As a former video game addict, I look back on my time spent gaming as largely a waste. Most of it was a compulsion, like staying up until 4am re-queuing in Dota. Or grinding some armor piece.
But I don't look back with regret on any of my time spent reading. I think most people here know what I'm talking about. Why is that?
I can think of a few guesses. Books aren't in the same category of quick dopamine releases as most (not all) games. There's an element of imagination and mental world construction in the book with even the cheapest entertainment. You're exposed to different interpretations of the world, possibly integrating the thoughts of others against your own. It also helped me write and spell.
I'd certainly categorically rank books higher than games if I had to. Though I know if you told this to my 14-year-old self, I would've made you think I only played MathBlaster and games from The Learning Company all day. "What, you think learning is bad?!"
I'm reminded of when I was at my friend's house when he kicked his son off Youtube to go outside. He thought it was the most unfair thing in the world, happy to let you know how many good educational videos there were on Youtube even though he'd just done a four hour binge of screaming Minecraft vids.
I chuckled and thought of myself at about that age. At one point I spited my mother by bringing paper and pencils outside to draw instead of playing in the street. That'll show her! Well, I now have a drawing hobby that I still practice weekly in my 30s. :)
My mom also used to tell me to get off the computer and go outside, while I wanted to stay inside and mess around with the computer. 25 years later, I use those self taught computer programming skills to make a good living as a software developer.
I think the point is that it is impossible to know which 'boredom' activities will lead to creativity.
If you, as a parent, understand the difference between four hours of an iPad F2P game vs four hours of interacting with friends in Minecraft with voice-chat, you're surely in a good position to make informed decisions here instead of the frustrating "computer=bad" that a lot of kids have to deal with.
I'm not yet a parent, but I can sympathize with the idea that you want to see your kids develop well-rounded interests. You see your kid on computers and phones all day (just like adults) and don't necessarily have any insight into how they are actually spending that time (especially on their phone). At which point, it might be a relief when they pick up a book for an hour or two.
Good point with learning to read and spell though, that's a plus books have over TV and games, especially for kids.
You need a balance of the two to have a healthy life.
But as an adult you can actually understand how things relate, like a mental timeline, how the things you're doing now and your decisions might play out at a later stage.
I remember playing many hours of Sid Meier's Pirates! when I was a kid, for instance, and then my history teacher being amazed at how much I actual history I'd learned about the 17th century Caribbean. And I've read tons of pulp novels that weren't enriching in any way, they were just fun to read, empty mental calories for me in the same way it sounds like Dota was for you.
I feel like it's more fruitful to ask what makes good games and books good and bad games and books bad than it is to put all books in the "good" pile and all games in the "bad" one.
Easy one. It's because this is how society teaches you to feel.
You grew up in a world where schools tell you read anything you can get your hands on. They have book fairs, summer reading contests, entire libraries full of both nonfiction and fiction. It's drilled into your from an early age how valuable reading is.
If society indoctrinated you to feel that way about video games, that's how you'd feel.
There was a time when they only books considered worthwhile were nonfiction (and maybe the Bible). If a teacher caught you with a mystery or romance book, you'd be spanked in front of the class. In those days you'd feel guilty for spending an entire day reading Jane Eyre.
But I agree. Just look at an airport book shop's best sellers: is anyone really getting anything enlightening out of a trite mystery book that they don't get from TV? We (or at least I) feel some guilt for not having read classics and then attribute the same feeling to any sort of reading. Provided it's on a dead tree.
I've spent ages reading A Song of Ice and Fire, ultimately that is just the same as time wasted on the internet or TV if what I'm valuing is time spent on self improvement. Even reading a manpage is more valuable.
I think there’s more value to cold calculated strategies in a simple ruleset than to spur of the moment reactions in a dynamic environment.
Then again, I was never a good DotA2 player. Maybe there’s an element I missed that’s closer to chess.
- Why? Because a video game move forward at it's speed, setting, since it keeps things going regardless, it's own agenda. A book only moves forward at the speed of a child's own thinking. There's always an opportunity to stop and think when reading a book.
While this is a simple mechanic, I imagine even this small element of gameplay would turn a player towards thinking about survival rather than taking the opportunity to stop and think.
