Context: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-rolls-out-new-rules-minors-online-gaming-xinhua-2021-08-30/

Much ado has been made of the "sex recession" or rising sexlessness, which disproportionately afflicts young men. There are arguably many reasons, but one factor that plays into it is addiction to the vidya.

Online games are pretty much mobile NEET factories. Total historical aggregate hours spent playing video games tracks the level of sexlessness, and on an individual level you'd likely see the same thing: the young men who play online video games for 8+ hours a day almost certainly have fewer real social connections of any sort than those who don't play at all. This includes romantic partners. And I've seen this play out in person, multiple times: a marginal guy turns to video games to substitute for in-person interactions instead of putting himself out there, building social skills, and bettering himself, and before you know it he's dropping out of university and completely isolated from the world outside his games. It is "spiritual opium," to borrow the CCP's phrase.

Banning these video games would force young men to focus on other things, which are better for their social development than the games. Even if they're on the street corner with friends drinking a forty, at least they're stimulating the local economy, learning real social interaction, and are more likely to encounter potential partners.

Why now? Video games are built differently than in the past. Companies literally bring in the same consultants that casinos do in order to develop addictive lever-pulling mechanics. And the "social" aspect of video games can now act as a substitute for real interactions: the connections people make in online video games are "social" in the same sense that the connections people make on OnlyFans are "romantic." Pale simulacra of the real thing.

Why should society care about this? Young men end up suffering disproportionately from the damage caused by video games, and we should care about the wellbeing of young men. Not only does it crowd out the kind of fortuitous encounters that create real happiness, but years of it causes not just social stagnation but outright regression. On top of this, it hurts women who now have to compete for a smaller group of eligible men (as the unkempt 8-hours a day gamer is obviously not an eligible partner), forcing them to put up with bad behavior from the remainder. And it's relevant for the wellbeing of the society and the state, both because of decreased economic productivity and declines in birth rates as fewer romantic pairings develop.

This analysis should also probably apply to porn: a guy who watches porn for hours per day is obviously hurting himself and society, and he should be out there meeting actual women instead.

I acknowledge that freedom is an important thing to keep in mind, but it's a less salient concern here because we're talking about targeting people below 18. In the same way we don't let 16 year olds go to casinos or purchase cigarettes, we should do the same for novel addictions that can permanently damage their life trajectory.