
Study finds young men are playing video games instead of getting jobs - sandmansandine
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-video-games-jobs-emploment-20160923-story.html
======
nercht12
What jobs? All the ones I know of are for people with "experience" with XYZ.
Pardon if out of the bazillion candidates in this world, biz's can't find that
oxymoron of a candidate: the perfect, outgoing socialite whose as good at
brown-nosing as he is on the PC. You could roll the dice to go to school and
end up stuck in debt over your head (btw, loan defaults are ever on the rise).

There's more to this story than just the problems of getting a job. Society
has become very digitized, and more and more, I'm seeing children play LESS
because of busy schedules, so it gets replaced by the next most convenient
addicting thing: video games. Result? - Loss of imagination. When I hear of
schools "bringing in technology", I can only cringe at how _insert
explicative_ the administration must be to not realize that technology is not
a solution, it's only a tool. Kids aren't getting smarter (in fact, I only
hear it's getting worse), they are becoming less inspired. Some guys I know
got their degrees and only looked for work because they knew they needed it,
but they had effectively no passion, no dream at doing much in life, and the
fun they had was primarily from gaming. As someone who dreamed of doing big
things, I found myself rather lonely in my objectives. (Needless to say, I
don't play video games.) Anyone else felt this way?

~~~
andrewstuart
There's jobs for people who work hard. The vast majority of people don't want
to do the hard work required to get a job.

A sense of entitlement for a job won't lead to anything except sitting at home
playing video games wondering why no one has recognised the game players
genius.

It's easy to overcome lack of experience - at least in the field of software
development - by using your time not playing computer games but by programming
and writing code for a well-known open source project. People don't want to
hear this advice though - they want to know if there is an easier way.

~~~
ethanbond
I think people want to know why there's no longer an easier way. It seems
people 50 years ago didn't have to dedicate their waking hours from 6 to 18
years old constructing an impressive enough resume to give them the _luxury_
of then dumping a hundred thousand dollars on an employable education.

Software has an obscenely low bar for getting experience, you're right.
Software comprises enough job vacancies to employ the country?

The simple fact is that the system is obviously broken, and it should be just
as obvious that it wasn't broke by the people who weren't yet born when it
fell apart.

I'll tell you, I'm a pretty hard worker. I work nowhere near as hard as the
laborers down the street who go day in day out being told this incoherent
narrative of "just work harder and it'll pay off!" There's no reason to
believe that it will. Why wouldn't they just do bare minimum and go home and
play video games?

~~~
jomamaxx
"It seems people 50 years ago didn't have to dedicate their waking hours from
6 to 18 years old constructing an impressive enough resume"

People 50 years ago didn't go to University - and they took a menial job at
the factory, or did 'what their parents' did, took over the family shop/farm
etc..

They earned very little, travelled little, had little in the way of material
or aspirational opportunities.

They also had strong gender, family, social roles they were expected to adhere
to, including going to Church every Sunday.

They also lived in mostly ethnocentric communities, knew their neighbours.

'We chose' what we have now, and at least in material terms, it's a whole lot
better. There's a lot of opportunity out there.

Yes, it means most people will have to 'work' \- and do things like
accounting, IT, customer support etc. etc. - but frankly, that's not so bad.

Most people have little to complain about.

~~~
internaut
> They earned very little, travelled little, had little in the way of material
> or aspirational opportunities.

That is some extraordinary revisionism you've come up with there.

It is the 1960s, not the 1600s.

> We chose' what we have now, and at least in material terms, it's a whole lot
> better. There's a lot of opportunity out there.

