The archive link doesn’t load past the starting text. Can only read the introductory paragraph.
I’m gaming less the more time goes on. I’m so stressed from the current state of affairs I can barely focus on a game without thinking of my current responsibilities.
I absolutely am working less though. Why would I, its worthless where I am to make anything beyond survival. I’m in one of the most expensive places in Canada. Rather, that free time can be dedicated to getting out of this hole at least.
Buh, the glimpse I got from the article comes off like we’re slaves. “Luring young men from the workplace” sounds so insidious. Logically, they have to be able to afford that luxury. Thus, they need to work to play. A very small majority somehow exploit the system to play indefinitely, but they’re far less of a problem compared to actual financial exploiters (1% and… up?) What about TV? What about sports? ‘Sports is literally draining people of their time and energy that can be dedicated to work!!’ /s Fuck off, Justin Von Gooberville. I don’t know what I’m expecting from a financial opinion piece though. Especially one I can’t read completely lol. Maybe it all comes together at the end.
It comes together at the end, right? With well cited sources to boot?
I mean functionally we are slaves there’s just no physical punishment for not working. Instead you just lose everything you worked for.
I’m gaming more and working more. I work more because everything is expensive af and just keeps going up. I’m gaming more because my job requires talking to hundreds of people a day so I like to just sit in silence mindlessly playing games
I mean functionally we are slaves there’s just no physical punishment for not working.
I feel like this not really the only difference between slaves and relying on wage labor to survive. Comparing wage labor under capitalism with slavery seems really inconsiderate to me because slavery in many places was not just forced labor.
The article here complains about young men gaming more so they work less and somehow this gets compared to slavery. Sorry but WTF
That’s why I said functionally. Like yeah I know I’m nowhere near enduring what actual historic slaves did.
I’m simply breaking it down to “forced to work without consent” and you could argue that I have the ability to not consent and therefore not work.
But wouldn’t ya know it food water and housing all cost money! And wouldn’t ya know it the people that sell these things are the same people that sign my paychecks!
I have to work for the money just so I can give that money right back to my employer. When slavery was first abolished in America slave owners created sharecropping. Where you’re still functionally a slave but technically you’re not you just have to keep working in order to afford enough money to pay for the “housing” they provide. You have to eat but they deduct every bite taken out of your pay.
This is what is happening to a large number of people in modern day America the only difference is you have the illusion of choice between employers. Even though most of those employers will do practice the exact same policies.
This is all coming from someone who’s poor af who lives paycheck to paycheck because prices keep going up while my wage stays the same causing me to not have any real life outside of work because I can’t afford more than 2 days off a week.
I am functionally a slave. I’m a well treated slave but still a slave.
Somehow you are only focusing on slavery as tool to exploit bodies for work and not also as a tool of white supremacy and the connection between both. And that is in my opinion a large part why the comparison just feels so inconsiderate to me.
Yeah but you forget that the same systems that bolster white supremacy also works against poor white people.
So me.
Plus I’m talking about slavery in general not just “black people bad” slavery. Slavery without racism I should say
Settled agricultural society is coercive at its core, and requires slaves. Money is simply a tool for keeping slaves in line.
We are slaves, but in a widely interpret-able sense such in that we are slaves to our desires or materialism. That can be overcome to a degree, although I understand not wanting to and you shouldn’t have to.
What I’m referring to is Justin’s wording and how it implies we are working-class slaves to serve societies needs rather than our own first. Like, I wish your situation was better, but I’m glad you have something to fall back on that keeps ya truckin’ another day ya know? It feels like Justin expects you to reduce gaming and work more because “the numbers”. We’re humans! We have needs!
Like fuck, I re-read the limited article and he’s actually saying he’s interpreting one of his own sources:
… the survey doesn’t differentiate between electronic and non-electronic games, but most researchers assume it’s chiefly the former…
What researchers? It’s never cited. (or is it…?) This reads like rhetoric stink meant to farm anxiety and outrage from out-of-touch, financially-invested old farts, but again I can’t even read the article and clicking anywhere on web.archive causes the entire page to disappear q.q
During the first decade and a half of this century, young American men devoted a growing amount of time to computer and video games and a shrinking amount to work. In a 2017 paper that received tons of attention, four economists proposed that better games (“improved leisure technology”) were luring young men away from the workplace. In a response that received less attention but that I found more convincing, economist Gray Kimbrough argued that the interaction between weak labor demand and “a shift in social norms (that) rendered playing video games more acceptable at later ages” explained the data better.
