Sim training certainly can’t hurt. It’s not a substitute for the real thing, but it sure can help with the learning curve.
While it’s possible to get a private pilot license with 40 hours of flight time, most people will require more, and that gets expensive. Especially if those 40 hours are spread out over several months. Practicing in the sim can fill the gaps and possibly lessen the actual flight time needed to earn a license.
It certainly can! I’ve seen it first hand.
Someone got carpel tunnel from flying too much 
??
But in all seriousness, it could do more harm than good. For some people it might help, others develop bad habits which are hard to eradicate. I also didn’t like excessive amounts of solo flights in a flight syllabus for the same reason, I could often tell who has been flying solo a lot recently because most became so ■■■■ sloppy after just a few solo flights.
I have never used any flight sim to learn how to fly, I used X-plane and FS2004 to prepare for type ratings. Approaching it like a procedure trainer helped a lot, being able to look around, see where all the buttons are. Some expensive add-ons have all the system logics correctly simulated as well. I used FS2004 during instrument training to practice holdings and interceptions (on autopilot), but never have I used flight sims to learn how to fly.
Flight sims are excellent procedure trainers, to really learn how to fly, other than the very basics they are not so useful in my opinion. Even the most realistic Level-D full flight simulator isn’t capable of replicating a flight with perfect realism. Some are really good though, but still far from the real thing. There is a reason you learn to fly on a Cessna or equivalent and not on simulator. Even new MPL courses start with the “core flying skills” on a single engine piston aircraft before moving to a multi-crew aircraft simulator.
For the same reason, when doing a type rating you can’t perform “zero flight time training” (ZFTT) if you don’t have previous experience. ZFTT means that you do all the training in a simulator with no (base) training on the real aircraft before flying with passengers. And even if you are able to perform ZFTT there are restrictions.
The sim definitely harms my rudder skills! After a 3 month lockdown break in training, my instructor was not best pleased with me.
Better prop torque modelling would definitely help things to feel a bit more real. That and introducing thermals and improved weather forces. The sim feels like flying on rails most of the time!
PPL student with 5 hours of flying time here.
First got FS95 as a teenager which I was engrossed in. Been interested in aviation since, and have a good general knowledge and understanding of. Tried MSFS in October 2020 when I got a gaming PC after many decades, and have around 100 hours of fly time in mostly the Just Flight Piper, and FBW A320, as I’ve tried to learn and familiarise them from scratch.
Generally speaking, for every hour of flight time, I probably have 2-3 hours of planning, reading and learning - topics mostly around IFR and VFR navigation, radio comms (I jumped into VATSIM early which was a fantastic decision), and aircraft handbooks for the GA aircraft to learn their performance profiles, right down to watching videos on what a carburettor does, or how the oil system works.
On my first PPL flight in a PA28 cadet my instructor was impressed with my abilities and knowledge, and mentioned it takes most folks 6-7 hours to be as comfortable as I was.
However there was absolutely no suggestion by either of us that I was anything but a complete newbie to ‘real’ flying, and I’d be learning everything from the ground up, one lesson at a time. And no overconfidence on my part - just a willingness to learn. I am fully aware I will make many, many mistakes, as many if not more as someone with no prior experience in aviation.
Flight simming if used responsibly, as part of a broader learning package, and with the same level of risk awareness as you use in the real world, is a great tool that can help somebody new to aviation learn much about it that will subsequently make your first real life sessions much more comfortable.
With that said, since my first real lesson i’ve cut my simulator down to one practice session per week - as per the logic in some posts above, I want to learn and familiarise myself with the real aircraft, and I don’t want the sim to take away from this. I’ve been doing an hour or two of circuits (from full cold and dark, and at manned VATSIM airfields) once a week, just to maintain the gap between lessons.
TL; DR:
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