Real wage growth stalls half way through the 70s, just five years later.

~~~
jomamaxx
In the 1960's people did not travel. Commercial air was for the rich. People
might have had a family outing, by car, to Disneyland or something. Now people
travel worldwide.

"Real wage growth stalls half way through the 70s, just five years later."

This is completely false - and is a function of how we calculate inflation. In
fact, it's laughably false. A 'medium wage earner' today has a significantly
improved material situation than in the 1960's. _Everything_ is significantly
better for the common person on a common wage.

The average person today has multiple TV's, cable, internet, smartphone,
'apps', 500 channels, amazing healthcare, amazing cars (have you ever driven a
car from the 1960's), travel possibilities, educational possibilities.

The notion that real wages have been stagnant is one of the most laughable
economic fallacies of the modern era. Anyone alive in that time knows exactly
the truth. Financial concerns aside (aka debt), a good measure of wealth is
'what you can buy with it'. The average person is significantly wealthier than
the average person in the 1960s.

~~~
ethanbond
So how about sources then?

~~~
internaut
I can tell you the answer they typically give.

They, and this is not a joke, put a 'hedonic adjustment' for quality of life
into inflation. The criteria is not measurable, it's about feeling, not
seeing.

It is the same answer the Fed gives to the government. They definitely do not
believe it, but we're talking about people effectively employed to be the
Wizard of Oz here.

We didn't do that for the transition from gas lamps to electric or for horse
drawn buggy to car. It is bullshit.

When real wages go up people can actually tell. I don't believe in democracy
and thereby take polling with sacks of salt, but I do believe in the wisdom of
crowds when they have knowledge or experience, and boy are Westerners
pessimistic about both the economy and the government since around 2008. Every
Gallup poll and Pew survey shows it.

~~~
jomamaxx
XBox One is _better_ than Nintendo 64 and it's not just a 'feel good thing'.

Tomatoes that you can buy - any time of year - instead of just when they are
'in season' is a _material_ thing, not a fantasy improvement.

Cars that drive better, get 3x better mileage, are significantly more safe,
and have tons more features - are _better_ \- it's not some crap fantasy.

~~~
internaut
I don't deny that quality of life improvements exist.

The proposition I make is that wage growth halted for the average (median
average) American in the 70s. The same phenomenon spreads to other Westernized
countries too later on, most dramatically evident in the island of Japan which
has spent 30 years keeping up maintenance.

Alongside this I proposed (here or elsewhere on HN) that we were and are yet
presently living in a stagnant period. The thesis is well laid out here:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3EBfS9IcB4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3EBfS9IcB4)

Stagnation is not a plateau or a halt to growth, but a slowdown in the rate of
change. So there is some _change_ , just not much relative to former periods.
The economist Robert Gordon has written a life's work on the subject. He may
be wrong, but it is not a stupid idea.

The items you mention are examples of incremental improvements in existing
technology. This is not unimportant, it is at least half the battle since what
is the point of high technology if nobody can access its utility.

However my worry, and that of Levchin, Page, Gordon, Musk and Thiel is that we
are not seeing breakthrough technologies able to scale up and this is a very
troubling sign for the future.

Energy production and storage, space travel (Musks's entire rationale is
reasoned on the Stagnation Hypothesis), biotechnology, nanotechnology,
materials technology, central coordination, many important areas in our
society are in some form of decay, diminishing returns are evident. Lots of PR
and press releases but no impacts. Investors have gone bust in many of these
areas, esp. in biotech, nanotech and cleantech. If everything is improving
that shouldn't be happening.

Again, the benchmark is not _no change_. The benchmark is the past history of
those areas. You can pick bright spots in each industry and high achievements
but we do not see things like technologies to make heart attacks impossible or
cheap aerogel insulation, the kinds of leaps we made in the past that really
lifted all boats.

This can be difficult to believe if you live in a modern western city, but if
you go to the peripheral of our world you can visibly see it rotting away.
This is because it is not the center of the system that fails first, it is the
peripheral.

In a period of rapid true growth you see whole new fields of development
opening up from what used to be small niche fields (like computation used to
be).

It is not about having faith in the future or technology, it is that we have
to come up with business plans and ideas that make things happen or it is
entirely plausible they never will happen. Believe me, I want a better future
as well, I'm not trying to drag you down because I have a cynical personality
or something like that.

