Economists in study believe young men are lazy because they play video games

in life •  7 years ago  (edited)

A study here suggests that video games are to blame for the reduced hours young men are spending as part of the "labor force".

Other experts have pointed to a host of reasons — globalization, technological change, the shift to service work — that employers may not be hiring young men. Instead of looking at why employers don’t want young men, this group of economists considered a different question: Why don’t young men want to work?

Mr. Hurst and his colleagues estimate that, since 2004, video games have been responsible for reducing the amount of work that young men do by 15 to 30 hours over the course of a year. Using the recession as a natural experiment, the authors studied how people who suddenly found themselves with extra time spent their leisure hours, then estimated how increases in video game time affected work.

A bigger question is does gaming constitute a kind of unpaid work? If these games for instance rewarded in cryptocurrency and this cryptocurrency could be used to pay bills then would these studies by economists be rendered politically superficial? It is also possible that the labor of young men simply isn't as valuable as it was in 2000 and the demand for the labor of young men being a lot less would result in young men spending more time playing games. If these games also get young men paid, then will there be a reconsideration about what work really is?

And what about Steemit? Are we playing on Steemit or are we working?

References


  1. http://www.nber.org/papers/w23552
  2. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/03/upshot/why-some-men-dont-work-video-games-have-gotten-really-good.html
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why listen to economists? why not listen to violin players? or gardeners. Anytime someone speak to something not in their field they are just as ill informed as joe sixpack about quantum physics.

Economists are loud and have ties to the government but you make a good point. Economics isn't really a science in my opinion and hasn't told me anything useful other than to reinterpret activities into a language economists understand for political purposes.

Mechanism design is very different from economics even though an economist probably knows about this.

I'm underwhelmed by what I've observed of the accuracy of economists.
The robustness of a discipline is directly proportional to it's ability to predict .
How's that working out for economics?

Track record is way better than 50%, if the rule you use is - do the opposite of what the Fed Chair suggests

good point.

This doesn't make any sense at all. I don't know how they drew these conclusions from this setup, but it's ludicrous.

"who suddenly found themselves with extra time spent their leisure hours, "

So, a study on how new leisure time leads to playing video games somehow proves the reverse causation - that video games make people become lazy to get new leisure time?

This sees like the kind of hit-piece study the religious right was funding in the 80s and 90s when they were losing it over Dungeons & Dragons.

they are NOT lazy,

Video games can be immersive and addictive. So can Netflix or reading or guitar playing or a thousand other recreational pursuits. Modern society offers a broad menu of entertainment options. The question economists need to ask is does modern society offer young men ( and women) a similar menu of options for work that is interesting and meaningful and engaging and challenging? I am 59. I had a factory job at 18 that paid for an apartment, a car, insurance, utilities etc and still had money left over for movies and concerts and low budget get away camping weekends. I went to college part time on an employer funded tuition reimbursement program. All I see available to young people today is low wage drudgery that doesn't pay enough to offer even some small level of independence. Video games would seem like a better choice to me as well.

I feel the game and the steemit is very much different, no work that does not use the time, STEEMIT can be said to work indefinitely, GAME can not be said to work, because it is a means of entertainment.STEEMIT in the process highly appreciate its members who are creative with Reward,
GAME is on the contrary, although there is Reward it is like bet or gamble, time runs out but there is no benefit, STEEMIT is suitable for anyone, let alone unemployment.thanks....

Considering I make game reviews on Steemit I disagree. The wonderful thing about this site is that there are so many different niches of people to appreciate your content no matter what you like doing.

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

I think there are a couple weaknesses in their argument. The difficulty in making studies like this is that you have to make a lot of assumptions in order for the results of the study to hold. Since the research data made use of a natural experiment in which they measure how much extra leisure time was spent on playing video games, it is quite possible young men just found the activity to be more enjoyable compared to socializing and watching television. This by itself does not mean that they are choosing to play video games instead of working.

Hahaha... I don't play games and I'm still lazy... to me, I'm having fun here on steemit, does that constitute to wasting time and being lazy?

After I read this post I'm getting rid of all my video games and focusing more on Steemit :D

Good strategy!

:-)

I would have to agree with this statement , most men I knew during their teenage years , all they did was play video games , and when you'd call them or their friends you'd find they are all playing . With this addiction they do tend to get lazy and sit around at home all day or play for hours and hours

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation

How did you conclude they were "addicted"? Strong word to throw around. By this barometer, are not most young women "addicted" to social media?

What did you expect them to be doing, playing with yoyos?

Did you consider perhaps the society has given them no reason to do anything else:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbivore_men

It's an addiction when they do and think of nothing but video games. No I don't expect them to play with yoyos, I expect them to go outside, play play outside and things like that .

Women plays video games also and they're not lazy lol

Lazy is a broad term. The one thing I see is that their attention span has significantly decreased (under 10 seconds without constant stimulation). Social Media and video games can provide this constant stimulation.

I don't think that's true to a large extent, I would rather they say social media is a major cause.

Is social media a kind of labor? Why or why not? I don't think building a strong reputation on social media is easy and maintaining a strong reputation isn't easy either.

Funny, I look at day trading as playing a really complex video game with terrible graphics. Playing this game can be very stressful, but it pays better wages than my normal job most months.

they are NOT lazy, just sharpening their brain working skills ...

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

What about automation being the blame for less work xD Besides gaming has become more and more attractive and a thing new generations grow-up with. 15-30hours a year is not really a lot anyways..

I feel its more a combination of ALL the distractions around nowadays, society has changed fundamentally over the last couple of decades.
Less Work + More Distractions + Convenience = Lazier People, not just males.
Gaming is one of those distractions definitely as it has the triggers for the reward chemical Dopamine. But so do a-lot of other things.

And what about Steemit? Are we playing on Steemit or are we working?

I tell my friends that Steemit is work! Somehow it feels like it. I have the urge to create content I like and hopefully also by some in our community, but it is hard work! One of my passions is electronic music and it costs me a lot of energy to get this a bit going on Steemit. In that respect, I see time spend as work. The other thing is that it also gives financial rewards; Although not using these to pay for any bills, it is still an income. From that angle my time spend feels somewhere between hobby and work.

Hi @dana-edwards! ... For sure we seetmers are not playing over here. Its a platform for creating the valuable and useful content for which we can get paid if its worth.. ♨

Thanks for the info...

There goes my upvote to you.. 👍
I am new to steemit... I m learning a lot from you... Check out my intro post and motivational post @supergal

Do upvote, resteem, follow me to get connected and encourage me to keep posting...

Boooo. That is all.

proud to be a gamer and I am not lazy!

Interesting study. Crypto does seem to be a path for gamers to provide value in the future economy.

I do not think video games make us lazy
Video games open's our minds make us clever;)

LOL! So how does this explain the young lazy men before video games existed?