reading someone express the idea that NEETs "are robbing /themselves/ of agency" is surprisingly upsetting.
what is someone to do when they've grown up undersocialized, not in-tune enough to hang with the normals yet too prideful to debase themselves and consort with the common nerd? when they've no real skills, no hobbies, and (stemming from their failure to acquire any thus far) no drive to try and find some?
the phone is to blame, sure, but only for creating a highly-social, fast-paced civilization where everyone else is waiting to leave their fellow people behind the moment they fall out of cultural lockstep.
video games and pornography aren't taking these people's agency, they're providing a buffer. a way for shut-ins to pass the time so they don't up and kill themselves.
Not to say there isn't any overlap. But whereas people who are smart but somewhat lacking in social skills can thrive in nerd-dom, for people in the lowest quartile on both, paid employment is a race to the bottom.
(Side note - HN tends to hypothesise that smartness and social skills are inversely correlated. While there's certainly a trend for people to develop one at the expense of the other, there's not much correlation in innate levels).
Video games and porn play the same role here as weed has for at least the last couple of generations, and alcohol for centuries - they make an otherwise intolerable situation tolerable. If you've genuinely no escape from your circumstances, that's a good thing. If you might otherwise sort your life out and become a positive contributor, but they rob you of motivation to do so, not so much.
I wouldn't like to say which side the numbers come down on overall. When does taking the edge off go too far - harder to measure this when you don't have the direct indicators of health damage or violent/abusive behaviour that alcohol brings. Modern society tends to assume that the right amount of motivation to have is "as much as possible", but that's not always true.
of course -- nerds have friends, there's a nerd table in the lunch room, there's always some space carved out for nerd-type activities, they'll probably eventually find a matching nerd-girlfriend (or boyfriend, i suppose. neetdom is an affliction that hits guys harder.), parents know how to deal with nerd children, etc.
games and weed make the intolerable tolerable, as you say: some folks aren't well-configured for productive society, and if the option is between active torture trying to better themselves and "be normal", all-encompassing boredom, and soma-esque games 'n porn, i'm comfortable giving them the last category without constantly trying to tell them that they're doing it to themselves.
Yeah, NEETdom is mostly a male thing, which kind of begs the question of what happens to the female equivalent - low-functioning, not much productivity, neither intellectual nor social skills.
Some will end up getting landed with kids by men who don't stick around - in most countries some combination of the state and their extended family will pick up the tab.
Some won't have kids, but will act as carers for their wider family.
And overall being low-status, working a low-level job with no chance of progression, is less of a problem for women than men (Native-born men in particular, but that's a whole other can of worms), so some can just quietly get on with life.
I'm not sure what the lesson is here, but there's surely a link between NEETdom and the winner-takes-all game that men are expected to participate in.
what is someone to do when they've grown up undersocialized, not in-tune enough to hang with the normals yet too prideful to debase themselves and consort with the common nerd? when they've no real skills, no hobbies, and (stemming from their failure to acquire any thus far) no drive to try and find some?
the phone is to blame, sure, but only for creating a highly-social, fast-paced civilization where everyone else is waiting to leave their fellow people behind the moment they fall out of cultural lockstep.
video games and pornography aren't taking these people's agency, they're providing a buffer. a way for shut-ins to pass the time so they don't up and kill themselves.