China has forbidden under-18s from playing games for more than three hours/week

This is the thing that is going to spur a backlash against the CCP in China. Or at least it should. Minors are the perfect protesters: are you going to jail, beat, or kill them? The international backlash would be incredible.

I spent a lot of time hiding away in my room - up late on the internet, playing video games, reading books, listening to music - often the kind aimed at the alienated. I felt alone, like i didn't belong.

Some of it was my personality, some of it was how my parents raised me. Some was how that was juxtaposed against the culture/environment i was raised into.

My parents pushed a lot of sports and i grew out of it - favoring poetry ( that i didn't have thick enough skin to ever better myself at), dreaming of being a rock musician (see former), watching hours of scifi and fantasy.

And i dunno. Now I'm 40. And all my life i've almost prided myself on my introversion, my anti-social aspects, my quirky, sometimes cynical view of the world, my constantly ability to not want to be locked into the major binaries and choices society sets out for you.

And after coming down with severe anxiety.... something about it just flipped in me that made me realize how valuable human connection is.

how much family matters. How much connections with your community does. Not some online community of people who only get in contexts you can easily block or mute.

How much.. being outside in sunshine and nature and being active, matters.

I look at this boring cyberpunk world i was a part of, and there's nothing there but isolation and depression. There's nothing there but bad habits preventing you from being your best, healthiest, happiest, you.

And it's one of these things you don't realize....until something happens that forces you to need these things. Then you look back and be like.. would i ever be right where I'm at, right here, right now.. if i didn't do all this mentally unhealthy shit for 25+ years?

There's lots of reasons i wasn't positively engaged with my peers - there's blame to go around to me, my folks, and even externally to just the way society was and increasingly is, but I take responsibility for my portion and i say my reaciton to it all was wrong.

And don't want my kid getting lost in digital worlds (and jesus - it's so much scarier today that it was 20-25 years ago), hiding away, brooding to depressive and aggressive, mad-at-the-world music and basically being someone who's unreachable unless you're some underdog geek or "wrong crowd" peer.

Is crime going to skyrocket? These kids are going to have a lot of time on their hands and nowhere to spend it.

> Of course, playing with a ball in a field might be better, but, covid.

Depending on the kind of "ball", but your kid goes to school., no?

that's way more dangerous than playing outside in the sunshine. from a covid perspective.

Lots of reasons this might be a shortsighted, footgun decision. Kids might use drinking or other more actually-damaging vices as substitute goods. Has the potential to generate mass resentment and foment agitation for political freedom. Et cetera.