3 Reasons to Never Play Video Games at the Office

Don't play video games at work.

This is sort of like saying: "Don't mix beer and wine together. Oh yeah, don't drive on the railroad tracks." Words to live by, says Bill Murray in "Groundhog Day."

Do we really need someone to tell us not to play video games at work? Apparently...

Lost Production

According to studies, men are wasting more time playing video games at work. Researchers at the University of Chicago and the University of Rochester say that work hours for young men between age 21 and 30 have fallen by 12%.

The reason? Well, at least part of the reason, they would rather be playing video games -- about 25 to 50 hours a year of their working time.

Lost Control

Video games have been blamed for many societal ills, such as violence, sexism, racism, and more. It's often a chicken-or-the-egg problem, but some scientists have found real links and they are not good for workers.

"Aggressive cognitions and aggressive affect, as wells as decreases in pro-social behaviour, empathy and sensitivity to aggression" were cited as negative consequences of game playing in an American Psychological Association report last year.

Lost Liberty

Three men recently pleaded guilty to cybercrimes that led to the meltdown of a 300,000 devices and a large part of the internet crashing last year. They created the Mirai botnet to hijack vulnerable internet-connected devices to launch powerful distributed denial-of-service attacks, prosecutors said.

And how did these young men begin their descent into captivity? Playing Minecraft and trying to gain an advantage in the online video game.

So yeah, it's hard to do your job when you are distracted by playing video games. It's even harder to do it when you are in jail.

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