I spent 25 years online. I'm now 40 with a family of my own.
I don't have the time in the day to find some happy center. I'm happy to cut out video games and wasting my time online except for the odd Hacker News break while I'm at work.
The pendulum might be swinging, but i have a lot less free time now than I used to and I chose to use it more precisely and with more conscious intent rather than just letting the hours waste away clicking around in a digital wonderland.
If i want to read - then i make time for that. I make time for alone time, exercise, being outdoors. I make family time. I do this around work, taking my kid to sports events, school drop offs and pickups.
I look back and see the 20k posts i made on Vbulletin forms and all the reddit accounts I had and all the hours logged on video games and it all just seems like a waste of life looking back..
When i think about the things that enriched me, these things did not.
If they didn't enrich you then they didn't enrich you, but don't overly project your own experience onto others. Many (not all) video games have been enriching and/or healing experiences for me personally.
Human beings are social creatures and it's a psychological need whether people recognize this or not - and this is still considering some of us are introverts and it takes more out of us to be social.
40-50+ years ago, all the way back to the dawn of man - so most of human history, this conversation would be completely irrelevant.
Technology changes us an individuals and as a society, it's broken our bonds, ruined out communities, destroyed our connections to each other, increased rabid individualism - not just in the political sense but in the sense of consumer identities and lifestyle brands and hyper-specific cultural balkanization and what do we have to show for it?
mass increases in anxiety and depression levels.
The average high school student today has the anxiety levels of a person being seen by professionals for the disorder in the 90s.
As a parent... you are going to project one way or another. I'll project the way that'll more than likely build a stronger, happier, more resilient child.
This love affair with the people who give you likes and retweets being the only ones who really get you, is poison. Relating to digital worlds more than the real one - sitting around for hours upon hours "consooooomnig" digital goods from your phone or laptop, is not life.
I'm just saying bud, you're voicing some really black-and-white views that paint in broad strokes and are pulling together some pretty disparate things under an oversimplified umbrella. Good as your intentions may be, extremes and dogmas rarely help anyone to be happier or more resilient, especially children.
I'd advise you to take a step back and unpack the baggage you clearly have around this stuff. Not just for your own sake.
