[socialist_coder]

If you did that with an iPad today, your kid would basically only watch the most horrendous youtube videos or play brainless games. That stuff just didn't exist when we were kids, using our just-for-nerds computing devices. The games weren't as addictive or plentiful, video apps tuning to their "likes" didn't exist. It's not even remotely similar.

[techman9]

I don't know. I grew up in the XP era and I played a lot of brainless games (3D pinball was where it was at) and read a lot of mindless Wikipedia articles as a kid. But then I got curious about how it all worked behind the scenes.

Maybe I'm too optimistic, but my hope is some of that inquisitive spirit hasn't been totally quashed. It's too depressing think that kids are not still discovering the internet as a virtually boundless repository of human information and a fascinating set of technical problems.

[socialist_coder]

The difference is that back then, the brainless games were the equivalent of a box of chocolates. Sure, you might eat a couple but you would probably get bored before you finish the box. Now, it's like Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. You never want to leave.

So as a child, choosing the productive option yourself is basically impossible.

[eesmith]

I disagree about the addictiveness of earlier games.

I and many others played endless hours of PC games in the 1980s. I remember going through all 150 levels of Lode Runner, for example, and it distracting me from doing other things.

Some kids played so much Pokemon, or Tetris, or other games that their parents took away their Game Boy.

One difference, as this piece mentions, is the direct coupling of the gameplay in many modern games to a wheedling for money from the parents for in-game advancement. That didn't occur 20 years ago. (The Game Boy required batteries or the purchase of a wall adapter, so there was demand for additional money to play, but the coupling wasn't anywhere near as direct as now.)

[megaman22]

I could never get bored with Civilization 2, or Lords of the Realm, or Close Combat 2, or Age of Empires. And I put a lot of hours in, between 10 and 18. I'm not sure that Candy Crush is anymore fun than those games were.

[techman9]

Oh my god. And Starcraft, and Axis and Allies, (original) DOTA. I was even a WOW player back in the day before I got fed up buying expansions. Man, the hours of productive time I wasted...