It may be time for some new hypotheses. Statistics released last month by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics from the annual American Time Use Survey show that the time young men spent “playing games” — the survey doesn’t differentiate between electronic and non-electronic games, but most researchers assume it’s chiefly the former — rose by nearly three-quarters of an hour from 2019 to 2022, more than it had increased over the previous 16 years. A Big Increase in Gaming Time for Young Men
Average daily hours spent playing games, US men ages 15 through 24* 0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2010 2020 2003 2019:1.08 hours 2022:1.82 hours
Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics American Time Use Survey
*Data not available for 2020
I don’t think there’s been a sudden acceleration in video-game quality improvement over the past three years, and labor demand was quite strong in 2021 and 2022. There was, however, a pandemic that brought big layoffs in early 2020 and an extended experiment in remote schooling and work that continued long after that. Amid all that disruption, young men turned to their computers and gaming consoles. So did young women, but from a much lower starting point. The Gaming Gender Gap
Average daily hours spent playing games, US, ages 15 through 24*
Men Women0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2010 2020 2003
Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics American Time Use Survey
*Data not available for 2020
What are young men doing less to free up time for all that gaming? That’s hard to say with too much confidence: All these estimates are derived from a survey of about 26,400 households that is subject to sampling and other errors, and while the increases in gaming time are so big we can be confident that they represent a real phenomenon, some of the other changes could be mostly noise. Still, it does appear that, since the pandemic, most of the additional gaming time has come from work and sports/exercise/recreation. 1 The Changing Shape of Young Men’s Days
Change in average daily hours devoted to selected activities, US men 15-24 Since 2019 2003-2019 Playing games 0.74 0.51 Sleeping -0.03 0.41 Eating and drinking 0.10 0.16 Computer use for leisure (ex games) 0.05 0.10 Household activities -0.10 0.14 Educational activities* -0.04 0.07 Organizational and religious activities 0.06 -0.14 Sports, exercise and recreation -0.26 0.16 Watching TV -0.04 -0.15 Working and work-related activities* -0.35 0.03 Socializing and communicating -0.03 -0.41
Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics
*Includes travel time to school or work
Before the pandemic, there was a big decline in the estimated time young men spent socializing and communicating, and smaller drops in the time spent participating in organizational and religious activities and watching TV — with the latter activity, at 2.14 hours a week in 2022, probably destined to be surpassed by gaming soon. Notably, given the academic debate discussed at the beginning of this column, there wasn’t any decline in hours worked. That’s partly because young men’s average working hours rose after the periods examined in the papers discussed above, which seems to lend support to Kimbrough’s argument, but also possibly because both papers examined trends among men ages 21 through 30 while the statistics in all the charts here are for ages 15 through 24, which is how the BLS reports them. 2
The share of men ages 15 to 24 who spent at least some time playing games on an average day topped 50% for the first time in 2022, at 52.4%. Before the electronic era, playing games was often a social activity (bridge, anyone?), and it’s possible that part of what’s been transpiring is that the social aspect of gaming has made a comeback, with a big boost from pandemic lockdowns during which multiplayer online games provided a socially distanced way to spend time with friends.
Then there’s the question of games versus work. The 20-to-24 age group has lagged both teenagers and prime-age (25 to 54) workers in the job market recovery of the past three years, with labor-force participation still down 2.1 percentage points since February 2020 among the men, as of May, and 1.3 points among the women. I don’t think games are really the cause of this, but the big increase in time spent on them could be a symptom of the disruption the pandemic caused for a subset of young adults who had just joined or were on the cusp of joining the labor market, and it’s possible that heavy video game use is making it harder for some to get their lives back on track. Among men ages 15 to 24 who spent at least some time playing games on an average day in 2022, the average time spent was 3.82 hours, which is a pretty significant chunk of the day, and 8% of those in the age group played for six or more hours a day. 3 I think that might be too much!
Don’t worry, though, I’m not going to conclude this column by yelling at the youngsters to stop spending so much time playing video games. How could I, given that young men and their gaming consoles still don’t hold a candle to old men and their televisions? American men 65 and older spent an average of just more than five hours a day watching TV in 2022, up from just more than four in 2003. Senior Citizens Watch a Lot of Television
Average daily hours spent watching TV, ages 65 and older*
Men WomenSource: US Bureau of Labor Statistics American Time Use Survey
*Data not available for 2020
I don’t think this trend has significant labor-market implications, but the fact that those 65 and older make up a larger share of the US population than ever and are watching more TV than ever probably explains a lot about our strange political era, and also just seems kind of sad. The slight decline in TV time since 2019 is within the margin of error, but the fact that it didn’t grow during the pandemic is at least slightly encouraging. Seriously, my soon-to-be-fellow elderly Americans (I’m 59): stop watching so much TV!
“Labour force participation” FFS dudes are really expected to just be workers and have no hobbies??
I sure hope they’re playing more games and avoiding crummy workplaces that treat them like garbage. Screw being treated like that; play ALL the games.
“those darn young men are not working! now we have a construction labor shortage! lazy young men floundering!”
gee its almost like not being able to afford a condo suite and being unable to afford adulthood has young men checking out of life
Didn’t know Bloomberg was my mom.
Work becomes less and less lucrative compared to capital gains. So why would anyone in their right mind, work more than absolutely necessary?
