[trs80]

This paper is interesting but I don't think it really gets at the core of the issue. It associates the decline of young men in the workforce with so-called "leisure luxuries" such as video games. The paper even admits that, "For other groups - younger women, older men and older women - recreational computer is not a leisure luxury."

I would like to submit a complimentary hypothesis. While it may be true that young males are more interested in video games, video games are not necessarily the cause of the decline of younger males in the workforce. Perhaps games are simply a tool of escapism, utilized by a demoralized section of the population (young males). This could explain why young females are not influenced as drastically by the same leisure luxury. As with anything, the underlying reason behind young male decline in the work force could be a variety of things (e.g. males have more interest in games compared to young females or are more addiction prone to game than young females), but I believe that the case for escapism in young males in a society which is increasingly anti-male is a strong one to explain them seeking refuge in video games.

[majormajor]

As always when people make these claims, you have a lot of far-from-proven assumption embedded in here, so the claim that society is "anti-male" rather than "less aggressively pro-male than it used to be" is unsupported.

A more subtle point would be that, to a marginal young male, it may be hard to tell the difference. Resentment is likely to be high to start with in someone struggling but consistently failing. This I find much easier to believe, and less wildly in contradiction to the evidence of my (male) eyes and the experience of people who grew up around me. But it's a hugely significant difference in what it implies about who should do what.

That's without getting into proving a correlation, let alone causation. The timelines don't seem to line up for your claim, IMO.

[trs80]

> demonstrate that society is "anti-male" rather than "less aggressively pro-male than it used to be."

Call it whatever you'd like... it can still be a contributing factor. Also, I never claimed society was anti-male, only increasingly so.

[majormajor]

Ok. So now you seem to be saying "increasingly anti-male" is the "less biased in favor of males than it used to be." Let's run with that!

My fellow men - namely the video-gaming and complaining-about-anti-male views that we're talking about here - will have to compete with non-males. Male gamers have a shitty as hell reputation for social skills and behavior - maybe people who feel inclined and entitled to act like that are simply less employable because people think they're assholes.

This isn't all or even most gamers, but it seems to be the ones that make the most noise both in the games and about how everything is turning against them socially. Rallying people behind a cause of "things aren't quite as in my favor as they used to be" is going to be hard, even if it feels very real and discouraging.

EDIT: reworded in response to good point from response about equating laziness with employment outcomes

I'm unconvinced by the class arguments so far, though. The people I know personally in this bucket are not from lower-class backgrounds. The people I know whose parents were constantly struggling to stay employed and make ends meet have a very different perspective on what it takes to get by, and never had the same amount of time available to waste.

[Inconel]

I think it wise to not automatically conflate laziness or the lack of desire to compete with non-males with unemployment or underemployment.

[majormajor]

True, good point, revising.

[hnuser1234]

You're not getting any replies from the person you replied to because you exposed yourself as too closedminded to even be capable of considering it.

[dropit_sphere]

> "anti-male" rather than "less aggressively pro-male than it used to be"

Is there a difference? The assumed model in a lot of these discussions is that there is a pie of goodies that is divided, zero-sum, between sexes. But this assumes (or at least implies) identical utility functions. A trivial example: government funding for any abortions I might have is of zero value to me, since as a dude, I'm not likely to fall pregnant any time soon. This can be extended to whatever gender stereotype the reader feels comfortable standing by.

It becomes harder to determine in isolation when you take into account that the sexes have not just sex-specific benefits, but also problems and responsibilities. My sister may feel a pressure to be warm and comforting; I serve as her unpaid bodyguard if we find ourselves in any sort of dangerous situation.

I'm not trying to say these "are equivalent," --- indeed, that's the point. I don't think they can be really compared. The only place we approach anything like equality (which implies not just equal measure, but like terms) is in the NumbersLand of employee compensation, and we can't even do that unimpeachably enough for everyone's satisfaction, because other factors leak in.

