Chess is not a waste of time, negative thinking is!
Every negative comment I read here felt like a waste of time, tbh... Then I realized I was wasting my time reading this thread, and my time could be better spent playing a fun chess game instead!
Anything that makes you happy can't be a waste of time.
If you think you're wasting time doing whatever, just stop doing it and go do something else that is meaningful to you.
How many people think that; Chess is just a Total Waste of Time in Life!

The problem with chess is that it's a totally narcissistic activity. Music and art can amuse, enlighten, and entertains thousands to millions of people. Mathematics allows the creation of all the technologies we know and love. Unless you're the 0.01% who create beautiful brilliancies you're just a wood pusher wasting time. That's why I took 35 years off from the game and here on chess.com I think I've played 20 blitz games over the last 2.5 years. Ultimately, chess is isolating and creates unhealthy obsessions and, especially, ANGER.

Perhaps others have already made this observation, but even if someone has, I believe it bears repeating:
In terms of the actual "Activity" itself, "Playing Chess" is an appalling waste of time in life. However, alas, it is our only known entree into something truly meaningful -- it takes us to the most sublime, the most gloriously profound activity of which human beings are capable: Posting Comments in Online Chess Forums. (You take the bad with the good.)

Any time somebody argues that something is a waste of time in comparison to something else entirely, I find it pretty silly. You could pretty much argue anything is a waste of time. Making money? You can't take it with you, why throw your life away on it. Sex? It's just a feeling. Hanging out with friends? You could be taking a real estate licensing exam instead.
To me wasting time would be if you had a goal to do something meaningful to you, but for whatever reason your method of accomplishing it is inefficient. That would be wasting time.

Einstein did!
No, he didn't.
He didn't play Chess because he didn't like the competitive nature of it. He didn't want to beat or get beaten.
Chess is a waste of time.
Watching a ball game is a waste of time.
Walking in the woods is a waste of time.
Watching a sunset is a waste of time.
Laughing at a funny joke is a waste of time.
Taking time out to be kind to someone else is a waste of time.
The list could go on ad infinitum.
Chess is a waste of time if it consumes someone (like Bobby Fischer for example) to the point of nothing else has meaning. Some people will never become strong chess players and are consumed with it. They spend countless hours studying and convincing themselves that eventually they will reach master level only to realize they didn't have the talent. Sad.
How many people think that semicolon is out of place?
And the exclamation mark for that matter, not too mention a few too many capital letters.

Just an observation, but it seems to me that high profile "intellectual" people often seem to think chess is a "waste of time". I don't believe them. What I think it is, is that if one of us loses a game, it's just a part of a normal day. Whereas if we had tens of thousands of followers boosting our ego and following our every brain fart on Twitter constantly reinforcing our self-perception as geniuses, our egos might not be able to handle the prospect of loss, so we might avoid chess.
Sort of like people who like working on their cars, welding, grinding, fabricating, machining parts, etc. as a hobby. Perfect thing to wear would be overalls (protect your skin, your clothes, etc.) But they never do.

I don't know how many people consider chess a waste of time, but I would include everyone who plays speed chess. Those are people who apparently think they're wasting time, so at least try to waste as little time as possible.

But if I had to guess how many people consider chess a waste of time, I'd put that number around 5 billion.

What a shame it's been all the time i wasted since I learned the moves of the chess moves. I was 14 or fifteen I've wasted 70 years playing chess, 60 years bowling, 30 years playing soccer, 27 years teaching SOCCER ⚽, what a waste of TIME. Nobody knows about it unless i tell them about it and it all disappears when I die. . .
53 years of being married to the same woman then she dies. . .
Once in a while someone comes up to me and says, "Thank you for teaching me when I was young!" That wasn't a waste of time to me . . .
I might have eaten three times a day for all my years alive
so did it mean nothing but a waste of time . . .
Everything I did really meant NOTHING to anyone only for a moment of time then it disappeared . . .
Hm. I better get UP maybe not, think I'll go out for breakfast maybe not, I just turned the clock back an hour to Pacific standard TIME. . .
Hey, i gained one more hour to waste . . .
Oops. I've got a bowling match to go and win . . .
Bye for now I have the rest of my life to waste . . .
RICH
Creating multiple threads about chess and wasting time is one of the biggest wastes of time.