This question is inspired by the Australian law that bans people under the age of 16 from social media. But then when I though about it, couldn’t the same argument be made for video games? I mean there are kids just waste their time on video games and not do any of their school assignments.
This purpose of post isn’t me arguing for or against the Australian law or any hypothetical law about a similar ban on video games, I just want to see Lemmy’s opinions on video games compared to social media. To me they seem like both have valid arguments of being harmful.
Edit: Added “Why or why not?” to the question.
No.
Most of the issues with video games come from either game-related social media (e.g. bullying, political indoctrination, or just the massive time sink that MMOs and other multiplayer games can be which has an element of peer pressure) or stuff that is relatively easy to police on a per-game-basis (e.g. gambling, extreme contents). You can certainly waste a lot of time with single player games, too, but at that point we might as well not allow children to go home from school at all.