~~~
jomamaxx
Musk, Thiel etc. are the last people you should be listening to on the subject
- moreover - their statements have nothing to do with 'standard of living'.

Musk and Thiel are just old enough to remember and era when technology was
making seemingly huge advances: 'men on the moon', 'breaking the sound
barrier' etc.. They want to see 'that level' of innovation. I think it's
narrow minded and arrogant: Airplanes don't 'seem' like they have changed a
lot, but there has been an enormous degree of incremental innovation - just
not in the direction they want, i.e. 'faster, higher' etc.. The 'innovation'
has been in safety, reliability, fuel efficiency, price, sophistication etc. -
all of which has benefited 'the people' far more than someone making a new
Concorde that can do Mach 5 but costs $20K/hour per seat.

Over the 'long haul' \- the standard of living has improved as much since the
1970's as it has been on average for the last 200 years - roughly. The
1940s-1970s was a little bit of a bubble due to the war and the resulting
economic effects.

This idea of 'wage stagnation' is an unfair economic characterization of what
is going on, and it's used by the populist left to fight their ideological
battle.

Though it's true that a disproportionate amount of returns is going to the 1%
- it's not really at the cost of the 99%. The 99% are living a very high
standard of living - so long as they have jobs. Employment issues I think are
more important than the false canary of 'stagnant wages'

~~~
internaut
> Musk and Thiel are just old enough to remember and era when technology was
> making seemingly huge advances: 'men on the moon', 'breaking the sound
> barrier' etc.. They want to see 'that level' of innovation. I think it's
> narrow minded and arrogant:

I think there is something semantic in our way.

Are you familiar with Thiel's concept of representing progress using a
Cartesian plane? Technology goes on the Y axis, Globalization on the X axis.

Then it becomes possible to represent 4 possible states of play.

This is a model of course. There could be different aspects in different
states.

However it illuminates an important possibility, which is that you could have
broad progress in globalization without necessarily having much in technology.

Globalization is of course, the _spreading_ of Technology, so it is a kind of
derivative.

I hope it is clear then what I mean by 'Technological Stagnation'. I am
deselecting Globalization and looking at what is left.

> Over the 'long haul' \- the standard of living has improved as much since
> the 1970's as it has been on average for the last 200 years - roughly. The
> 1940s-1970s was a little bit of a bubble due to the war and the resulting
> economic effects.

Sure but we agree with all of that. With the caveat _some_ of that growth was
not real (in the finance sector). That is of course true of other eras too, I
just mention it because it plays an outsize role when the bubbles come up.

We are talking about different things. The standard of living improving is
globalization. The improvements in airplanes you mentioned, are improvements,
but again, they are a form of globalization.

We see that, it is good. But it is _not enough_ if we are to keep going.

> This idea of 'wage stagnation' is an unfair economic characterization of
> what is going on, and it's used by the populist left to fight their
> ideological battle.

I am on the right. The furthest to the right imaginable. The same is true of
many if not most people who talk about technological stagnation.

The populist left is not wrong about _something_ being not right, just the
solutions they tend to throw up.

> Though it's true that a disproportionate amount of returns is going to the
> 1% - it's not really at the cost of the 99%. The 99% are living a very high
> standard of living - so long as they have jobs. Employment issues I think
> are more important than the false canary of 'stagnant wages'

I would say to you that those 'returns' are almost all fake.

The top 1% of 1% is not making real money because their stock portfolios and
property valuations are increasing, it is the mother of all bubbles caused by
monetary manipulation.

I live myself in a house that is worth at most 1/8 of the valuation the market
gives it.

------
irrational
The left out the porn.

"When I watch porn, I know if I have a few minutes I will be rewarded," he
said. "With a girl, it's always been up in the air with the amount of work I
put in and the reward."

------
rumcajz
This is the demographic that's traditionally fueling crime/war. You can give a
positive twist to the story by rephrasing the title "study finds young men are
playing video games instead of shooting people."

