I previously addressed that very point in my post, when I said the following:
“Yes, there have always been a handful of people who have taken things too far, obsessive/compulsive card players or dice players or chess players. But they were the exception, not the rule. The rule, the norm of video game playing is to play them a lot. Videogaming and online gaming is a mindset, a Way of Life, for many many players. As is The Internet.”
You’re missing (or avoiding?) the point. Yes, I’m sure “everyone you know who used to play World of Warcraft” aren’t doing so any more, but I’m betting they’re still playing some kind of obsessive, time-consuming game. Even the low-tech, limited funds types who don’t spent much on the high-end games can still play the "app"y games like candy crush saga, farmville, bejeweled blitz, or whatthehellever (so many of which are so similar to one another, they’re almost templates of one another.)
The reluctance on the parts of some people here to avoid admitting the obvious borders on…mania…brain washing…almost a religious fervor to it. Childhood and adult obesity drastically increased at the same time as the mass-production and mass-acceptance of home-based video game systems, and The Internet. And it’s only going to get worse. I’m not Chicken Little here. Advertising for fast food might have a slight effect on all this, but we can’t blame McDonald’s and commercials for McDonald’s for what is clearly, to be blamed on our collective infatuation with the isolating, dehumanizing, sedentary, solitary forms of entertainment that we are being encouraged to accept as the norm. Generations of kids are being raised on it: they know no better; they don’t know that there is anything different than staring at a screen for ones entertainment, news, music, games, human interactions. What’s worse (as I’ve stated in other posts) generations are now learning how to behave from watching people act like their not acting on Social Media, from people who are tailoring their online behaviors for the specific purpose of getting the attention of others. What could be less real, less authentic?
It’s all just horrible.
