According to the U.S. Army Major, Jon-Marc Thibodeauthe youth of America are experiencing a Sedentary life which makes them fragile e prone to injury. The thing that he did discuss is this: Major Thibodeau has labeled these young Americans as “The Nintendo generation”.
According to the US military, the Nintendo Generation “is weak”
Who among you is part of the Nintendo generation? For most video game enthusiasts – even Nintendo fanatics – this term tends to apply to people who have become fans from the company’s 8- and 16-bit production. between the late 1980s and mid-1990s. The so-called Nintendo Generation, therefore, stands rapidly approaching 40 yearsif it has not already reached this milestone.
However, for US Army Major Jon-Marc Thibodeau, the term applies to today’s youth.
The Major, in fact, by Nintendo Generation means all the young people of today, whose age is between 18 and 25 years old about. This news, and Thibodeau’s subsequent claims, come from an official press release published in the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service, a hub of official images, videos and news published by the Pentagon.
The article, entitled “Why today’s ‘Gen Z’ is at risk for boot camp injuries”, reported an interview with Army Major Jon-Marc Thibodeau, a clinical coordinator responsible for medical readiness at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. The Major described Gen Z recruits as “soft, cuddly morsels with mushy skeletal structures unprepared for the rigors of military life thanks to an education that includes too many video games and too few outdoor activities.”
When asked about today’s youth, Major Thibodeau was in fact directed:
The skeleton of the Nintendo Generation soldiers is not tempered by activity prior to arrival, so some of them break more easily.
The captain also spoke Lydia Blondin, assistant chief of physical therapy at Leonard Wood Army Community Hospital. Blondin talked in detail about the kind of injuries she saw in the so-called Nintendo Generation.
We see injuries ranging from acute fractures and falls, to anterior cruciate ligament tears, to muscle strains and stress fractures, with the vast majority of injuries related to overuse.
The remainder of the press release then urged those seeking to join the military to do some basic physical preparation before going to the training camp.
Truth or yet another stereotype about gamers?
Analyzing the matter carefully, it appears that Major Thibodeau was trying to say that the more sedentary lifestyle of the modern technology-driven era it tends to produce young people who are less physically strong compared to their counterparts of the glorious and long gone 1950s.
Unintentionally he has in fact compared two different historical periods. At that time, children played outside and tempered character by falling from trees or to the ground, peeling their knees and getting a pat on the back from their parents. Nowadays, however, they spend two or more hours in front of video games: or at least that’s what the Major claims.
In reality, however, this is all rather comical. Not just because of the mistake from the point of view of label and yet another and useless stereotype about gamers. We enjoy reading that today’s youth is described in this way, and above all as the Nintendo Generation. Perhaps the Major is unaware of it, otherwise he would not have said it but Nintendo is one of the few companies that encouraged young and old to get up from the sofa to get some movement.
And we have the proof: it is video games. Between Wii Sports, Wii Fit and more recently Nintendo Switch games like ARMS, Ring Fit Adventure, Fitness Boxing e Jump Rope Challenge. These are all video games that encourage movement is one more active lifestyle to varying degrees, especially compared to the competition.
The Soft American and Nintendo Generation
Also, if we think about it, injuries in basic training they are not new and certainly the fault it’s not video games. In 1960, then President-elect John F. Kennedy wrote an op-ed in Sports Illustrated where he talked about “The Soft American”.
Apparently the Nintendo Generation is one new version of “The Soft American”, but it is also outdated. The generations of kids whose parents thought Nintendo was a synonymous with all video games and consoles they were there Generation X and millennials. We are talking about the times when Nintendo consoles dominated the concepts of popular culture about video games.
I know it Generation Z (the one that Major Thibodeau refers to), who most likely grew up playing Minecraft, Call of Duty or Fortnite, saw that Major Thibodeau still thinks of them as the “Nintendo Generation”, they would probably consider him cringe.
Training before training
As we mentioned earlier, the press release concludes with what recruits need to do before starting training. To prepare for basic training, Thibodeau recommends that new recruits “get off the couch” while Blondin recommends that they train. Preparation, as revealed, may include:
- Begin a training program with exercises such as corsathe walk e weight training;
- Talk to your own recruiter of any training opportunity;
- Take the sole e drink milk regularly; Blondin said low calcium and vitamin D levels are commonly seen, particularly with bone stress injuries;
- Follow one proper diet.
This is all pretty funny but we feel it is not necessary to insult or attack what Major Thibodeau and Captain Lydia Blondin have stated. It is good to keep in mind that we are faced with people who they live in a completely different reality from ours. And then, most likely, they are light years away from the concept of “Video games and the digital world”.
At the end of the game, these are just opinions bottomless. Each player is different from the others and each of them knows what it is worth, even on a physical level. In short, among us there could be the gamer who spends two hours in front of his favorite console and spends another two hours in the gym. Or the one who passes four, in front of his own console of the heart. Is that a problem? Absolutely not.
And then, if we really have to say it all, video games are not the main problem of “Sedentary lifestyle”.