My point is that I don't think comparison is a fruitful model (anti-male does not automatically mean pro-female), and that it's relative. Is society more pro-male than 1000 AD? Probably, I haven't caught dysentery lately. On the other hand, I wasn't expected to provide a college education for my children then, either.

We should be pro-male! We should be pro-female too!

[wjn0]

> A trivial example: government funding for any abortions I might have is of zero value to me, since as a dude, I'm not likely to fall pregnant any time soon.

For young men, especially poor young men, this is an absolutely terrible example (child support laws, for example).

[dropit_sphere]

I'll admit it's not ideal. Could you suggest a better one?

[wjn0]

>>> The assumed model in a lot of these discussions is that there is a pie of goodies that is divided, zero-sum, between sexes. But this assumes (or at least implies) identical utility functions.

I agree that this is a faulty premise. However, there's a difference between the pressure of social norms and whether this particular "zero-sum sentiment" is actually reflected in, say, US law or policy. I personally believe it's not, and I can't think of any policy or law that refutes that.

[bilbo0s]

You probably don't even have to be a marginal young male in a purely technical sense.

I mean, you could just be a hispanic young male or something.

[majormajor]

In terms of happiness and the like, it might actually be the reverse. I saw an op-ed recently about this ( http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-frey-millennials-... ), and some googling also turns up some source reports like this from 2017 based on what looks like a different from some people at UTexas: https://qz.com/937266/young-white-americans-are-the-most-apa...

Interesting takeaways: whites were less optimistic but also less ambitious and less concerned.

> White millennials were also consistently less concerned about reaching personal aspirations, such as achieving financial stability, owning a home, traveling, or getting a college degree.

So there's a potentially interesting connection to the male-vs-female question. If both whites, and males, show reduced motivation despite being currently at the top of the pyramid, that's curious. Could be that things are too cushy (having tons of time to play video games doesn't seem like the result of anti-male pressures). Could be that things are too hollow, that material results aren't ultimately so meaningful, especially when they're from your parents labor, not your own?

[Inconel]

I'm somewhat weary of the notion that all whites, and especially that all males, are somehow at the top of the pyramid.

[majormajor]

Not every white or every male has to be in the upper echelon for the aggregate trends in to be interesting. And let's remember we're talking, here, about a population defined by copious amounts of free time and the economic flexibility to devote that free time to serious video gaming.

[merpnderp]

If you were interested in trends of males being at the top of the pyramid, why wouldn't you start with Asian American males?

[bilbo0s]

"...This could explain why young females are not influenced as drastically by the same leisure luxury..."

Or...

Maybe young women just don't like video games? Let's be honest here, most of the "hobby" type video games that require dedicated time to be allocated to them are not filled with content that women like to consume. I'd wager that the male/female split in a game like CoD is nowhere near 50/50. (Even though many in the video game industry claim it to be.)

Add to that the fact that many young women likely wouldn't want to fire up PUBG, CoD, or Fortnite and have obscenities hurled at them...

and it's pretty clear why women seem to be less interested in that content.

I think a more helpful strategy would be to attempt to discover why older MEN seem to spend less time in these pursuits than younger men? This might shed some light on characteristics specific to younger men that would explain why they love these sorts of activities so much.

That answer might be a whole lot more pedestrian than we'd hope for. ie - Younger men just have more time. (No kids). Or it could be truly novel, and provide some great insights into human psychology. (But more probably, it's somewhere in the middle.)

[pjc50]

Women are 52% of gamers, even if they don't like those particular genres and certainly don't like the nastier kind of competition: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/18/52-per...

Older men vs younger men: cohort effect? if you're over 40-50ish you didn't quite grow up with games.

[CaptSpify]

I'm speculating in a subject I don't know all that well, but....

Aren't women-focused games generally less long-term engaging than male-focused games?

At least in my experience, the games that I perceive women generally want to play are more "5 minutes here and there" type games vs "3 hours straight" type games. So perhaps there are more women playing games, but they individually spend less time doing it?

Does anyone have stats on this either way?

[skybrian]

In that age range we grew up with classic video games and the first personal computers.

