As a kid from the 80s, my parents prohibited video game consoles except for a GameBoy during Thanksgiving trips. It took me years of work as a child to successf

As a kid from the 80s, my parents prohibited video game consoles except for a GameBoy during Thanksgiving trips. It took me years of work as a child to successfully overcome their restrictions and get games onto the family computer. At one point I synthesized a hybrid of every Jazz Jackrabbit level and bonus level into a single launcher sceeen, something the publisher hadn’t because DLC and GOTY weren’t things yet. I was bored out of my skull as a child and applied every ounce of that boredom to making my life interesting. My parents didn’t ban games because, apparently, I had to work hard to play them at all. I would have been much less interested in computers if I’d had a Nintendo console that I could just play games on, to the point that I might have become a math professor instead of an IT guru. TLDR: Take care not to conflate 80s-90s PC gaming with “one-click” gaming such as consoles, Steam, etc. Their effect on children can vary wildly.