I Can't Do That Jane!

Today's class article talked about Jane McGonigal and her idea that the more gamers in society and the more time spent playing games will be beneficial to solving social issues. I see the argument we discussed in class when it was said why not go fishing where the fish are, but I just can't bring myself to agree with the big picture of it. I do agree though that we have a large chunk of our population that immerses itself in video games and inventing games that bring about social change could be a way to intelligently use that portion of the population, but I believe there is a better way.
    Most of my friends that would consider themselves gamers are those people I feel have a parasocial relationship with video games. They go to class, (most of the time), do their homework, pop in a microwavable meal, and rush back to sit in their room and play games the rest of the night. Even if they were playing a game that overlapped somehow into the real world, do we really think that's the best way to solve problems? This girl doesn't think so. In fact, I feel McGonigal's solution is creating more problems than anything else. Saying that over the next decade she wants to see the number of hours spent playing video games go from close to 6 million hours to over 20 million is disheartening. She wants change and wants to help so I give her props for that, but telling people to spend more time sitting on their butt, starring at a screen and moving only their fingers for activity, is crazy. If McGonigal's idea were to come true that would mean we'd have more lazy people in society than we are already dealing with right now.
   My biggest question is with the amount of gamers who use games to escape reality and aren't very active in society now, what makes her think creating games about society will get them motivated to go out there and make a change later? I just feel as though her idea of a better world won't be brought about by more hours of playing video games.
      If this were to be the case, and in 10 years we are playing over 20 million hours of games, I think we'll be living in a society where we yell up the stairs to our overweight son who's been sitting for hours to quit doing his homework and to play more video games because he hasn't met his quota for the week.
I'm sorry Jane, but I just can't do that.