I keep all my money in my mattress. All of the $52.

This sounds like a good opportunity for augmented or mixed reality. Show some extra grit or whatever and gamify the real washing.

Those things are absolutely contributing factors. But don’t be so dismissive of the allure of video games. I grew up in paradise compared to what you describe, and we did play outside pretty much all the time. Then the NES came out. Our parents had to pry our asses from the TVs and throw us outside after that and threaten us with punishment if we didn’t go outside to play. All we ever wanted to do was play Nintendo from there on out. Then some friends got computers… Yeah not much time was spent outside in paradise after that. And these days many games are designed to be addictive, to make you spend more time in them. We didn’t have that and we were still hooked.

I’m not saying that to bash games or anything, I still love games and have been a computer nerd since back then, I’m just saying.

What does “vaguely European” even mean?

Just leave the door open.