I guess there is still a chance that playing those games gained you some super powers, similar to Karate Kid washing the cars.
There are also a lot of ways to waste time. Few people seem to make good use of it, so perhaps again it is not really Computer Games that are to blame?
I think a lot of people were playing sports, or practicing an instrument, or learning how to deal with the opposite sex (or maybe even the same sex), or reading. . . all of them, to me, more viable activities than Starcraft, at least at the level I played.
