[dyauspitr]

Well let me try and fix that. In my opinion, a child sitting in front of the screen for long hours and being occupied enough with a videogame that you want to watch additional media on it when you’re not playing belies a waste of potential and frankly social and mental (outside of a small band) development. It has created a generation of stunted individuals and there’s a pushback coming. Now it’s for social media but it will expand to all forms of screen time.

[demosthanos]

I'm an adult who doesn't have time to play Minecraft anymore because I'm too busy between a career and raising kids, but I did play a ton of it in its early days and I still watch a selection of Minecraft YouTube channels (mostly a few of the Hermits).

My early experiences with Minecraft absolutely helped get me to this point in my career. Minecraft is less a video game and more a sandbox and development platform. Redstone is a fabulous introduction to concepts that are applicable to programming, electrical engineering, and really any logic-oriented field. I first learned Forth through a Minecraft mod, and my first technical documentation experience came from writing docs for people to use that Forth system. I later picked up Lua through ComputerCraft, and my earliest real Java projects that I built were Minecraft mods.

All of which is to say: I'm totally going to introduce my kids to Minecraft when they're old enough! I wouldn't trade the hours I spent on that game and in its community for anything.

[shrimp_emoji]

You're totally wrong. Apart from myopia and obesity, it's all nature, practically no nurture (without exceptionally negative environments, like abuse, drugs, or malnutrition). You're better off blaming social trends and microplastics.