so they can convince themselves that voting against unemployment benefits isn't going to directly screw over a whole bunch parents and children from all over the social strata.

automatwon 10y ago
In order to qualify for unemployment benefits, one needs to have been employed.
jomamaxx 10y ago
Facts are not BS.
- XorNot 10y ago
  Data is also not the plural of anecdote. Stitching together a bunch of statistics with anecdotes is not research, which is what the article does whereas the actual source is as yet still unpublished. Of course the article is somewhat worse then that: the anecdotes pretty clearly paint a picture of a poor job market with few low-skill opportunities for advancement. But speculates wildly that it must just be video games.

nercht12 10y ago

What jobs? All the ones I know of are for people with "experience" with XYZ. Pardon if out of the bazillion candidates in this world, biz's can't find that oxymoron of a candidate: the perfect, outgoing socialite whose as good at brown-nosing as he is on the PC. You could roll the dice to go to school and end up stuck in debt over your head (btw, loan defaults are ever on the rise). There's more to this story than just the problems of getting a job. Society has become very digitized, and more and more, I'm seeing children play LESS because of busy schedules, so it gets replaced by the next most convenient addicting thing: video games. Result? - Loss of imagination. When I hear of schools "bringing in technology", I can only cringe at how insert explicative the administration must be to not realize that technology is not a solution, it's only a tool. Kids aren't getting smarter (in fact, I only hear it's getting worse), they are becoming less inspired. Some guys I know got their degrees and only looked for work because they knew they needed it, but they had effectively no passion, no dream at doing much in life, and the fun they had was primarily from gaming. As someone who dreamed of doing big things, I found myself rather lonely in my objectives. (Needless to say, I don't play video games.) Anyone else felt this way?

andrewstuart 10y ago
There's jobs for people who work hard. The vast majority of people don't want to do the hard work required to get a job. A sense of entitlement for a job won't lead to anything except sitting at home playing video games wondering why no one has recognised the game players genius. It's easy to overcome lack of experience - at least in the field of software development - by using your time not playing computer games but by programming and writing code for a well-known open source project. People don't want to hear this advice though - they want to know if there is an easier way.
- fjjrxcbdhx 10y ago
  >There's jobs for people who work hard. So let's think this tautology through. It's difficult to get a job -> person is not able to get employment -> person becomes unemployed -> only lazy people are unemployed -> lazy people don't want jobs -> therefore everyone is employed

rumcajz 10y ago

This is the demographic that's traditionally fueling crime/war. You can give a positive twist to the story by rephrasing the title "study finds young men are playing video games instead of shooting people."

bendbro 10y ago
Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I think men are obsolete. Men are responsible for forcing all the natives out, setting up the government, constructing nearly every piece of infrastructure and creating nearly all technology. Not to minimize the potential of women (patriarchy really, really held them down), just highlighting that these male flavored contributions to society are really not needed anymore.
- foxfaction 10y ago
  The most needlessly sexist thing I'll read today.
- erklik 10y ago
  Is this sarcasm by any chance?

lgas 10y ago

For a potential solution, see "15 Million Merits", the second episode of Black Mirror. :)

whamlastxmas 10y ago
Such a depressing series

jimmywanger 10y ago

Often, getting a job is a stepping stone to impress a woman, get married, and have children. That takes a long time, and women these days usually work, making your job a lot less attractive to them. Why not play video games at home? At least then you'd know you'd have some fun.

koder2016 10y ago
Marrying an overweight/tatooed/feminist older woman is not much fun!

im4w1l 10y ago

There are many companies (should be familiar to anyone in tech) and well funded organizations working hard to give more opportunities to women. Well, they succeeded and this is what success looks like. Their work hasn't stopped either, so expect even more success in the future.

sturgill 10y ago

I had two thoughts as I read this: - Lots of talk about how the happiness of this group of people was higher, but no numbers on the happiness of their parents. I have three kids. I love them immensely. I don't want them living with me in their 20's. Especially spending all day playing video games while I work to pay the bills. - I wonder what proponents of Universal Basic Income would say about this. Turns out that when there's less incentive to do things, less gets done. Which seems to run contrary to the narrative of "if only I didn't have to worry about bills, I could do something meaningful." At least for me, I find providing for my wife and children quite meaningful. What job I choose to do that is almost secondary.

internaut 10y ago

Two words. Real wages. They are at historic lows. > Turns out that when there's less incentive to do things, less gets done.

sturgill 10y ago
Real wages didn't get higher when they got kicked out of the basement. The difference is they had to do something in order to feed themselves. I think a 20 y/o who lives with their parents so they can play video games is a sloth. I fully intend to teach my kids the same. I expect them to leave and take care of themselves even if the only opportunities available to them are blue collar / manual labor that pay very little. The decrease in real wages lowers the incentive to work. But so does a society that views playing video games in your parents' basement in lieue of entering the workforce as acceptable. That probably sounds harsh, but (at least from the article) it seems like these people haven't had difficulties getting jobs when they're in their 30s with equally poor experience. They're just ten years behind the earnings curve.
- internaut 10y ago
  I don't really disagree. Some of it is attitude. That and what the book the Millionaire Next Door referred to as Economic Outpatient Care. It is just that in the past the standard of living also was raised, and the market had to bear higher costs to motivate people to work. If you examine the pay of our grandparents and parents you see they experienced very considerable wage growth in their lifetimes while the standard of living was rising, like by a factor of 10. Roofing contractors were paid a dollar a day in 1900! That impetus is missing from the labour market today. It is partly that some of the people mentioned in the study feel like they have better things to do, but a lot of it has to do with the trajectory and speed of wage growth. When you feel like your prospects are 'capped', you're bound to be less motivated. I've heard employers whining they can't find the right people in the WSJ and NYT for some time now (subtext: at subpar rates of pay) and I think this should be treated with the same reverence given to lazy bones on the coach there. None.

shenanigoat 10y ago

IRL, rewards come slowly, if ever. Setbacks can cost years of loss of 'progression'. We are mostly, by definition, average, without much agency, without much optimism, without much opportunity. Video games provide the shortest path to a rich, rewarding experience for our minds. Platitudes about hard work aside (for they are for the exceptional), we are helpless in our pleasure seeking, pain avoiding minds. The disappointing mundanity of the 'real world' cannot compete.

Balgair 10y ago

Where is the link to the actual study? I could not find it in the article. Anyone have the actual journal article?

undersuit 10y ago

I took a long drive on Saturday, and on the way home I travelled past my old place. I got hit by a wave of nostalgia as I went past. When home I found a Reddit post by a guy who overlays the Guild Wars maps on the Guild Wars 2 map[1]. Wave of nostalgia... followed by a realization, I can still play Guild Wars. I cannot go back to my old house and relive my memories, but I'm a quick download from remembering similar memories made in that same house while playing Guild Wars. That's powerful. It's the same reason my parent and grandparents made photo albums and home movies. I can literally play a game to help me relive my memories and it's not just me grasping for moments in my head, but it's literally the same experience. When I'm old and dying I'll have the chance to start up a video game and get my nostalgia fix with far more satisfaction than if I was telling a story of my childhood to any of my future grand children. [1] http://guide.thatshaman.com/ http://guide.thatshaman.com/