Some people meet their spouse on a video game. Some meet life-long friends. Yeah, they might spend a few years of their life on something like Maple, but I think meeting a good girl on Maple and moving to her state to be with her, (or having her move to you, whatever,) is preferable to 7 years of clubbing and going through hundreds of degenerate guys and chicks, and possibly walking away with genital herpes. Clubbing and bars is how "cool" people meet each other. No thanks. You guys need to keep in mind that literally ANYTHING can be an addiction -- shopping, sex, thrill-seeking, etc can be just as bad as smoking, drinking and womanizing. Yeah, there's stuff I hate about video games, but I met some really good people through them. And because of the nature of the internet, you can trust easier and get hurt less than in real life. Not every friend you make on the internet is a fake one. For introverts, the internet is an imperfect alternative to holing themselves away and reading book after book for decades. That's what people like me, and many of you, did before there were video games and internet. It's good for intellectual development, but you might just die old and alone.
As for video games not teaching you anything, in the case of well-made MUDs, (see http://www.achaea.com,) a video game can be more informative than the vast majority of literature. That's cause there's a lot of crappy books, but the best text game in existence doesn't have crappy writing. Imagine a constant session of D&D with a couple hundred players involved at any given time, and that's Achaea.
As for video games not teaching you anything, in the case of well-made MUDs, (see http://www.achaea.com,) a video game can be more informative than the vast majority of literature. That's cause there's a lot of crappy books, but the best text game in existence doesn't have crappy writing. Imagine a constant session of D&D with a couple hundred players involved at any given time, and that's Achaea.