Are computer games killing society?

Spirederman

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Abit yes and no.

but I'd say Mobile Phones have caused more damage, that and facebook.

Computer games killed off kids going outside to play, that aspect changed, when I was a wee lad it was going down to the school fields with friends to whack a couple of jumpers down and play football, usually that game I don't know name of where one mug is the goalie and the others pair into teams of 2 trying to score to get into next round stuff. or Go-karting, biking, knock-and-nash etc, etc

then when about 12-13 computer consoles came into play and all that stopped completely.

Horrid text chat, twitter, selfies, facebook.........them things killed off the socializing, well maybe not killed it, but changed it.
I'm roughly the same age as you Dave, and we used to call the game with the mug goalie 'Two man Wembo' or ' One man Wembo' if it was just a single person instead of teams of 2. The Wembo obviously standing for Wembley. We all used current footballers names as well, when scoring or whatever and doing the comms. I remember around the 94 WC time I was always Gheorghe Hagi, or Hristo Stoichkov. Used to fucking love it, and just played football endlessly, if not that Cricket, Knock a door run, or at the time, wrong as I now know it is,going round the estate and tormenting someone with Mental Health problems to get a Chase off of them.
This was the era of the Megadrive and Commodore Amita,Atari St, and we used to have tournaments on the football games of the time as well such as Sensible Soccer,Kick Off, or Fifa on consoles, or games such as NHL, NBA Jam, Streetfighter II, Mortal Kombat etc.We were still out 90% of the time though, including football training twice a week in the evenings and playing on a Sunday morning.

I'm inclined to agree with you regarding mobile phones being at the initial root of the problem. Playing games never stopped us playing out, yet when I got to 19/20, when still playing Sunday League football, I noticed a shift with the introduction of texting. Even the older teens were texting non stop and this eventually filtered down, and it became noticeable the lack of kids playing out on the park, school fields and on the streets.

Quite sad really, as I know personally my 16 year old step lad has missed out on what I had when I was growing up, but the problem was already apparent when I got together with his mum when he was 10. It was already ingrained in him.
I won't make the same mistake with my own 2 young boys. Playing out is actively encouraged, TV is limited and they don't play games of any sort yet(Consoles).
I take my oldest to the football on a Saturday which he loves, whereas when asked how old the 16 year old was when bought his first console, I got the reply 4.
So wrong.

I love gaming even now, and will allow my kids to partake at some point, just not yet. I'd much rather see them running around the garden/living room with a ball, or scrapping with each other as we used to do.
 

Renegade

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We played Wembley too, for some reason my favourite player when I was 8 years old was Pierre van Hooijdonk whilst Forest were last in the Premier League. I was either him or Dwight Yorke...I was a weird kid.

Great game though.
 

Relentless

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We played Wembley too, for some reason my favourite player when I was 8 years old was Pierre van Hooijdonk whilst Forest were last in the Premier League. I was either him or Dwight Yorke...I was a weird kid.

Great game though.

This one kid who was obsessed with Brazilian footballers kept almost jizzing his pants to exclaim being Emerson Thome when he first came to the league
 

Womble98

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We played Wembley when I was at Primary School about 7 yrs ago. In the past, so when I was about 14/15 I spent a huge, ridiculous amount of time on games. These past few years though, finally got a solid group of mates, barely spending any time on them at all. Generally, I would say people play on games because the alternative isn't available.
 

Ebeneezer Goode

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cuppies and heads and volleys we played
 

Pyeman

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I think Rene makes some very good points. I would certainly agree with him that the extent to which video games impact on a person's life depends much on the personality of the individual in question and the context of their personal life.

I also agree that the idea of socialising isn't disappearing, it's just changing. This isn't just due to the increase in availability of computer games, but also many other platforms for communicating, predominantly social media. I work as a teacher and the amount of kids who claim their hobbies are Facebook and Twitter is astounding.

Whether or not this is 'bad' for society is an interesting question. I think it depends on perspective. Many people will argue that advances in communication technology have contributed to an increase in child obesity, and they're probably not wrong. On the other hand, I'm sure there are parents out there who are happy that their child can be playing with their friends from the safety of their own home rather than being out and about in the dark evenings of winter.

