On 10/9/2017 at 2:23 AM, SillyCow said:

I find the solitary nature of *TV* and pc-games to be worrying. You usually don't develop much as a human being by playing them.

It is true that games are not that beneficial compared to other life skills like playing music or boxing, but I think games bring more value to your life than you have realized, albeit not directly as evident to the aforementioned skills.

It depends on what kind of games you play first. Violent games may not add much positivity to a child's development, perhaps negative even; but a puzzle game, a historical game, or a well-written story in a fantasy game can be as useful to a child's development as reading Alice in Wonderland, perhaps more that games are interactive. I am no child development specialist, but when I was playing the latest King Quest game, I thought to myself how engaging this game could be to a child. The silly but harmless actions and scenes throughout the game, added with puzzle elements, could definitely engage a child's brain.

On 10/9/2017 at 2:23 AM, SillyCow said:

Listening to pop music will allow you to relate to a large (ageless?) group of people around you.

Now this, arguably, is one of the most useless aspects in our modern lives. I am not sure if listening to Backstreet Boys then added much to my adult life now. Yeah, it has that social aspect, but you can get your child to socialize through other means.

5 hours ago, trjh2k2 said:

Playing games is great, because games are great - but when it becomes a vice, at the expense of experiencing the rest of your life, then that's when it becomes a problem, IMO.

This is not unique to games.

Entertainment in moderation is a wonderful, and can help make life better.

Excessive entertainment of any form, including binge watching, or being a couch potato, or a lounge lizard, or a book worm, can become problematic.  It does not matter the specific media used, and the problem has been around long before modern electronics. If you are avoiding life by reading novels, or watching reruns, or browsing news feeds, or posting on online forums, or otherwise cease living your own life, that is an issue.

^ I wouldn't say books take more effort.  They take very little effort at all, and lots of people get lost in them as easily as games.  The difference, IMO, is that books don't have the image of "this is bad for you" attached to them.

Getting lost in your vices is not unique to games at all, but I think games are sort of in an early state of being recognized as being a vice in the first place.  There's a weird balancing act right now between those who want to "legitimize" and "normalize" games as comparable to sports and books and things, but also the concerns and conversations about their effects, predatory addictive practices, etc.  Essentially all the things TV went through, but with a new face on it.

5 hours ago, SillyCow said:

How often have you read a book over the weekend and said to yourself: "What a total waste of time, I should have gone to that party, got some work done, or attended that family meeting". While this has occasionally happened to me with books, It happens to me much more frequently with electronic media. I would say at least once a month.

Gatta avoid projecting personal experience though.  It's easy to say people spend too much time on their phones because you can see it- and because the gut reaction to someone being on their phone is "they're wasting their time!", but you don't see the time people spend with books, and the gut reaction to reading is "that person is expanding their horizons" or something like that, so it doesn't register as wasted time.  It doesn't matter what you've buried your nose in, the effect is the same- that time could have been spent elsewhere, and it's on the individual to decide the value of the activity.  Who's to say someone on their phone isn't reading an e-book?  What if the physical book someone is reading is just entertaining nonsense?

It's easy to suggest that games/tech/etc. are a more common vice because we're in the middle of the kinds of communities who dive deep into those things, but this is a bias - other communities don't care about gaming, and absolutely fall into movies or books whatever else in much the same manner.

I have seen a few people and I know of (but don't typically see) people who have completely swapped out their real life in exchange for books.

You don't see it because the lifestyles are usually secluded, but if you pay attention in libraries (the real buildings) you'll see people who come in every few days to pick up 20+ cheap romance novels, or read their way through the entire fantasy/fiction section. That is their substitute for a real life.  

There are many entertainments that people will use as a substitution for real life.   It is easier to vicariously feel the emotions of success and failure, love and loss, hope and despair, rather than to experience them in the oft-excruciating pace (and deeper personal connection) in real life.  Entertainment is not inherently a problem, but when it becomes a substitute for real life it is unhealthy.

But usually those substitutes don't incite violence, as the survey is trying to suggest through poor questions.

3 hours ago, frob said:

Entertainment is not inherently a problem, but when it becomes a substitute for real life it is unhealthy.

What makes it unhealthy?  Isn't this just applying an arbitrary ideal onto other people?

I don't see any inherent problem with escapism if it doesn't cause anyone to suffer.  But you never qualified it in that way.

Sure, health is arbitrary. 

(Also I understand the psychology folks prefer to call it compulsive, rather than addictive.   Some definitions of addiction require chemical components, but any behavior can become compulsive where the person feels strong urges toward or against it.)

For physical health, you might argue that being unable to run a 5K is unhealthy as healthy people can typically run it, or that being unable to walk a 5K is unhealthy, or that being unable to walk 200 meters is unhealthy.  The line is arbitrary, although I doubt many people would say someone who struggles to stand due to extreme weight would be at a healthy weight.  Even so, I'm sure as an arbitrary line someone could say that if they're not completely dead it must be an acceptable weight.

For mental and emotional health, it is similarly arbitrary.  When a person has difficulty forming interpersonal relationships, difficulty relating to other people, difficulty interacting with people on anything beyond the most basic levels, there are degrees of it being unhealthy.  I've known people who were unable to hold a job or to really do anything that didn't fit the flights of fantasy from the books they were constantly reading.  I've also known people who were constantly in romance novels, and who had given up on real life relationships because none could compete with the dramatically scripted highly romantic plots in the books.  I'd consider both to be unhealthy, but they're not dead, so who knows where someone else would place the arbitrary line.

I'd put the arbitrary line at the point where it begins to interfere with 'normal life' or disrupt someone from doing the activities they wish, although that too is arbitrary.  If you are unable (or unwilling due to compulsion) to do what most people are able to do, it is unhealthy.