David Epstein's Range has a great viewpoint on this. He states that there are Kind Learning Environments. These are places like golf, chess, or classical piano

David Epstein's Range has a great viewpoint on this. He states that there are Kind Learning Environments. These are places like golf, chess, or classical piano. Here, the feedback is quick, the goals are clear, and relative ranking is knowable. To excel in these environments, it is all about drill-and-kill. Repetition and stick-hours are the name of the game. This is in contrast to Unkind Learning Environments. These are places like tennis, business, or jazz. In the unkind world feedback is harder to come by, goals are unclear, and relative ranking is often not knowable. To excel in an unkind environment, Epstein states that you have to be an information grazer. Getting as many viewpoints and mental schemas as possible is the best way forward in an uncertain world. Epstein's book goes much more into depth on this and has many very memorable examples. It's on Bill Gate's best books of 2020 list, despite being published in 2019. So, I think that having more reading of any sort is then better for unkind environments, as it is a method of information grazing. Even terse dime-novels will often expose you to new ways of thinking, a new word, or a new idea. Though not the best method of information grazing (whatever that may be), it matters what boys replace it with, if anything. If they replace it with the kind learning environments of CoD or WorldofTanks, then that is not as good. If they replace it with foreign films and TV, that may be just as good.