The Problem With Video Games (Essential Excerpts)

What video games do to us and why China has banned online games outside of a few specified times.

Hello Bar-Setters,

Tuesday I wrote about supernormal stimuli—perhaps the most important concept for people to understand if they want to thrive in the modern world. In that post, I posited that two supernormal stimuli, in particular, were wreaking havoc on young men. Porn and video games.

You can get my full argument there. Today, I wanted to share a short excerpt from Jon Tyson’s phenomenal book, The Intentional Father, where he addresses the problem with video games:

This is one reason I think you have to be careful about how much your son plays video games—they are very good at providing a false sense of accomplishment.

Men ache to master something, to be seen as strong and to receive honor and respect, and because it is hard to attain this in real life, many of us default to chasing these things in the digital realm, because the wonderful myth of video games is that you can conquer the world. 

Source: The Intentional Father, Jon Tyson

Tyson is hardly the first person to recognize that video games discourage more productive aspirations. In fact, the Chinese government has banned youth under ages 18 from playing video games during the school week and it limits them to one hour per day on weekends and holidays.

I’m not advocating a nationwide ban or any autocratic methods, but it is interesting that the Chinese government views video games as such a pernicious threat. What’s more interesting is that their parents agree. Demand for these bans have largely come from parents in China.

Initially, the Chinese government allowed up to 90 minutes of gaming on weekdays and three hours on weekends. But Chinese parents complained that this was too generous and too poorly enforced. In what must have felt confusing and somewhat magical for the Chinese Communist Party, parents asked the government for more restrictions and stricter enforcement. As the New York Times reported:

“Recently many parents have reported that game addiction among some youths and children is seriously harming their normal study, life and mental and physical health,” the administration said in an online question-and-answer explanation about the new rules. Parents, it said, had demanded “further restrictions and reductions in the time provided for minors by online gaming services.”

The new rules also reflect the government’s intensifying push for companies to jettison what the Chinese Communist Party says are unhealthy influences, especially among teenagers and children.

“Some teenage kids just won’t listen to their parents’ discipline, and this policy can control them,” said Lily Feng, a company worker in Shenzhen in southern China. She said her 10-year-old daughter was less interested in online games than in Douyin, the Chinese equivalent of TikTok, but added that the new limits set a good example.

In the United States, we usually opt to allow parents to serve as the governors of their children’s lives. But in far too many cases, American parents and schools have failed to do so. China bans online games during the entire school week while American students often spend hours at school each day playing online games on school-provided devices.

Unfortunately, it is up to you to recognize the threat of supernormal stimuli and help your children learn to navigate a world defined by their incessant temptation.

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Carry the fire!