Space Invaders and the Atari 2600 came out in 1977. A 50 year old would have 10 years old then.

I'm a bit younger than that and grew up with Apple II, Commodore 64, Amiga, Mac Plus, and so on. Many of the nostalgic references in Ready Player One were from around then.

[UK-Al05]

A more interesting job is my first thought as to why older men don't use video games.

When my job unsatisfying I do tend to resort to video games to compensate.

[majormajor]

Older men golf or (if not quite as old) play basketball. :) Physical games have much more immediate stamina limits, for starters, in terms of time-spent comparisons. Thinking more about golf, that one has more of an economic limiter than basketball or video games. Perhaps there's a dangerous sweet spot that games are hitting - cheap enough that you don't have to work a ton, attractive enough that you don't want to. Which would result in a different discussion of if that's good or bad.

Either way, you still have a primarily-male competitive activity being a huge thing for older demographics, which is interesting. The "is it upbringing or nature" question around sports participation by gender is an old one, my hunch is that video games is just the modern version.

The 30-to-40 generation is in the middle; gaming for a while was a much more in-person thing pre-universal-internet-access. So that probably resulted in different habits as life more and more interrupted the ability to throw LAN parties together.

[trs80]

> Maybe young women just don't like video games?

Perhaps this can be a contributing factor as well. Problem is, I mentioned this in my original statement. Did you not see? Doesn't have to be either-or, you know.

>discover why older MEN seem to spend less time in these pursuits than younger men

Maybe they got jobs, had children, etc. Just speaking from experience. As an adult I have less time for games nowadays.

[watwut]

I haven't seen anyone claim that women and men play cod 50/50. The claim "many in the video game industry" had was that women play a lot more videogames of you count all videogames including candy crush and farmvile. Which is true. Women play games much more then CoD ratio of players would suggest.

You literally took the game with worst male female ratio and use it as general argument about who plays games in general.

[smogcutter]

If you can't find a job in this economy the problem is you, and if you're somehow demoralized out of the workforce by a perceived "anti-male" bias then you'd be an uncompetitive person in any environment.

[zeppelin101]

That is a ridiculous thing to say - unless you're assuming that everyone is a techie. If some guy was shortsighted enough to major in something like psychology, he is very likely to face anti-male hiring bias when he's applying for a job in HR, for example. This should be obvious.

[smogcutter]

It's certainly not obvious. Can you support that with anything?

[zeppelin101]

I can only speak from what I've personally observed and from what has happened to a few men I know. The gist of it is this: given a 'soft' role in a company, especially a tech company, those roles are in large part reserved for women. Consider a tech company - the people in the front lines will almost invariably be men. They were the ones who probably studied Computer Science or a comparable major in college, afterall. So from a diversity standpoint, almost all tech companies are stacked with men already - because they focus on tech and because the actual techies are almost entirely comprised of men. Then, when it comes to the softer roles in the company, such as HR/recruiting/administration, those roles will very largely be filled by women (who studied psychology, communications, english, or something similar). I suppose I can only speak about this as it applies to the tech industry, as that is what I'm familiar with. But tech is eating the world, so if it doesn't yet apply to some of the other industries, it soon will.

[Caveman_Coder]

It isn't just the "soft" roles anymore...when I first started applying for positions I got absolutely nothing when I was applying as a male...I literally only changed my name/sex from Joe/male to Joanna/female, reapplied at all the same companies and within the week I heard back from each and every company...they don't want average males...preference is for women now...at least from my experience

[zeppelin101]

Was this an experiment you ran out of desperation? When these companies responded to you (as 'Joanna'), did you proceed with the interview process?

[smogcutter]

If you grant that, then getting a "hard" tech job should be similarly discouraging for women (many would argue it's often much more so). How does this add up to an "anti-male" society?

We're not talking about someone having a harder than average time finding a job, but about guys staying home playing videogames instead of working. I submit that if someone thinks anti male bias is the reason they're on the couch playing call of duty all day, they're mistaken.