~~~
bendbro
Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I think men are obsolete. Men are
responsible for forcing all the natives out, setting up the government,
constructing nearly every piece of infrastructure and creating nearly all
technology. Not to minimize the potential of women (patriarchy really, really
held them down), just highlighting that these male flavored contributions to
society are really not needed anymore.

~~~
foxfaction
The most needlessly sexist thing I'll read today.

------
sturgill
I had two thoughts as I read this:

\- Lots of talk about how the happiness of this group of people was higher,
but no numbers on the happiness of their parents. I have three kids. I love
them immensely. I don't want them living with me in their 20's. Especially
spending all day playing video games while I work to pay the bills.

\- I wonder what proponents of Universal Basic Income would say about this.
Turns out that when there's less incentive to do things, less gets done. Which
seems to run contrary to the narrative of "if only I didn't have to worry
about bills, I could do something meaningful." At least for me, I find
providing for my wife and children quite meaningful. What job I choose to do
that is almost secondary.

------
jimmywanger
Often, getting a job is a stepping stone to impress a woman, get married, and
have children.

That takes a long time, and women these days usually work, making your job a
lot less attractive to them.

Why not play video games at home? At least then you'd know you'd have some
fun.

~~~
koder2016
Marrying an overweight/tatooed/feminist older woman is not much fun!

------
XorNot
This article is a pile of just-so bullshit designed to appeal to baby boomers
so they can convince themselves that voting against unemployment benefits
isn't going to directly screw over a whole bunch parents and children from all
over the social strata.

~~~
jomamaxx
Facts are not BS.

~~~
XorNot
Data is also not the plural of anecdote.

Stitching together a bunch of statistics with anecdotes is not research, which
is what the article does whereas the actual source is as yet still
unpublished.

Of course the article is somewhat worse then that: the anecdotes pretty
clearly paint a picture of a poor job market with few low-skill opportunities
for advancement. But speculates wildly that it _must_ just be video games.

------
spectrum1234
"That's a big chunk of labor that could be used for something, and we're not
using it," said Greg Kaplan, an economist at the University of Chicago who was
not involved with the new research.

I'm also an economist and this guy is not smart. Others will rush in the fill
the void. Marginally there will be almost no difference. This guy is
forgetting that directly below this group of men who now play video games is a
nearly equal capable group who now has better job opportunities. This logic
continues to ratchet all the way down....

This isn't rocket science. Only if there was never a poorer group could this
be true

~~~
csallen
I don't see how your statement contradicts his. The fact that other people
will rush in to fill the void doesn't change the fact that tons of people will
still be sitting at home playing video games. Hence his statement about a big
chunk of labor remaining unused is still true.

Also, there's absolutely no guarantee that job opportunities will become more
attractive at a rate that matches the attractiveness of video games. It's not
hard to imagine a world 20 years from now in which millions of people spend
12+ hours a day in what essentially amounts to the Matrix, slaying dragons,
shooting bad guys, and saving princesses. You might say to them, "Go out and
get a job! There's no competition! You could make great money!" To which they
could very logically reply, "Why would I need lots of money for? I'm perfectly
happy right now."

~~~
Teever
But are they really a chunk of labour?

Like if people that chose to not work and play video games are a chunk of
unused labour than so are unemployed alcoholics.

