- The paper attributes one-third to one-fifth of the decline in work hours by less-educated young men to the rising use of technology for entertainment — mainly video games. The new study has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, and the researchers say they are continuing to refine the precise figures.
So take it with a grain of salt... but I have now seen three different investment papers trumpeting this article like it's that goddamn "You're more likely to get killed by a terrorist than married over 40" bullshit thing in Newsweek.
Related: ALSO: I spent a while trying to find the original article, "Leisure Luxuries and the Labor Supply of Young Men", but it's been removed from the only two sites that have hosted a PDF, and Google's cache isn't helping either. But I did find the abstract: and a sentence from the conclusion: Cynic-veen would say that it looks like advanced curve-fitting. Anyone else have some perspective on this? “We explore the declining market hours of men in the last fifteen years, with a particular focus on less-educated young men (LEYM), who experienced a relatively large decline in work hours. The paper documents the decline in hours worked as well as corresponding trends in real wages and consumption, and shows that the large decline in hours is inconsistent with a stable labor supply curve with standard elasticities. We propose a new methodology that exploits detailed micro data on how individuals allocate their time away from work to infer how changes in leisure technology have altered labor supply. In particular, we use estimated “Leisure Engel Curves” to calculate that changes in leisure technology for computer goods broadly, and video games in particular, shift the labor supply curve by an amount between 10 and 25 percent of the observed decline in market work hours for prime age men and between 20 and 45 percent of the decline in market work hours for LEYM.”
“Our calculations suggest that innovations in gaming and computer leisure had a substantial impact on LEYM’s labor supply, explaining perhaps as much as two thirds of their increase in leisure time and 45 percent of their decline in market hours.”
It kind of sounds like typical poor blaming, but with stats. I'm not going to read the original article, because I don't care enough, but in the newspaper piece they sure didn't show causality, even noting that educated, employed men also have increased video game playing a lot in recent years ("but they also work hard"). There is a long journalistic history of trying to prove that poor people love being poor. You'll note that the underlying study was rejected from peer review.
I wanted to talk about how this article reeks of old people who don't know what they're talking about, but I'mma just let that quote speak for itself. I also love right off the bat that they were like "whoops yeah he's got an associates degree but he's still unemployed, but it's still the vidjagaems." I don't want to claim I have a dog in this race. Obviously I'm speaking anecdotally (the best kind of evidence!). Yes, statistically because of the hours I spend on any given week playing games, I could be called...vicious shuddering...a gamer, but also the only thing I'm waiting for at this point is death so it's easier for me to look at this objectively. Or maybe it isn't. Maybe I think I'm above this article when in reality I am also Danny Izquierdo, but getting a college a degree with the added bonus of also being riddled with crippling depression. I have been told by many a person ways to do things and how those things will make me feel better or fix me. None of those things work, obviously, or I wouldn't be so pessimistic on hubski (hubskimistic)! Perhaps as a result I do use vidjagames as a form of escapism. But I'm not sure, because it's not like playing makes me happy either, which I thought was the point of escapism. Mmm. I know lots of people take being told to stop playing vidjagames pretty personally. I'd like to think I'm not one of those people. I do other things recreationally, of course, but I'm also pretty sure none of things will help with employment, the same way playing vidjagames won't. Maybe I'll stop the latter tho, and then get the job I always deserved! Long story short, everything is shit, and: Danny Izquierdo enjoys playing video games on all platforms. He often plays with friends via a big screen monitor, as shown, but is just as adept at gaming on a laptop or smartphone.
Good anime_irl. I'm in the same boat as you, but unemployed. I'm still trying to digest this article for myself, but I do have a sort of a more hopeful podcast episode I've been trying to mesh its information with. Plus, it's a good podcast: http://www.wnyc.org/story/video-games-wellness-depression Key quote from the episode: The opposite of play isn't work, it's depression.