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ORIGINAL: MrsWargamer

Well my son seems to regard most MMOs as a chat program with a game attached instead of a game program with a chat program attached

But as he has several girls in his life, even while rarely seeming to leave his room, he must have learned some enviable skill to make him able to attract girls without needing to go look for them very much

Well at least it seems most of my local single male gamer friends normally do NOT have much success in finding girl friends thanks to never getting off of their computer much.

I have to chime in on the son thing. My two sons are different in many ways. The oldest hikes, runs every day and is somewhat shy. He still plays a lot of games(pc and board) and is now married. My youngest(now 25 and a computer engineer) almost never leaves the computer, playing MMORPG's and strategy games, yet he also has girls coming out of the wood work. I had to hunt girls when I was younger and have yet to figure out how my youngest son does it. He also has superb social skills. Go figure.

Well I did say 'might have done yourself critical harm'. I think too often too often too many people actually prove out my comments during their replies.

Text is notoriously lousy at conveying most of what humanity has relied on for hundreds and thousands of years of communication. Posture, tone, pace, local linguistic context. Which you get none of with just text. Not to mention too often the kids resort to just inventing words, or they intentionally alter the original definition of the word ie 'that's totally sick' well that meant what it meant when I was a kid, but today it means the opposite.

My son when not playing just about everything under the sun, and often he is doing 3 things at the same time via multiple monitors, is often creating art of some sort. I don't think he's actually bought any of his gifts he's given to friends in recent years. He likes to jog too. He reads so quickly that in most cases he's done most course work long before the course was due to be finished.

The internet has done a lot to connect me with persons with like problems. But there's limits to that. Nothing actually replaces actually talking with someone about something in person. I'll take 1 hour once every 2 weeks with a skilled opinion helping me with problems, over 100 people online even when they have the same problem. Because sometimes, you need to actually be with someone to relate entirely.

But I can sympathize with an Aspergers sufferer. One has to wonder though, how many of society's things that some of us suffer from, were created by some of our society's ways of doing things. Although I confess to having no personal experience with anyone that sufferers from this particular hell.

Nowadays however there are too many rules and regulations (atleast here in Norway), to the extent that if todays government had seen what I was allowed to do unsupervised as a kid, my parents would have lost custody.

Amen. to your observation Treje439. How true, How true! This is the same case in the USA.

ORIGINAL: terje439
The parents and the government rules are as much to blame for how the kids end up as the PC and TV itself.
Terje

So much I wanted to say, summed up in one sentence.

my mom had to kick me out of the house a fair amount in the summer when i was a kid since otherwise i'd sit inside all day, often playing on the now legendary C64 when my friends were elsewhere

however when my friends came over more often than not we'd whip out board games (axis and allies/shogun/battletech/cards - the list goes on) and play that. i always thought computer games are for when you don't have someone to play with so it was a good way to whittle time away. if your kids like games then they like games and there's not much you can do about it except make sure they don't go crazy spending 16 hours a day on a computer, and if he/she had friends over i'd steer them towards board games. computer games are a drug to a lot of people and most kids so it's always a battle to rip them away from the screen

computer games do all the work for you so all you have to do is sit and stare - board games you need to read, comprehend, setup, stay within boundaries set by words in the rules (not programmed to limit you), and involves real talking and discussion, and teamwork (you all have to agree on on the interpretation of the rules) so even though it's a game it teaches you *live* socialization and organization

see what kind of games your kids like and buy a boardgame version of the subject (maybe let them pick it out so they feel ownership) - boardgames are going through a Renaissance right now so lots of choice to take advantage of!

We allow our kids 30 minutes of computer game time at most. Yes, sometimes it gets stretched a bit, and we don't allow it everyday. My kids spend more time reading than play computer games. Heck, I spend more time playing computer games than them.