Numbed by Nintendo.(video game addiction in American youth)

My two sons recently entered puberty. There's no better way to gain a firsthand look at the degenerate aspects of modern American culture.

Today's music is mostly lacking in melody, and, at worst, is vile and offensive. The fashion is for boys to wear their pants so baggy that their underwear shows. When I was a kid, I called my father "Sir." My kids have taken to calling me "Dude."

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the modern youth culture is the computer game sensation. This past Christmas, against our better judgment, my wife and I gave our boys the new Nintendo handheld Game Boy--a computer the size of your palm that plays hundreds of arcade games. Now it is omnipresent in our lives: Our sons walk around the house, down the sidewalk, through the mall, even (once) for Holy Communion at church hunched over in a semi-trance.

Young Americans have an addiction problem, and it isn't drugs: It's video games. These inane mind-vacuumers are the opiate of today's youth! We resisted as long as we could, and were one of the last families in our neighborhood to buy a Nintendo. But we caved in too. Now our kids spend their vacation days--their golden days of youth--not outside playing sports or at the beach, but locked away in the basement glued to the computer screen.

Lest you think I'm jesting about the addictiveness of these games: The family down the street had a ten-year-old who was so deeply entranced by the Harry Potter game that he would sit unblinking in front of the TV set for three to four hours at a time, until he wet his pants rather than interrupt the game for a bathroom break. If we give our kids even a moment of unscheduled and unmonitored time, whoosh, they're down in the basement in front of the TV in a comatose condition.

My kids won't play real basketball, but they will play Allen Iverson in the NBA game for hours on end. The other day my son tugged at me beaming to come see his new dunk. So I naively headed out to the hoop in the back ...