Should I Let My Son Spend All His Free Time Playing Video Games?

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Reena Ninan:
Episode 214. Should I Let My Son Spend All His Free Time Playing Video Games?
I’m just a little hangry right about now. I’m finally getting a colonoscopy and I am just three hours into not eating anything. So I’m warning you, I’m grumpy, so I’m going to have some grumpy questions for you on video games.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Let’s get grumpy. It’s just a rite of middle aged passage, so to speak, so to speak.

Reena Ninan:
Thanks for rubbing it in.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Reena. I’ve done it. Got to do it. Good for health. Proud of you for doing it. Not the most fun thing.

Reena Ninan:
It’s not and I’m hungry already and I can have our clear liquids. I’m coffee, tea and maybe some broth a little later, but I’m not a broth person.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah, it’s just you’ll get through it. Got to do it. I’m sending good vibes your way.

Reena Ninan:
Thank you. I take ’em all. I take ’em all. I love this topic today because you were the person who I actually decided to purchase an Xbox for my son at the start of the pandemic because you told me and I never looked at it this way. Video games are a way that boys socialize.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah. Yeah. Huge. A lot of boys in the pandemic were living their best lives.

Reena Ninan:
They really were. My son was one of them.
So I want to take on this letter because I’ve got lots of questions, but I want you to, let’s read the letter that we have here.
Dear Dr. Lisa and Reena, my son is 13 years old. He’s a straight A student. He’s always been involved in sports like soccer, flag football, basketball, et cetera. However, he has a deep passion for video games. As parents, our experienced with sports and our son has been that we have to pry him away from video games for most practices and sporting events. However, once he’s there, he’s really happy and content. If given the choice, he will always pick video games over sports and is getting to the point where he’s choosing video games over social outings with friends while gaming. He’s usually having a group conversation with multiple other boys who are friends from school or family. We live in a large school district where sports are very competitive and it’s unlikely that he’ll make school teams. We would love for him to continue to play at the recreational level if possible. However, at this age it is becoming more difficult to find teams. Do we allow him to do what he enjoys most, which is playing video games? How do we help him find balance? It’s an ongoing challenge in our house to get him out of his room and into family activities or sports. We don’t know how to move forward. Thank you so much. First off, is this an alarming problem to you? How concerned are you when you heard this letter?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I wouldn’t say concerned because I think it’s this family. I mean the way the letter’s written gives me so much confidence in this family to manage this. You know what I’m hearing, Reena, as you read it, as both the problem beautifully laid out, but also how respectful this parent is of her kid. Acknowledging he has a deep passion for it, not just being like those lousy video games. Really seeing it from his perspective and also acknowledging and so much credit for fairness that while he may be bailing on in-person interactions, the letter writer is also acknowledging it’s very, very social what he’s doing. So she’s not even, I’m assuming it’s a she, but it may be a he, not even making the assumption that this means that her son is isolated. So in terms of when I worry Reena, the nice thing about having been a clinician for a long time is it takes a lot to get me really worried. This doesn’t get me really worried and yet it’s a very real problem that I think a lot of families work with.

Reena Ninan:
I want to go back to what I said at the beginning as we were talking about it in the open. What are really the upsides of playing video games?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Okay, let’s just start there. Because in the pandemic for a lot of kids, mostly boys, it was actually how they maintain their peer relationships. First of all, they’re fun, right? We’ll just start there. They’re fun. That’s, its a value unto itself for kids who are unhappy about something that happened, they can provide a little distraction that lets those feelings die down. Now, do we want them to do this every single time they’re unhappy? Do we want them to do this for hours on end? No, but it’s not at all a bad thing. If a kid has a terrible day and comes home, hops on their video games for a little while, gets the feelings to die down and then returns to the world in a better place, that’s perfectly fine. Reena, the other benefit of video games, and we see this is they do help kids develop spatial skills.

Reena Ninan:
Wait, tell me more.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I know it’s very interesting. So when we look at the data on academic skills in boys and girls, we have consistently over decades found that when it gets to higher level math boys consistently outperform girls. And that’s even more interesting at a time when girls are basically outperforming boys on everything else and higher level math, all of it requires a good grasp of spatial skills and the video games where kids are navigating 3D spaces in a 2D environment, we have actually tested it. They do in fact build spatial skills. We know that this is a factor.

