Videogames Uber Alles

What would we do without behavioral science? New research has shown that an increasingly large number of young men is spending more time playing video games in their parents’ basements than on the job.

Reported in the Wall Street Journal, the report showed that:

... since 2000, men who would otherwise be working are instead being drawn into immersive virtual worlds, giving up paychecks in the process.

By the numbers:

The paper’s authors note that 15% of younger men who weren’t students didn’t work in the prior year as of 2016, a notable increase from the 8% who didn’t work in 2000.

The rise of gaming “accounts for 23 to 46 percent of the decline in market work for younger men during the 2000s,” the paper’s authors write. For men ages 21 to 30, hours worked fell by 12% between 2000 and 2015, compared with a decline of 8% in hours worked for men 31 to 55.

The authors suggest that video games are addictive. Who knew?

These young videogame dropouts are now averaging 520 hours a year on the computer, with 60% of that time devoted to videogames, dwarfing other pursuits like socializing with friends in the real world.

The paper’s authors see the decline in work due in large part to rising game quality that draws essentially young men in, siren-like. “It is possible that individuals develop a habit (or addiction) for such activities.”

Are they miserable and unhappy? Not at all. They are more happy than the men who are working. Better yet, they are fully supported by their parents:

What’s more, these men are reporting higher levels of happiness compared with those who work, and they’re drawing on the support of mom and dad to stay there.

Also,

Instead, they’re enabled by family members. The researchers found that nearly 70% of these men who aren’t working lived with a close relative in 2015, versus 46% in 2000.

Yet, the Journal suggests that we have a serious correlation/causation problem. Is there a correlation between increased video game playing and unemployment? Is there a correlation between increased video game playin and employability? Or does the one cause the other.

Neel Kashkari raises the issue:

The paper is “somewhat controversial,” Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis President Neel Kashkari said Tuesday. “There’s some data supporting it, but it’s somewhat far-fetched” to think games are entirely behind what’s happening, he said.

Mr. Kashkari said Japan offers a reference point. “Japan has a lot of video games, too, and they’re not seeing the same effect that we are seeing here,” he said.

We may draw several salient conclusions.

First, behavioral economists like Dan Ariely are in the habit of justifying their bad advice by saying that when people take it—when they ask rude and intrusive questions on a first date—they are happier. The next time you hear this, recall that young men playing video games in the basement are significantly happier than are their peer who are out working. Feelings of intense happiness are not necessarily a sign of anything more than excessive stimulation.

Second, what does it say about today’s American parents that they are underwriting and financing this addiction? Doesn’t this suggest that we are suffering from a severe shortage of Tiger Moms and Dads? Can you imagine the Tiger Mom tolerating this sloth?

Third, for all I know, the moral desuetude of young American men, their embrace of sloth and dereliction, their rejection of responsibility as adults … has something to do with what Christina Hoff Summers called the war against boys. If boys in Japan and Hong Kong do not indulge in the same behavior, it could be that something in the American culture denigrates boys to the point where they lose all initiative. It could be that we have so thoroughly destroyed the role of the male breadwinner than many young men no longer believe that it is worth the trouble to try. They suffer from what appears to be a permanent Peter Pan Syndrome.