gaming is such a waste in the bigger picture
I used to be insanely addicted to games when I was still in middle school, particularly with this game called Elite Dangerous (which is basically an insanely grindy space trucking simulation game). It was so addicting to the point that I made a Youtube channel on it.
And for a few years, I kept playing and making videos. Immediately after school I started my daily 3-4 hour sessions doing nothing but fly nonexistent spaceships in nonexistent star systems to make nonexistent currency.
But as I entered high school, I started to see how much of a waste it was. This game had absolutely zero benefit to my actual life and made me sink thousands of hours which could've been used for anything else. And how was this supposed to help me in college admissions? Some mediocre YouTube channel can't even compete with literally any internship.
Furthermore, the whole online community (which I was deeply invested in) was filled with bums. There were straight unemployed people who were complaining like babies about the developers' occasional updates in an online video game instead of touching grass outside and looking for jobs. It was quite ridiculous to see so many people stuck in an online, virtual bubble complaining about some features that mildly frustrated them instead of going out in nature or going to the gym.
And so I quit. I stopped uploading videos in the channel and haven't played the game since.
Life has gotten so much better now in high school. Because I liberated myself from this addiction, I've gotten a job, an internship, hit the gym, and actually started living life in the real world. In the bigger picture of someone's lifetime, it's evident that games will never make someone's life better, and that your valuable time is better spent outside fishing and hiking and whatnot.