For my own part, I think it's sad that some children don't experience many of the kinds of things I did as a child; 18-a-side football games in the park, playing man hunt in the local woods, street cricket with a lamp post as the wicket.

As I type this, I find myself sounding oddly like my dad, who often tells me that "things were different back in his day" and that "he used to get away with far more than I ever could as a child." So perhaps this is just the natural progression of society; the next stage in social evolution.
 

Womble98

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I was out last night at a mates 18th, one thing I did notice was the huge amount of people taking photos on repeat doing the same poses over and over until they got one they liked, to then immediately post it on Facebook.

The thing that problem annoys me most is when you go out, and someone pulls out their phone and starts using it without saying "excuse me for a moment, need to check something". Really pisses me off.
 

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I don't understand how you can't just leave Facebook and the like alone when you're out. It's just rude.
 

Tilbury

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It's all about image and image projection. The need to be seen having a good time and getting as many likes on a picture as possible in order to feel happy.
Last week a couple of my housemates (girls) were talking about and comparing how many 'likes' they got on the same picture on Facebook and then Instagram and they genuinely seemed upset if a picture didn't have what they deemed to be enough. I despair.
 

Ebeneezer Goode

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It's like social media has turned real life into a really boring MMORPG.
 

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It's all about image and image projection. The need to be seen having a good time and getting as many likes on a picture as possible in order to feel happy.
Last week a couple of my housemates (girls) were talking about and comparing how many 'likes' they got on the same picture on Facebook and then Instagram and they genuinely seemed upset if a picture didn't have what they deemed to be enough. I despair.

I read a study a little while ago that blames social media for a rise in depression among teenagers and young people. The fact that people only project the good side of their life on Facebook/ Twitter etc. means that people who arent the most popular, or dont do photo-worthy activities all the time feel crap about themselves as all of their peers seem to be happier and more successful than they are. Then on the flipside, should someone dare to suggest that something in their life isnt all that well on Facebook, they are branded an attention seeker and either ignored or mocked.

I think its one of those things that as you get older, you know popularity isnt the be all and end all. My friends list on Facebook currently consists only of people I want to be on there. Family members, close friends, people I went to school/ college/ uni/ worked with who I actually liked, so while we maybe dont see each other anymore, I actually care enough about them to have it as a method to keep in touch with them, and the rest are mostly people I met online who I have shared interests with like football or gaming. I 'like' stuff that makes me laugh or smile, Ill comment on links my mates put up and have raging arguments with them, its great for group messaging if you're trying to arrange something, or for reminiscing when your mate posts up some terrible photo that I probably took when we were teenagers! Thats what Facebook is supposed to be for, its an easy way to stay connected and share stuff, but it has become an exhibition.

I say some of us grow up, plenty of others dont. On the subject of taking photos, Ive always been one of those people who has a camera at social events. When we were kids, I was the one who took my little camera into school or on trips and took those terrible natural photos of people messing around or dancing or falling asleep on the bus, all this back in the days before digital, so nobody got to see what these terrible pics were like until I got them developed! There were occasionally posed ones or group pics, but generally I always liked the more natural ones, that people didnt know I was taking and you can actually capture moments so much better. These days, I still always have my camera with me, and of course everyone has one on their phone now, but I take a lot less than I ever did, except maybe at football. Because its all about posing and selfies. (I will never EVER take a selfie btw...if I want a picture of myself doing something, Ill ask someone else to take it the old fashioned way thanks!) I went on a night out the other week with 4 mates, and I think I took 5 pictures, 3 of them were the same thing because my mate vetoed the first 2. Im now not allowed to take any pictures where she doesnt look less than 100% fabulous because its all about a Facebook impression. Yet scroll through my pictures, there are some utterly horrendous natural ones of her on nights out, but she has untagged them all, and now needs to approve tags. I do think its an image thing, she broke up with a lad she'd been with for 7 years about 2-3 years ago, and despite them still talking, he asked why she had deleted him. So she made her profile hidden from him and told him she'd deleted her profile. I then stuck my foot in it one night because I mentioned something a mate had posted, so she made a dummy 'fake' profile, that the likes of him were allowed to see but had virtually nothing on it. It was bloody exhausting keeping up with her, and now everything on there is staged and pointed. And I dont take pictures anymore.
 