Let's remember the context. This is the quote we're talking about:
Because a video game move forward at it's speed, setting, since it keeps things going regardless, it's own agenda. A book only moves forward at the speed of a child's own thinking.
There are games that push you through like watching a movie. But even the most linear games let you make choices. Some games are slow, some are fast, some require quick thinking, some require slow calculated thinking. Some involve creativity, some involve math.
Talking about games as if they're just push you through some rigid narrative like a movie is just incredibly ignorant.
I feel like maybe you've not done much gaming? This sounds like Tipper Gore telling us about how heavy metal music inspires devil worship.
Make it too hard and the player loses interest. Make it too easy, the same behavior can be observed.
If you want a game, you want to keep the player in a state of flow, if you can’t do that, the game would presumably not be well received by the players, thus not really a good game.
You achieve flow through gameplay, and if you add gameplay to any medium, does it really keep a neutral agenda? The game needs to push you in one way or the other, else it’s not really a game.
Tell me, in what way does Myst force an agenda in a way that a book does not?
That being said, book readers don't yell at the rest of familly because they lost level. They don't swear into microphone. They don't hit things in frustration and while they don't like much interruptions either, generally they are able to answer basic questions.
if you let children play sports in the backyard, they are liable to do all those annoying things. also I take particular issue with the "able to answer basic questions" item. if you respect a person (even a child), you shouldn't expect them to drop what they're doing and answer whatever random question you have at the exact moment that it's convenient for you. unless it's truly urgent, why not just ask at family dinner?
See, and when they are not playing video game they are responding questions without trouble and I don't have to tiptoe around then. They are more willing to breat the game for answer or help. I don't have to treat them as someone special who can be approach only at certain times and with bigger caution then actually working adult.
I think this is honestly what they call gamer entitlement - the idea that other people are there solely as your service and you have no duty to communicate politely.
I still take issue with the responding to questions thing though. I think your perspective shows that you don't think games are a legitimate activity, so you don't have to care about interrupting them. think about it more like football practice after school. if you are watching from the sidelines and think of a question to ask the child, are you going to just run out onto the field and demand that they respond? I think you would either wait until the end of practice or just say something like "hey, when you are finished I need to talk to you about something". this is a much more respectful way to act, and really doesn't take too much effort on your part.
Less talked about issues are things such as a worldwide reversal of the Flynn Effect [1] in numerous developed nations. The Flynn effect is the observation that real IQ scores were increasing over time. IQ is normalized to always have a 100 mean with a standard deviation of about 15. But what Flynn found is that the mean 100 in e.g. 1920 was substantially higher than the one in e.g. 1900 and similarly moving forward. People were becoming 'smarter' over time, so much as IQ can measure. Sometime in the 1990s this trend began to reverse and quite sharply. IQ scores are dropping around the world by rates up to around 1.5 points per decade. This might not seem like much at first, but remember that a whole standard deviation is only 15 points. Imagine you are one standard deviation (15 points) ahead of the population. That means you are 'smarter' than 84% of people. Drop that just 1.5 points and you're down to only being ahead of 80% of the population. For that scale of change to be happening as a population level event, every decade, is really insane.
It could be that these are all spurious correlations that have nothing at all to do with the rise of the internet, 24/7 digital tech, social media, and so forth. However, I think that the probability of that being the case is something very close to 0%. This will probably be a self correcting problem (many of these issues are going to correlate strongly against successful reproduction) but it'd be much more pleasant if we could resolve this without going full darwin on ourselves.
It's quite possible that the Flynn effect was "gaming" IQ scores by introducing education and basic nutrition to society at large. And the reduction of average IQ stores (reported in Norway and Denmark) was caused by immigration of less healthy refugees and people downplaying their own IQ to avoid military service.
Finally, high IQ is in no way required for reproduction, as the thousands of years of survival before the Flynn countereffect clearly shows
It entirely depends on what kind of books you're reading vs kind of games playing vs kind of videos watching.
Every medium has content that can be placed on a spectrum ranging from trash to nutritious.
The fact that every public library and used bookstore usually had over a dozen to pick from sure helped too.
Now in Canada, my son's English class requires reading of many novels ...