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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Haffrung" data-source="post: 7771896" data-attributes="member: 6776259">First, in my experience most people who play tabletop games are healthy adults. They have jobs and families and meaningful engagement with broader society. So there's no reason to believe the popularity of tabletop gaming is a sign of declining capacity to function as adults. But the withdrawal of more and more people from meaningful social engagement is real, and it's a problem. Large numbers of 27 year old men living in their parents' basement detached from meat-space, lacking responsibility and purpose, is not healthy. For them or for society. And it turns out that what these men turn to in large numbers is video gaming and other digital nerd hobbies. They even get social validation for their mastery of Game of Thrones lore or mad skillz at Dark Souls. In that sense, adult nerd culture can be a symptom, rather than a cause, of a social ill. The virtual communities that have been fostered by social media, including those focused around nerd hobbies, are better than no social engagement at all. No doubt they've helped isolated or alienated people feel part of a social network, which is a good thing. But they are not a genuine substitute for real, meatspace social bonds. The science is out on this. Weakening real-world social bonds correlates to all sorts of undesirable outcomes in physical and mental health. In descending order of desirability:1) Real-world social bonds.2) Digital social bonds.3) No social bonds. The question is whether the ease and convenience of engaging with digital 'community' is deterring people from seeking out and strengthening real-world social bonds. It's similar to the concerns around the ease of accessing online porn taking enough of the edge off the sex urge that increasing numbers of men simply don't even try to find a mate in the real world. And like the men cited in the study who find at 36 that they're unemployable, if you don't develop real-world social skills in your 20s, you're going to have a tough time getting into the game in your 30s or 40s.</blockquote>

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