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It's like social media has turned real life into a really boring MMORPG.

Worth watching the whole documentary if you haven't seen it (how many more times can I link Charlie Brooker in this thread), but watch from around the 1:34:00 mark in this video and you've had the same idea as him.

Social media does compare to a game and though I partake in it (hard not to, lest I become a social pariah), I pretty much detest it. It has completely bastardised not just the way we communicate with each other, but also how we act in public. It and the portability of cameras, bane of my existence. It's hard for society not to become completely shallow when everyone has a Facebook or Twitter in which they constantly 'have to' keep up appearances.

That said, my Facebook page has pretty much become a forum for people to dump old Simpson's quotes onto because I never use it, but most other people feel like they are playing a character on Facebook. What can I say to sound interesting? Which photo will make me look the coolest?

Fucking. Hate. It.
 

Pyeman

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Perception is the new reality. People don't give a shit about having a good time any more. They just want people to think they're having a good time. More and more people do things, not because they want to enjoy the experience of doing it, but because they think it will look good to others when they post it on Instagram.

The sad consequence of this is that people don't seem to live in the present any more. They live in the future. "I can't wait to see what the pictures from tonight look like" or "I wonder how many likes my new profile picture will get." Again it comes back to perception being prioritised over reality.
 

Ebeneezer Goode

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Like the retards that watch a fireworks display through their phones.
 

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There was me thinking that we drifted from the drawbacks of video games to social media idiots but I haven't considered that Facebook and Twitter could be considered games.
I was one of the last people on this planet to possess a Facebook account. I thought it was shit. I thought there's nothing Fb can do that msn can't. Then I saw how many people ditched msn for Fb. Never really liked it tbh. I post a few daft comments and it's nice to be remembered the birthdays of people you appreciate but it really isn't a place where you are going to learn about a certain subject and certainly not debate. All people on Fb post are omgs, lols, xds, ptdrs (that's French for lmfao or pmsl) and you look so beautiful (when in fact you want to say how did you get to so fat???). Making an actual interesting comment on Fb is almost forbidden.
It is useful though. You get to keep contact with people you don't get to see often (especially if you move/travel a lot and want to keep up) and let's face it Fb was extremely useful when migrating the lot of us from TFF to this messageboard. But that's it.
It is somewhat dying I reckon. Not sure how things are in the UK but here in Germany a lot of the events and photos are now shared on whatsapp. Now I don't have a smartphone ( :eek: ) so I don't have it and my friends actually have to think about contacting me via Fb (or, heaven forbid, sending me a text message!) because I don't have whatsapp. Just goes to show how fast social media is evolving.
Twitter on the other hand is great. I was able to do whole other sorts of activities such as listening to football podcasts, asking freelance journalists questions and rekindling writing football articles about French football in English. Again, I'm a slow fucker. I think I joined Twitter in October or something.
I'd say Twitter is much less look at me I'm a c*** than Facebook though. An RT or favourite wouldn't necessarily have the same meaning as a like for some people.
 

markwwfc1992

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Regarding mobile phones..

I went to Greneda recently. Every couple of days a large cruise liner would dock into the main harbour of the town coming all the way down from Miami bringing lots of tourists in the morning and would pick them back up in the evening. As the American tourists came off the ship, they would just sit in one of two of the only Westernised shops in the country (Subway or KFC), log into the WiFi and just sit playing their phones for a good 8 or so hours. Why would anyone pay so much money to go on a Caribbean cruise to just sit inside all day playing their phones instead of making the most of their trip? I wouldn't mind if they needed to send an important email or something, but they had the damn WiFi on the ship....

It makes me question the way society is going.
 

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