In my early-40's, I've found that the massive gap between youth culture and adult culture has, thankfully, shrunk. While it's still the case that no 16-year-olds are going to want to hang out with us, their language and activities and perspectives don't feel as foreign as Boomers purported to feel about, well, everything. Because unlike previous generations, who fetishized leaving behind childish things and creating stark barriers between kid world and adult world, many of us have continued to do what we like as we've grown older. And it turns out, the reason kids like to do things like play video games or obsess over anime or take drugs is because these things are fun. And because we're still "in the game", so to speak, we don't balk and criticize and feign outrage like previous generations. That leaves a tremendous amount of space for connections, because we all play games and have niche interests and like our weird TV shows, even if the specifics vary greatly (and more than ever before).
I recently bought my nephew a box of Pokémon cards. I don't play Pokémon, I have no interest in it and frankly it seems kind of dumb. But I would never say that because all I wanted at age 12 were boxes of comic book cards and Magic the Gathering cards. Equally dumb, at least! So I 'get' it, unlike my mother who, though sometimes obliging, thought all of these hobbies were incomprehensible nonsense.
This doesn't seem to be a passing phenomenon. Once you've established a perspective that respects and expects change, there's no law of nature that will magically revert that. That doesn't mean it will be frictionless. And it does require some conscious effort to keep up. I have TikTok on my phone. I rarely use it, but I'm familiar with it and it's not foreign to me. I see it as my task to refuse to let changes in technology or culture become foreign to me. And that task seems vastly easier today compared to the pre-internet era of scarce information, overwhelming monoculture and insular, defensive subcultures.
"it's still the case that no 16-year-olds are going to want to hang out with us"
That's a broad brush you're painting with, amigo. As a 49yo father w/ two teen daughters (17 and 15), I've been surprised and delighted at the strong bonds I have w/ each of them (esp. my 17yo). We "hang out", and seek each others' company, to our mutual enjoyment -- it's absolutely nothing like my relationship w/ my own parents at their age.
Edit: PS I think I agree w/ your main point; it was this one bit I wanted to counter.
>That's a broad brush you're painting with, amigo. As a 49yo father w/ two teen daughters (17 and 15), I've been surprised and delighted at the strong bonds I have w/ each of them (esp. my 17yo). We "hang out", and seek each others' company, to our mutual enjoyment -- it's absolutely nothing like my relationship w/ my own parents at their age.
This is not the norm though. I wonder why people think countering something with an individual experience that's clearly distinct from the norm is a counter? It's not. His generalization is correct, your counter isn't evidence against it.
Part of the reason for the generational gap isn't just because of different culture. But it's also because where kids and adults are all day. Adults are at work, kids are at school. So the social connections, hierarchy and the dynamics are all completely different universes.
A lot of kids don't give a shit about grades because often that's not part of the social hierarchy at school. Money isn't even that huge either. It's when they get out of school all the rules change. That's why there's always this younger generational gap between teens and adults but less of a gap between say 20s and 30s.
OP said "no 16 year-olds..." (ie, zero). A single example to the contrary does serve as a counter. But my point wasn't to be pedantic, rather it was taking an oppty to share a positive example about a rare connection I'm fortunate to have. IME it's often interesting to read counterexamples to broad generalizations, for a more complete perspective.
You should mention this in your reply because it seems like an attempt at refutation. Like the generality is obviously wrong. It's not. The broad brush is correct. Your experience is the anomaly.
Are video games actually fun? I used to spend a lot of time playing, until I had an epiphany and realized that it was more like working an unpaid part-time job. I was playing because I sort of felt obligated to reach the next level or finish the campaign or whatever, but I wasn't actually enjoying it and no one else cared about my achievements. So, I just quit and never looked back.
Definitely playing the wrong games, imho. I've been an avid gamer in one form or another since the late 1980's and a game design trend that's really been put on steroids in the last 10-20 years is designers getting a lot more sophisticated about creating feedback loops that drive you to put in that one more hour (or ten more dollars) for that incremental hit of dopamine. There is a type of game that is very specifically engineered to get you to play as much as possible for increasingly incremental rewards. World of Warcraft was my own first exposure to this philosophy of game design and they had me hook, line and sinker.
On the other hand you have games which are designed almost like an art piece or a one-and-done thing where you experience what the designer intended and then you're done. For instance it's an old game but take Battle Chess for instance, you buy it, you play it for like an hour and it's chess with extra cool animation and art. Great, now when you want to play chess, you crack open Battle Chess, and when you don't want to play chess anymore you close it. A lot of indie games and adventure games still have this philosophy where it's more about delivering a high quality good experience that is finite, not stretching everything out to infinity.
>I had an epiphany and realized that it was more like working an unpaid part-time job
I've had the reverse epiphany: That if I view aspects of my real life that seem difficult to make progress on as being more like a computer game, I can increase my motivation to tackle them.
Couldn’t that argument be used with a lot of hobbies?
I think for most people it’s like interactive light television watching. Not great to do it obsessively but it can be relaxing and/or mentally stimulating.
As someone who played on a Switch for a significant time (mostly Zelda and Mario games) and then transitioned back to PC games, I'm going to guess that by "video games for Xbox, Playstation and PC", you mean the big tentpole titles. Just within that frame of reference, I would agree. However, most of my playtime on PC is in indies, and those are just as fun as Nintendo games if you know where to look. For recommendations, look at the winners and nominees of the Seumas McNally Grand Prize. (Wikipedia has the list.) Most of the PC games that I had the most fun with (and also the most significant emotional response) happen to be on that list.
I also had this realization. Part of it was that after a point, games stop being novel. I used to like playing with legos, but building a set just feels like a chore. These days, I'm doing a lot of ice skating, and what I like is the feeling of learning something new.
Video games make way more money then Hollywood. I mean not to be insulting but it's like asking the question are movies actually entertaining?
There's also many different genres of video games like there are movies and each genre scratches a different itch. The itch you're describing is sort of a "leveling up" goal oriented genre.
That's not the only genre. For example what's the purpose of VR? How does it help with "leveling up" or getting to the next "campaign"? The whole point of VR is immersion.
Too many people view gaming from a biased corner from their own little niche interest without realizing how big the industry is.
I too enjoy video games but I also think they are a massive waste of time. If I could rewire my brain to have the endurance required to constantly try to learn new things, that would be my preferred mode of existence. Unfortunately, I often seem to need to "turn off" at the end of the day, watching something lame on netflix, switching on a game, reading a forgettable piece of fiction. It is actually pretty frustrating but I have done it my entire life so I don't see this ever changing.
"Fun". Well if you have a family you need to support, I think it becomes a lot more obvious why "fun" is something that should often be dropped. There are other things that need to be done and they are definitely not "fun". You will, however, be rewarded in other ways that entertainment simply cannot.
I recently bought my nephew a box of Pokémon cards. I don't play Pokémon, I have no interest in it and frankly it seems kind of dumb. But I would never say that because all I wanted at age 12 were boxes of comic book cards and Magic the Gathering cards. Equally dumb, at least! So I 'get' it, unlike my mother who, though sometimes obliging, thought all of these hobbies were incomprehensible nonsense.
This doesn't seem to be a passing phenomenon. Once you've established a perspective that respects and expects change, there's no law of nature that will magically revert that. That doesn't mean it will be frictionless. And it does require some conscious effort to keep up. I have TikTok on my phone. I rarely use it, but I'm familiar with it and it's not foreign to me. I see it as my task to refuse to let changes in technology or culture become foreign to me. And that task seems vastly easier today compared to the pre-internet era of scarce information, overwhelming monoculture and insular, defensive subcultures.