Consoomer

There are atleast two parts of the human psyche that video games tap into.

The grind, which I agree is super wasteful. We seem to be hard wired to want to invest lots of time in things that build up to a payoff. Farming does this, workouts.playing really Grindy games seems like time that could be better spent doing other stuff. Like learning a language, working out, going on dates.

Then there is story telling. We want to relive the experience of others so as to avoid making the same mistakes and learn how to make similar good decisions without having to learn first hand. This is a very high level of learning few if any other animals can do.

I think playing games to live out a story is fine and it's no different than reading a book or watching a movie. It may even be able to train the mind to do helpful things

But not at the expense of real life.

I play a couple hours per month. My five year old is bilingual, can swim, can read and write a good bit and plays the piano.

Doom scrolling and endless ipad YouTube is worse for kids in my opinion