I remember talking about this to to a friend who went to college in the 70's. In those days, people used to fail out of college for playing hearts/spades/Risk

I remember talking about this to to a friend who went to college in the 70's. In those days, people used to fail out of college for playing hearts/spades/Risk etc so I don't think this is purely a online phenomenon. I would say that computers give you an "always on/always there" opponent you can play whether it be a person or the computer itself. As a side note, I can imagine in the past reading being the same way for children of parents who put lots of emphasis on doing vs thinking. E.g. they would see their children get "lost" in a "fantasy" land rather than being productive.