Videogames keep youths away from crime, but...

To fact-check Prez DU30, who is appeasing China after ordering Filipino troops to occupy nine Spratly islets that the Philippines claims:

• The nine geological features have been occupied by the Philippines long before DU30. The largest is Pag-asa Island, populated by fishers and goatherds, with landing strip and seaport, and successive mayors and barangay chiefs (whom I met when I visited in 1983 and 2005). The rest are shoals, reefs, and sandbars: Lawak, Parola, Patag, Kota, Rizal, Likas, Panata, Ayungin. In 2002 the ASEAN-China Declaration of Conduct forbade any new occupation of un-held features.

• DU30 cannot sell the land to China. Foreigners cannot own land in the Philippines. Only Filipinos may purchase alienable public lands.

DU30 is assuring China that no new weapons will be used to occupy the Philippine claims, and that he’d eventually sell the islands to Beijing.

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Juveniles who stay home and play keep from mischief. Proof is in the numbers.

Crime in Europe and America is down by half since mid-1990s. Most dramatic is in England and Wales: since 1995 vehicle theft has fallen 86 percent, and burglaries 71 percent, The Economist reports. The mid-1990s cutoff is notable; that's when the first Millennials, persons born in the 1980s to early 2000s, were coming of age. That age bracket stands out in the crime stats. The number of youngsters between ten (the age of criminal responsibility in Britain) and 17 who ran afoul of the law has tumbled 84 percent since 2006. In contrast, crimes by adults declined only 46 percent.

Other studies support the trend. Interviewed in the Crime Surveys for England and Wales 2006-2016, victims of violence who thought their attacker was aged 16 or under fell almost half, from 14 to eight percent. And in 2012-2015 pupils who were suspended from secondary schools fell from 8.3 to 7.5 percent. Youths in Germany, Netherlands, and the US also have become more law-abiding, The Economist says.

Some factors for the drop in youth offenses are the same as with adults. Theft-prone items like televisions and car radios have diminished in value, so no longer worthwhile. Central locking and CCTVs have made carjacking and porch climbing tougher. Policing has improved.

Two factors pertain only to youths: vice and videogames. The share of youngsters who experimented with drugs halved from 2001 to 2014, but unchanged among adults. In 2014 only 38 percent of 11-15 year-olds admitted to trying alcohol, down from over 60 percent in 1988. Sobriety gives no reason to steal to sustain vice; juveniles not drunk or doped are not bold either to commit offenses. More striking is a 2012 research that British youths start at earlier age and spend more time online than European counterparts, The Economist says. Millennials worldwide are riveted in videogame narratives and graphics. In 2016 video-gaming hit $100 billion sales, making it the largest entertainment field these days.

So it’s true: Play Station keeps ’em away from the police station.

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There’s also a link between videogames and unemployment among young people, especially young men. That’s from a 2016 study by economists Mark Aguiar, Mark Bils, Kerwin Charles, and Eric Hurst, who call videogames one of the new “leisure luxuries.” Their finding is a global alert.

In 2000-2015 the employment rate of non-college grad males in their 20s fell ten percentage points, 82 to 72 percent. Those men live with their parents and tend not to marry at the same rate as their peers. And they play more videogames. Every hour less spent in work is another hour more for leisure; 75 percent of that pastime is on video-gaming.

It was in that period that videogame plots and graphics became more engrossing, social, and cheaper. Play satisfaction kept most young people from unsavory activities, but likely some also from aggressively pursuing careers.

The turn of the century also brought bad economic times for the age group. Labor-market options shrank, the four researchers noted. Hourly wages, adjusted for inflation, for college grads stagnated from the 1990s; those for fresh high-school grads even lessened. The proportion of high school and college grads not in work or school ballooned. In 2014, 11 percent of college grads were idle, compared to nine percent in 2004 and eight percent in 1994. The number of new college grads working non-degree jobs swelled from just over 30 percent in the early 2000s to 45 percent a decade later. Recession and the financial crisis hit the young adults harder than the rest of society. The young and the workless took to video-gaming to spend “unwanted downtime.”

To be sure, rabid video-gaming is the symptom rather than the cause of youth joblessness. Videogame designers would do well to incorporate features that could prepare players for gainful work. Social scientists can study the effects of video-gaming on marrying and interpersonal relations. The burden is more on government policymakers, of course, to ensure employment and livelihood for upcoming generations. Or else woe to the world where future leaders would be law abiding but impersonal, all single, and work inexperienced.

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