Playing is one thing pacification of human drive is another.

If just 30,000,000 adults spend 5 hours a week on video games you have 150,000,000 million hours of non-productive effort.

I certainly don't want to do away with video games, nor outlets for pent-up energy but it is a massive waste of human potential.

Movies and televisions were the worst wasters of human potential and progress has slowed down measurably since they were invented. However their intensity of participation was more casual. Television and movies are not as addictive as video game participation.

As an architect, Frank Llloyd Wright didn't get to his level of talent by channeling his mind into wasteful efforts. He didn't have the chance of course, but the point is the same. In the past, with less diversions to soak up human potential, people accomplished more. They dreamed more. They built and experienced more in real life.

Video games are a unique diversion. Seeing them evolve over the decades has been instructional. Simulating real life, and more importantly simulating things folks can't experience in real life drains the desires and efforts from real life progress.

Millions of folks have played space related games. They have no desire to travel in space because they would rather enjoy "space" as it is packaged in a video game, complete with ego-reinforcement, difficult but doable challenges and all the little tricks that make a successful time-consuming video game. The folks that wanted to trave l in space in the early 1970s have all but vanished.

Kids today don't dream of real adventures or traveling the world - they dream of owning as many Xbox games as possible.

It's a problem.

For those charged with keeping America superior technologically, physically and mentally it's a big problem.

The depression era kids were dreamers and envisioned a modern, utopian America. They started to make their dreams reality when WWII struck. When they came home they tried to bring about as much of this utopian vision as possible. Television, the space age and rocketry are their gifts to history. The suburbs of American cities, the tract home, the shopping mall and the comfortable lifestyle they provide are largely the legacy of this generation.

The baby boomers brought about social change. Civil rights, feminism, human equality and the peace movement. For them, technological progress was not the key but social change trumped it. That will be the baby booms lasting legacy.

Generation X is unaccomplished. They are the first true generation which has had a maximum amount of time consumed by television, videos and computer games. Coincidence? Not a chance.

Subsequent generations are slated to accomplish even less than nothing except be good consumers and spend as much of their lives engaged in a sort of artificial reality/placebo.

America is heavier than ever. That fat is largely contributed by a sit-on-one's derriere lifestyle. Kids are obese. Diabetes and other weight related illnesses are on the rise. Nothing is sadder than seeing these kids obese at 10.

Unfortunately there are no easy answers. Like smoking or drinking video games have an emotionally addictive quality. The parents use the video games as babysitters. The stress of modern life has made it easier to delegate parenting responsibilty to an electronic pacifier.

Depression era kids had radio.
Baby boomers had radio and TV.
Generation X had radio, TV and Arcade Video Games
"Y" have radio, TV, Arcade Video Games, Computer Games, Xbox, etcetera.

When a parent sends kids to the tv or the xbox, its often an intentional ruse to get them out of the way. The kids feel its a reward, but it's really a disservice. The parent may even know it and feel a bit guilty about not spending time, but can justify it a million different ways and it gets easier and easier to do.

Video games are not marketed yet as part-day-care center, part pacifier and as a way of giving up on accomplishing much in real life - but that's exactly what they have become.

Yeah, I know, reading this is a major downer. But it's not meant to be. It's more like the ringing of an alarm clock - a grating, but necessary, wake up call.

;-)