The only thing positive I see is that they actually have a closed circle from different nations, so he made some "online friends" there.
Here are some ways it helped me kickstart my self taught software engineering carreer:
- I learned how to enter the zone almost on command. I recognized my triggers and exploited them.
- I learned how to moderate a community. Now I see the fruits of that because somehow in the two companies I've worked at I've been seen as a leader even when I was a junior developer.
- I learned that learning stuff wasn't really that hard. It mostly requires dedication. I memorized speedrunning routes from google doc files for several games and it translates well into the experience I've had of reading documentation to learn a tool.
- I perfected my English. As a non-native speaker, practicing English with natives gave me the tools to now work for companies abroad that are astronomically better than local ones in every conceivable way.
I'm sure there are other benefits as well. There are also some risks such as social isolation, but that really depends on the player's surroundings more than anything.
It shouldn't replace irl friends, but there are much worse online friends to have than Classic Tetris players.
That being said, I’ve followed the scene for 6 years and always found it very interesting to watch.
Pot and TV can be fun too, and is mostly indistinguishable from what most Suburbanites do in their late twenties anyway. In my view you want to teach your kids how to assess if something has become a destructive obsession.
Likewise, if the kid is objectively good and entertaining, there is a market for it just like any other
I was a pretty high-level Scrabble player, devoting a handful of years of my life to it, and it’s one of the biggest regrets I have. Total waste of time and only a attempt to ignore the other things I hated about my life.
A more appropriate analogy for me would actually be frontend development in my early twnties. I was genuinely interested in the technical bits, independent of the fact that I hated various aspects of my life, but I escaped into it and later realized that it wasn't worth it because I was fired anyway. But I don't regret building up skills in that.
Point is, your kid finds something they're good at, maybe you cultivate it rather than try and repress it. Maybe they get too obsessed because they feel repressed by their parents in other areas, that's a thing. But you teach them appropriate life balance skills and hopefully they have the framework to step back when it's time.
Neither were a replacement for the other.
It's been the subject of study but it's impossible to truly reject the hypothesis due to the ubiquity of the effect - there's no control group. Obviously correlation is not causation, but I think the severity of the effects warrant further thought and investigation.
Online friends were very important to me growing up, and still are today.
I answered, but to further clarify: online friendships are not sufficient. No one said they don't have their place, either.
Can hardly blame your son for not taking something seriously which is mostly taken seriously because everybody thinks that everybody else takes it seriously and you can't just opt out of impressing others because it will limit what you can do and earn in the future. College itself is just a glorified game but a far more boring and unfair one than Tetris.
Good for him for finding the experience that he enjoys when he's young.
It's the same excitement as speedrunning if that helps you get it. Having a community where you are all trying to get better at something while having fun doing so.