I mostly agree with this article, except on the social part.
Considering I'm a nerd, a gamer, and an engineer, I'm surprisingly social. I like nothing better than to hang out with a group of my closest friends, talking, playing board and video games, and anything else we can do together as a group.
Just like you can be antisocial in a crowded party, you can be social doing something that would normally be a solitary activity. Playing video games is a great example: my friends and I regularly get together and play video games together. Sometimes we're playing the same game, taking turns or discussing strategies with the driver. Sometimes we are all playing different games, but chatting back and forth, checking out each other's progress and challenging each other's scores. Sometimes we play multiplayer games in co-op or competitively. Whatever the case, we aren't just several bodies in the room without interacting, which is more than you can say for getting a group together to watch a movie or going to a party and not talking to anybody.
That same social experience can extend to online. When my girlfriend plays World of Warcraft, she spends most of her time talking with her friends while the game itself becomes a distraction. In fact, the game is merely the reason they met and continues to be the cornerstone that brings them together at the same place and time, but she plays entirely for the socialization, which she doesn't do a lot of normally. When I play a game like Team Fortress 2, I'm not just playing against other avatars that happen to be controlled by people, I'm actively working together with them, discussing everything from strategy to the newest changes to the game to what the weather is like up here. I've met people, learned their names, and kept up relations with them. Sure, we may have never seen each other's faces, but we keep in contact, socializing in essentially the same ways as I would with somebody in real life. Is that not social?
Somewhere earlier, somebody said that communication in a game isn't social because using words is only 7% of communication. I'm not sure where you got that statistic, but I'd also ask, why does it matter? Is writing letters with a pen pal not social for the same reason? Is talking on the phone with your girlfriend not social for the same reason? Socialization has to do with a lot more than just interpreting words and body languages. Socialization happens at many levels, from something as simple as interpreting somebody's words and body language, to responding appropriately for desired effect, to building rapport and relationships, to forming entire social structures with leaders and followers. All of these things exist just as much in video games and on internet forums as they do in a group of people in close proximity to each other in real life. So long as people are able to communicate with each other, social relationships can exist; it doesn't require eye contact and body language to be truly social.
However, I will concede that it isn't healthy for a child to avoid direct communication and overemphasize online communication, because there are social skills we learn in the real world that don't exist in the virtual world. Body language, which makes up a significant part of our ability to communicate in real life, doesn't work online, so a child who doesn't spend enough time experiencing that and practicing that will be at a disadvantage when it comes time to communicate in-person. But this has nothing to do with games not being social, they just don't exercise all of the same communication methods.
In summary, video games can be just as social as card games, board games, and talking on the telephone. Being social is completely unrelated to the activity itself; one merely has to socialize while performing that activity. Games actually offer a great opportunity to be social because they act as an ice breaker, giving people a reason to begin talking.
