Slashdot Mirror
Ban Fortnite, Says Prince Harry (gamespot.com)
Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, is calling for the ban of popular battle royale game "Fortnite." The prominent member of the British royal family visited a YMCA in West London and spoke to mental health experts about addictive games and social media, saying that the latter is more addictive than drugs or alcohol. From a report: "[Fortnite] shouldn't be allowed," he said. "Where is the benefit of having it in your household? It's created to addict, an addiction to keep you in front of a computer for as long as possible. It's so irresponsible. It's like waiting for the damage to be done and kids turning up on your doorsteps and families being broken down." He also suggested that social media is "more addictive than alcohol and drugs." Further reading: Fortnite Creator Sees Epic Games Becoming as Big as Facebook, Google; and 'Fortnite' May be a Virtual Game, But It's Having Real-life, Dangerous Effects.
I think it is plausible that free to play games, where the goal of creating them is more or less to get people addicted (so they buy more stuff), could be more addictive than drugs or alcohol, where the goal is to give plusure. I am not sure if we are there yet, but in principle I could see that happening.
The important difference between free to play games on one side and drugs and alcohol on the other is that the cost to the individual is much lower. The cost is mainly in terms of time spend on it that could be spend more productively for the games (and lets face it, most everybody waste quite a bit of their time on things), where for drugs and alcohol it futher includes the persons health and that they can easier lead to crimes (because you need to spend much more money on getting a fix and crime is consided an easy way to get money, correctly or otherwise). It also means that it would be harder to ban, because while drugs and alcohol has negative effects on society outside the individual, the negative effects are more exclusively focused on the individual for games.
I used to think that, but looking at the United States right now I'm seeing the advantages of a constitutional monarchy.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Illegal drugs don't have multinational companies pushing them on children. Fortnite does.
Says the guy who has enough free time on his hands to go visit addiction services and see what problems they are dealing with in society, and who has a platform he can use to talk about the problems he has seen with his own eyes.
It's absolutely not true that the monarchy is a net gain for UK plc. To make that claim you have to assume that, to pick one example , no-one would visit Windsor Castle if we abolished the monarchy. Just like no-one ever visits the Palace of Versailles anymore.
It's royalist propaganda. The second claim is no better, since it's so vague it makes no actual sense.
Sorry for post as AC, but I modded you up. This is the only good info here, and points to the real issue at hand. Parents abandoning their kids to these video games is worse for them than drugs or alcohol. It's even worse than video games.
And as far as playing video games with your kid, well that's simply genius. No, it's beyond genius - it's wisdom.
Pretty much.
Social media is more dangerous to the people in power than drugs and alcohol, is more like it. That information age is really upsetting them.