It's kind of a self-selecting thing, do you really want the people that don't
want to work?

~~~
csallen
If the economists in the article are to be believed, these aren't simply
"people that don't want to work." They're people who ordinary have _always_
worked, but are now being actively persuaded not to by this new force known as
video games. So it's not analogous to alcoholics being alcoholics. It's better
compared to the introduction of a wholly new drug into society, which has
subsequently altered the behavior of a heretofore normal, hard-working, non-
addicted segment.

Secondly, while it may seem appropriate to deride these people as useless and
lazy ne'er-do-wells, that characterization isn't apt. It's not as if they're
living lives of misery, unable to overcome some base desire to pull themselves
out of it. Quite the contrary: they're happier than the rest of us. They're
looking at the options that society has presented them with, and making a
perfectly logical choice to spend their days engaged in meaningful, rewarding,
social, challenging, and fulfilling activity -- in a fantasy world. Why would
they go to work at dead end jobs if they have the option not to?

------
undersuit
I took a long drive on Saturday, and on the way home I travelled past my old
place. I got hit by a wave of nostalgia as I went past.

When home I found a Reddit post by a guy who overlays the Guild Wars maps on
the Guild Wars 2 map[1]. Wave of nostalgia... followed by a realization, I can
still play Guild Wars.

I cannot go back to my old house and relive my memories, but I'm a quick
download from remembering similar memories made in that same house while
playing Guild Wars.

That's powerful. It's the same reason my parent and grandparents made photo
albums and home movies.

I can literally play a game to help me relive my memories and it's not just me
grasping for moments in my head, but it's literally the same experience.

When I'm old and dying I'll have the chance to start up a video game and get
my nostalgia fix with far more satisfaction than if I was telling a story of
my childhood to any of my future grand children.

[1] [http://guide.thatshaman.com/](http://guide.thatshaman.com/)

------
lgas
For a potential solution, see "15 Million Merits", the second episode of Black
Mirror. :)

~~~
whamlastxmas
Such a depressing series

------
shenanigoat
IRL, rewards come slowly, if ever. Setbacks can cost years of loss of
'progression'. We are mostly, by definition, average, without much agency,
without much optimism, without much opportunity. Video games provide the
shortest path to a rich, rewarding experience for our minds. Platitudes about
hard work aside (for they are for the exceptional), we are helpless in our
pleasure seeking, pain avoiding minds. The disappointing mundanity of the
'real world' cannot compete.

------
toodlebunions
How do they support themselves? Parents basement?

~~~
kkarakk
yes that was the point of the article(that you obviously didn't read), young
men aren't going out and doing the low level jobs that would lead to career
advancement. they're doing them but at later ages, leading them to miss the
cutoff for advancement and being stuck in lower level roles

------
Balgair
Where is the link to the actual study? I could not find it in the article.
Anyone have the actual journal article?

------
im4w1l
There are many companies (should be familiar to anyone in tech) and well
funded organizations working hard to give more opportunities to women.

Well, they succeeded and this is what success looks like.

Their work hasn't stopped either, so expect even more success in the future.

------
internaut
Two words. Real wages. They are at historic lows.

> Turns out that when there's less incentive to do things, less gets done.

~~~
sturgill
Real wages didn't get higher when they got kicked out of the basement. The
difference is they had to do something in order to feed themselves.

I think a 20 y/o who lives with their parents so they can play video games is
a sloth. I fully intend to teach my kids the same. I expect them to leave and
take care of themselves even if the only opportunities available to them are
blue collar / manual labor that pay very little.

The decrease in real wages lowers the incentive to work. But so does a society
that views playing video games in your parents' basement in lieue of entering
the workforce as acceptable.

That probably sounds harsh, but (at least from the article) it seems like
these people haven't had difficulties getting jobs when they're in their 30s
with equally poor experience. They're just ten years behind the earnings
curve.

~~~
internaut
I don't really disagree. Some of it is attitude. That and what the book the
Millionaire Next Door referred to as Economic Outpatient Care.

It is just that in the past the standard of living also was raised, and the
market had to bear higher costs to motivate people to work.

If you examine the pay of our grandparents and parents you see they
experienced very considerable wage growth in their lifetimes while the
standard of living was rising, like by a factor of 10. Roofing contractors
were paid a dollar a day in 1900!

That impetus is missing from the labour market today. It is partly that some
of the people mentioned in the study feel like they have better things to do,
but a lot of it has to do with the trajectory and speed of wage growth.

When you feel like your prospects are 'capped', you're bound to be less
motivated.

I've heard employers whining they can't find the right people in the WSJ and
NYT for some time now (subtext: at subpar rates of pay) and I think this
should be treated with the same reverence given to lazy bones on the coach
there. None.

------
medymed
Stimulant of the masses

