Add Category
Posted
Video games may be meeting the needs of younger men traditionally satisfied by meaningful work, researchers studying the labour market in the United States have found.
American men aged between 21 and 30 are working 12 per cent fewer hours compared to the year 2000, and are also earning less money and staying home longer.
And while a decline in workforce participation is normally coupled with a lower self esteem, video game success might be a stand-in for achievement in the real world.
US commentator Evan Urquhart said modern day gaming satisfies many of the wants people normally seek to satisfy at their job.
"There's some research in psychology that suggests that we all have basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness," Mr Urquhart said.
"[For example] the ability to make choices, feelings of mastery and achievement, and with online games, relating to other people that you would otherwise get in the workforce.
"It seems to me that a lot of these games really provide a lot of that same psychological benefits."
For Mr Urquhart, it is not much of a stretch that sophisticated online gaming is becoming a solution for Western societies now grappling with a changing future of work.
"You can imagine a sci-fi future where we're all playing games and kind of soothed into being okay with the fact that humanity is kind of obsolete," he said.
The researchers at three US universities who conducted the study have come up with a theory that is holding up so far — since 2000, video games have got better.
Their preliminary paper concludes life satisfaction for the young men in the group increased during the 2000s despite stagnant wages and declining employment rates.
"These patterns are in stark contrast to answers from older workers during the 2000s, for whom satisfaction fell sharply, tracking their declines in employment," the paper reads.
"We take these results as suggesting a role for improved leisure options for young men."
Because Australia weathered the fallout of 2008's global financial crisis much better than the United States, the same trend does not seem to be evident here.
Peter Fitzgibbon, 29, said the satisfaction he derives from video games is still less than what he gets from his job, but he can see merit in the research.
"I think there definitely is something to the theory that you get that reward, the satisfaction out of winning or completing tasks," Mr Fitzgibbon said.
"In games, you're sitting there, you're given a list of tasks, and you're kind of doing that as a proxy for doing tasks in real life."
Topics: games, work, united-states