Game News “The Nintendo generation is more fragile” according to a commander of the American army
Responsible for violent behavior among young people, considered an addiction by the World Health Organization… Many evils are hung (sometimes rightly) on the back of video games. And today, they would be indirectly responsible for the fragility of young people.
“The Nintendo Generation”
This is in a press release published by the DVID (Defense Visual Information Distribution), official press organ of the Pentagon (United States Department of Defense), that a member of the American army spoke about the difficulties of recruiting young people aged 18 to 25. Jon-Marc Thibodeau, Major (rank equivalent to Commander in the French army) spoke about the physical condition of the trained young people, more fragile than that of their predecessors, made delicate by their sedentary way of life:
The skeletons of the soldiers of the Nintendo generation did not solidify before their arrival (at the training camps, editor’s note) so some break more easily than others.
More generally, the article talks about the injury risks of Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2010). Used by Mr. Thibodeau, “Nintendo generation” is the new favorite expression to designate a young population. Even so, it seems outdated today: Nintendo took American homes by storm… in the days of the NES and the Super NES. Today today it seems more relevant to consider that the younger generation is growing up with games like Minecraft, Call of Duty and of course Fortnite.
American army and young people, a long history
However, a single statement does not summarize the opinions of an entire trade. Vice recalls that two years ago, it was former Navy Admiral William H. McRaven who came to the defense of the millennials (or generation Y): in an interview, he even said that “anyone who considered them too soft hadn’t seen them in shootings in Afghanistan“:
“We were honored and fortunate enough to be the final piece of this very challenging puzzle. At the end of the day it was about the hundreds of thousands of soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, civilians, the CIA, NSA, everybody that contributed to bring bin Laden to justice.” pic.twitter.com/5weaUe7eb2
—CBS Mornings (@CBSMornings) May 20, 2019
On this subject, the American army has already tried to recruit video game players via an initiative that was debated at the time: on its eSports channel, the American army offered a competition to win a controller Xbox Elite Series 2. Except that once the link opened, it was an army recruitment form page that was displayed. A method pointed out by many streamers but also by political representatives like Alexia-Ocasio Cortez.
Source : Vice (1, 2) and DVIDS
