Since screens became mainstream, video games have encapsulated men around the globe. Their influence in modern life has only expanded as technology has advanced and the gaming market has flourished. Most children, teenagers and young adults – as well as many older adults – spend many hours a week invested in the virtual world, which is used as a social playground and a mental escape for most people.
Modern life has widely accepted the existence of video games. Many gamers claim to experience mood-boosting benefits and improved mental capability from the activity. But what does this venture truly cost?
The Truth about video games
The truth is that playing video games makes men weak. They are one of the methods used by society to (metaphorically) castrate men in the modern world.
Whether you love them or hate them, the reality is that playing video games regularly will limit your potential. It will hinder the quality of relationships, skills and mindset that you can, and should, develop.
Time? Got none
To begin with, they sap too much time from the schedule of a young man. 9 times out of 10, someone who claims to be disciplined with their use of video games (and only plays for ‘an hour a day’) is generally either lying to themselves or to you. Video games are designed to capture as much of your attention and time as possible. If you think that your discipline is enough to withstand the billions of dollars invested into optimizing each and every aspect of the game, there’s a good chance you are fooling yourself.
The fact is that It is the job of highly skilled game developers to overcome your discipline. The more time you spend in front of the screen, the more dollars filter into their bank account.
Even if you manage to stick to ‘an hour a day of video games’, that’s still 7 hours of your week which has evaporated. In any case, most men play for far longer than this.
When you are investing so much time into the virtual world, how do you expect to achieve your dream physique, or start that business to retire your family, or learn to talk to women? Time allocation is the solution to 99% of problems that a man has. Playing video games is one of the biggest slaps in the face to that solution.
Most people who complain about lack of time are usually wasting it doing dumb stuff (like playing video games). We all know that time is our most valuable asset. Spending it on activities that will advance you as a man will bring you more happiness than the spikes of dopamine from playing video games ever will.
Dopamine receptors? What are those?
As hinted above, video games lead to spikes in dopamine because they activate specific reward circuits in the brain. What’s the problem then? – Feel good hormone right? Well, generally, any activity that spikes your dopamine and isn’t clearly a helpful habit – is generally harmful instead.
That’s because, over time, they will (metaphorically) fry your dopamine receptors. This means that your brain becomes adjusted to higher levels of dopamine when exposed for prolonged periods, and becomes less sensitive to lower levels of dopamine. In simple terms, when you participate in dopamine-spiking activities often, the brain gets used to it. It then begins to find normal activities, that don’t spike your dopamine as much, boring. This is why your normal life feels boring compared to the rush of video games.
This is why games (and sugar, and drugs) become so addicting; the brain begins to crave those spikes of dopamine.
Over time, even those spiked levels of dopamine become normal and are perceived as boring. This results in a depressing cycle where you seek out more stimulating content. You receive larger spikes of dopamine – which fry your dopamine receptors even further, leading to more stimulating content – and the cycle continues.
Doesn’t sound good. Want to hear some ever more depressing news?
Following elevated levels of dopamine, there is a dip where dopamine levels go below baseline. Basically, afterwards, you feel even worse than you did before playing the game. This further contributes to the dangerous cycle mentioned above. People begin to associate the end of a gaming session with negative feelings of depression. As a consequence, they continue playing for even longer to escape those feelings for as long as possible.
Basically, game devs have converted your dopamine into a money-making machine, and screwed you over in the process.
Obesity crisis? Yeah no sh*t
This one’s pretty obvious. If you’re sitting in front of a screen all day how do you expect to not be overweight, let alone lean and muscular? Maybe your video game character is jacked and shredded to the bone, but if video games are your idea of free time ‘well utilised’ then there’s a good chance you probably aren’t.
There’s a reason the world is becoming fatter and less muscular day by day: too much sedentary time. Humans are not supposed to behave like this. They are supposed to be active for most of the day and hence have lean and muscular frames. That is what nature intended.
So instead of staying seated for the 7th hour today to load into another game of Fortnite (or whatever is popular now) – consider getting up and doing some physical activity.
B-But gaming helps me make friends a-and I actually learn a lot from playing video games…
It’s pretty clear that both of these are just copes. If you are going to play video games, at least admit that it’s because you enjoy the little spikes of dopamine you get, not because video games will improve your social life or enhance your hand-eye coordination.
For starters, the friends you develop through playing video games (whose faces you may never have seen before) are not real friends. Apart from the game, there is likely very little you actually have in common. Additionally, talking with people through a headset is not going to teach you about how to actually interact in real life to build meaningful relationships. Finding real people to talk to face to face will serve you a lot better.
Secondly, what you ‘learn’ from a video game is very limited outside of the actual video game. It rarely has any application in real life. Even if there is a useful skill developed from a game, you’d be much better off learning it directly than through some dopamine-frying activity.
Conclusion
Hopefully, now I have managed to convince you that removing video games from your life is better rather than worse. Even though I have painted them in a pretty bad light, you don’t need to completely cut out video games immediately. You can start by drastically reducing the time per week you spend on them, and from there cut back even further till you are free from their clutches.
