After rereading the article, it makes sense. Folks that are 35 were the baby boomer's kids - and the ones who grew up with Atari 2600s, Colecovisions and NES and Super Nintendos. Make sense to me - most didn't go outside and preferred to play video games.

As far as everyone claiming to be fit and strong - this is the Internet and you are prolly lying your butt off.

Even the most accurate survey ever taken is going to have more than its share of deviations that hardly invalidate the basic findings.

Many of the posts just on here alone seem to support this notion although I'm sure some of the personal claims are exaggerated at best.

As for all Gen Xers being a generation of kids who didn't go outside and opted to play video games instead, that's ridiculous. If that were the case, there would have been an entire generation of missing athletes at all levels of competition.

If anything, what you will likely find as any generation continues to age (Gen X, baby boomer, Gen Y or any other) physical abilities naturally decline without a conscientious effort to to keep conditioned with the natural peak for the average person typically being sometime in his/her 20s.

Things like heavy work, family etc. tends to lead to more sedentary lifestyles barring those who have physically demanding careers (law enforcement, fire dept, military, etc.). Maintaining the same eating habits as the metabolism slows with age results in natural weight gain without any effort to increase physical activity to counteract this.

When "dad" can't play tackle football/soccer/basketball/boxing anymore he can and typically does watch it as a spectator on TV, or even play it as a video game instead. Same goes for any other sport or physical activity that becomes harder to do as the years add up.

But watching TV or surfing the internet every evening in place of physical activity will have the same exact effect. There is no difference at all if the hours being spent per week are the same.

Either way, I don't see why anyone should feel defensive about this. We all know there are plenty of people who fit the stereotype, just as we all know others who are nothing like it at all.

Once again, a reporter with an agenda.

This thread makes me feel old, fat and lazy. To some people I probably am, to others I'm not. I am happy though.

I'm somewhat of an introvert, no where near the point of being a shut-in though. In any case gaming hasn't made me so.

If it wasn't gaming fat, lazy, depressed people with addictive tendancies turned to it would be something else. Gaming doesn't make you depressed and it doesn't make you an addict, it doesn't make you lazy and it doesn't make you fat. First people need to address their depression, and/or the fact that they are addicts (take the gaming away and they'll move on to something else, possibly more personally destructive), addiction is often part of the reason behind depression. Sort those things out and gaming becomes part of life, not the focus of life, or the means by which you escape/avoid life.

As a parent I need to ensure my kids have a balanced life, that means making sure they spend a reasonable time on video games.

TBH I think forums like this, Facebook, myspace etc are as big a drain on people's time and activity than gaming these days. I've got family members who desperately beat a path to the nearest computer wherever they go just to be able to put what they've been doing in the last 5 minutes and where they are now on Facebook. And they then proceed to scoff at me for playing video games of an evening.