Modern video games are frequently engineered to be addictive, and even when they aren't they demonstrably have a lot of addictive potential. Somebody who gets addicted to skateboarding will get active, get fit, and maybe break a bone. A few weeks later the bone will heal but the active habits will remain. Somebody who gets addicted to video games will stay inside, get accustomed to sitting on their ass, and quite likely get fat. Statistically, that kind of damage tends to stick around for a person's whole life.
Saying "its a hobby like any hobby" glosses over the obvious fact that not all hobbies are made equal.
> Saying "its a hobby like any hobby"
I didn't write that. I wrote it's "only a waste of time as much as any hobby" because the person I replied to wrote that they don't want to recommend video games as a hobby to children due in part to it being a waste of time. It's moot that the hobby is a waste of time because the point of it is to be a waste of time. They might not want to recommend games as a hobby to children for similar reasons as to what you detailed but that's different from not wanting to recommend the hobby because it's a waste of time.