If you played video games for just 10 minutes per day…
that’s not bad. Only 10 minutes out of
24 hours? Sure. BUT – 10 minutes per day is:
- 70 minutes
per week
- 4 Hours and 40 minutes per month
- 56 Hours per year (over 2 full days)
- 560 Hours per decade – (that’s over 23 full days!)
- At $10 an hour, 10 minute daily video game playing totals to $5,600 per decade.
- At an average typing speed of 40 words per minute (wpm), that’s enough time to type 1,344,000 words per decade: the length of 28 novels that are about 50,000 words each.
- At an average human walking speed of 3mph, that's enough time for a person to walk from Boston to Oklahoma City (about 1680 miles) per decade.
- You could watch Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space” music video about 8,400 times per decade.
- 4 Hours and 40 minutes per month
- 56 Hours per year (over 2 full days)
- 560 Hours per decade – (that’s over 23 full days!)
- At $10 an hour, 10 minute daily video game playing totals to $5,600 per decade.
- At an average typing speed of 40 words per minute (wpm), that’s enough time to type 1,344,000 words per decade: the length of 28 novels that are about 50,000 words each.
- At an average human walking speed of 3mph, that's enough time for a person to walk from Boston to Oklahoma City (about 1680 miles) per decade.
- You could watch Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space” music video about 8,400 times per decade.
That is staggering, isn’t it? There's just one problem: 10 minutes of video games per
day is a pittance. What is
realistic? Harris Interactive published a study in 2007 that found "average" kids ages 8-18 played 13-14 hours per week. In
fact, the 13 hour per week benchmark holds for ALL U.S. gamers ages 2 and up, according to NPG Group in a 2010 study. That works out to about 1
hour and 51 min. per day. That is:
- 13 hours per week
- 13 hours per week
- 52 hours
per month (more than 2 full days)
- 624 hours per year (26 full days)
- 6,240 hours per decade (260 full days – that’s over 8 solid months of time)
- At $10 per hour, 13 hours per week of video games is $62,400 per decade.
- Typing at 40wpm, that's 14,976,000 words per decade: the length of 300 novels of
around 50,000 words.
- At 3mph, a person
could walk 18,720 miles per decade - that's just shy of walking from the southernmost point in South America to the northernmost point in Alaska… and back.
- You could watch Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space” music video about 93,600 times per decade.
Sounds bad doesn’t it? Now, lets get really freaky: to a hardcore
gamer, 2 hours per day is nothing. NPD ranks the "hardcore" gamers at 22 hours per week – that’s more than 3 hours per
day. But in 2010, NPD Group identified one category of people as “Extreme Gamers,” estimated to be about 4% of the U.S. Population. What is extreme? 48.5 hours per week playing video games. Close to 7 hours per day. 48.5 hours a week - more than two full days of time and more than some people work per week - becomes:
- 194 hours per month (more than 8 full days)
- 2,328 hours per year (97 full days!! – more than 3 solid months per year)
- 23,280 hours per decade (970 full days – more than 2.5 solid YEARS per decade)
- At $10 an hour, 48.5 hours per week becomes a jaw-dropping $232,280 per decade.
- At 40 wpm, that’s 55,872,000 words: more than 1,100 novels of about 50,000 words
- At 3mph, a person could walk around the equator of the earth nearly 3 times.
- You could watch Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space” music video about 349,300 times per decade.
- 194 hours per month (more than 8 full days)
- 2,328 hours per year (97 full days!! – more than 3 solid months per year)
- 23,280 hours per decade (970 full days – more than 2.5 solid YEARS per decade)
- At $10 an hour, 48.5 hours per week becomes a jaw-dropping $232,280 per decade.
- At 40 wpm, that’s 55,872,000 words: more than 1,100 novels of about 50,000 words
- At 3mph, a person could walk around the equator of the earth nearly 3 times.
- You could watch Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space” music video about 349,300 times per decade.
The first cost of video gaming is unimaginable amounts of time. When I say "full days" and "solid months," that's exactly what I mean. All of the figures above are based on full 24-hour blocks of time. It is a shame to consider the potential innovation, discovery, and creation that could occur when someone is dwindling their life away. Sadly, more current statistics don't show improvement.
Most people playing video games are not paid to do so. Playing a video game doesn’t hone a skill set, teach you calculus, or let you practice a craft. Moreover, they cost money: hundreds of dollars in equipment, along with many games priced at $50-60 apiece as new releases. And within the span of a couple years, the hardware will be outdated (requiring new hardware) and those same games will only depreciate in price. In other words, they really aren't that good of an investment. Mobile games are also a large money drain and time drain, with free titles such as Candy Crush effectively pulling users into addiction and getting the user to buy "features" for the game… a purchase which does not buy anything real. All those $0.99 purchases add up. $0.99 per day for a decade is several thousand dollars.
Often, the video game debate is raging around content - "Do violent video games promote violent behavior?" and "Are video games harmful to my child?" Let's save the content for another debate because the frequency alone should be considered a crisis. Even the first example here (10 minutes per day) shows a big chink in the armor of "everything in moderation." There's a running joke on the internet:
"Why haven't you ever seen a Lamborghini commercial before? Because the people who can afford them aren't sitting around watching TV." …or playing video games.
"Why haven't you ever seen a Lamborghini commercial before? Because the people who can afford them aren't sitting around watching TV." …or playing video games.
How are you spending your time?
