[caput770]

I think part of it is that for every teenage girl spending 5 hours a day on social media, there's a teenage boy spending 5 hours a day playing video games, often with other teenage boys. I'd guess that video games are a more positive way to socialize, because teenagers are cooperating and competing rather than comparing themselves to others on social media.

[josephg]

Yep. People seem to forget the pearl clutching in the 90s over boys playing violent video games.

If the media was to be believed, video games were inevitably going to raise a generation of men ready to shoot up schools at the slightest provocation. Lots of research later, we started finding the men who grew up playing multiplayer video games were more strategic and often made better leaders. The fact that overwatch has guns doesn’t actually matter much in practice. However, the experience of getting a bunch of random people to cooperate is a lifelong skill that carries over into lots of other areas of life.

Most of what I learned about working in teams, I learned from playing world of Warcraft in my early 20s. If you can run a successful raid every week with 40 strangers, working with a team in an office is easy.

[giraffe_lady]

uhhhhh I don't think the video games are the reason but boys shooting up schools did turn out to be a big problem you know. So, idk, they were probably worried about the wrong thing but it seems they were right to be worried about that outcome.

[josephg]

Sure - and as an Australian I find America’s tolerance for school shootings utterly baffling.

Here in Australia we play all the same video games as American kids do, and we don’t have school shootings. The problem isn’t the video games.

[monetus]

> tolerance for school shootings utterly baffling.

I hang out with fewer gun owners than many but I am from Tennessee. It is kind of like getting people to recognize the need to do something about climate change. Most everyone recognizes it as a problem now, but solutions are someone else's business. "The ability to affect the problem is upstream, what am I going to do about it? What am I supposed to do about schools, sell my gun and be without it when something crazy happens?" That is even before addressing that they can be fun, like a collectible or a sport.

The ideas tossed around are often regulations at the consumer level, and the societal momentum is thoroughly against those in general.

If an uncharacteristic law was introduced along the lines of, "no more new guns" then some in my area would begin manufacturing themselves. I already see cardboard signs advertising squirrel rifles.

[josephg]

I've lived in the USA and I believe you. I just find it unbelievably depressing that the "best country on earth" can't find a way to stop their own children getting shot by other children in government run schools. As far as I know, the USA is the only country in the world with this problem.

Climate change might be exactly the right metaphor. Despite widespread public support for action, the australian federal government is still doing very little about the problem. Its not a good look.

[wombatpm]

But you do have football, sunshine, beer and Australian women which probably goes along way to resolving problems with young men

[josephg]

America has all those things in spades too.

The Christchurch shooter was an australian (to our eternal shame). But he shot up a school in New Zealand instead of in australia because it was easier to buy guns in NZ. (Was easier. They pushed through stricter gun controls after that incident).

[ggfhvt6yyghvhuf]

Um. No. Assuming you read what he wrote, he stated clearly that he got it and did it there not because of convenience, but because it would cause NZ to clamp down on guns ( and serve as an example ). He was actually a successful terrorist, which is presumably why CNN asked everyone not to even think of looking at it, because it can corrupt you.

[beecafe]

No, we have a generation of men who love shooting up schools and each other.

[gallopingcomp]

Not exactly a “generation”, but you are onto something here - men (broadly speaking) do appear to be more susceptible to radicalization.

[Aerroon]

>I'd guess that video games are a more positive way to socialize, because teenagers are cooperating and competing rather than comparing themselves to others on social media.

And even if they were comparing themselves to others, the context of it would be in the video game, rather than what their real world circumstances are.

[sw104]

More like "some" video games.

On one end you have lads playing video games who turn out to be good managers/workers in tech. On the other end, you have socially stunted lads who gradually find themselves falling down the "incel" rabbit hole.