Reena Ninan:
So what do you mean by spatial skills?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
So spatial skills are things like the ability to rotate an object in one’s mind, to picture it from the other side, the ability to see a 3D object and imagine what it would look like if you laid it out flat, if you could unfold it like a box, all of those skills are integral to higher order math. And so one of the things we know is that playing video games, especially those that ask kids to navigate around in space, we’ve tested this like confer advantage mathematically. So video games, I know we have a lot of reservations about them, but our job is just to be honest about what the data say and the data do say that there are some upsides.

Reena Ninan:
So what are the downsides of video gaming?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Okay, so the downsides one, and this is actually not small and we can blow right past it. They’re pretty sedentary. I mean kids are sitting and it’s better for kids to be active. Another is they are very hard to pull away from that kids can go in and mean to spend 10 minutes and then they’re there a long, long time.

Reena Ninan:
Addictive.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Very addictive. And there’s an algorithmic basis for this. It’s more complicated than this, but one version of it is a lot of the games are designed, not that you felt like you lost, but you felt like you almost won. So then you want to keep going. So sometimes kids, it’s not about character or willpower, they get stuck there longer than they mean to be. Another factor that’s very real is the question of violence and violent video games and there are a lot of video games available that are sort of morally offensive. There are real questions about the impact of playing violent video games on kids’ own sense of aggression. We actually did a whole episode on this and I would encourage people to go check that one out, but the bottom line is the data are not as compellingly. It’s the worst thing in the world for kids to play violent video games. That’s not what the data say. I wish it said that, but it doesn’t say that. What it does say though is it will move kids up in terms of how violent or reactive they are, which is not nothing. If you have a kid who has no issues with aggression and doesn’t struggle with aggression, them being a little bit more reactive may not have any real world consequences. Though I can certainly see helmets who are like, that’s enough for me. No, if you have a kid who struggles with aggression, they should not be playing violent video games that we’re really clear on. That that’s a bad idea because it just normalizes aggressive behavior.
Okay, Reena, there’s one more downside. This is not small in the banter that is part of kids playing video games in a peer connected environment, peer connected way, there is a lot of use of wildly offensive slurs and it’s done very freely. It is done constantly. This is of course wrong, just wrong. And what I worry about, and we talk about this all the time, it can norm that behavior where kids are hearing words thrown around that are just words that don’t belong in anybody’s mouth and then they’re sort of start using them in their every day because it just doesn’t feel like that big a deal.
Video games are not nothing. They’re a mixed picture, I think as a generic guidance. You got to know your kid, you got to know their restraint, you got to know their judgment. You got to know how aggressive they are. You have to work with them to make sure that the video games don’t take up more time than even the kid means for them to do. I mean, video games are a big important topic in family life.

Reena Ninan:
I want to go back a little bit on the socialization. I saw it and it actually never in my life thought these words would come out of my mouth, but I was thrilled my son was video gaming during the pandemic. I could hear the conversations he’s having with the other kids. There was connection. He was right in my living room so I didn’t have to worry about where he was in the neighborhood. I loved it. It made me feel wonderful. But when is socializing on video games good and isn’t socializing in real life far better? Shouldn’t we all be pushing for that?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I think yeah, right. In person’s better. And it’s interesting Reena when you ask it that way, I think we’re at this juncture, I’m certainly finding professionally where my professional life is sort of half online and half in real life.

Reena Ninan:
So true.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
And it’s amazing how different the two are. It’s absolutely amazing and you can definitely get a lot done in an online environment. There’s no question. And you can also get a lot of good things done in an online environment. And I think that’s true for adults. I also, what you’re describing, I think that can be true for kids. I think for kids, the IRL part of this, right? The in real life part of us, I think that’s one thing that’s specific for kids, which is they are still learning their social skills. And social skills are not just something that happened when you have headphones on and are looking at a 2D gaming environment. Social skills involve noticing the nuances of how people are holding their bodies, their facial expressions.
I’m not woowoo, but the energy that’s coming off of them and what it tells you about where they’re at or how what you said just landed, right? I mean, there’s ways that we can perceive these things that we can’t quite name, but we are picking up the data. So I think especially for kids who are building their social skills, they need time in person, they need practice in person. And I dunno if you’ve had this experience, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I’ll have an online professional relationship with somebody we met through meetings and then finally cross paths crossed and we end up having lunch together and then we go back to our online environment. It feels totally different to me when we’ve returned to the online environment. And so here’s my theory, see what you think. I think as evolved mammals we’re very, very easy, very, very good at detecting safety signaling. But I think that happens in a 3D environment and when you’re in somebody’s presence, you can pick up what’s safe, what’s not, whether they’re safe, how things are going. And again, all of this below the level I think that we can articulate, but it’s why together. When we’re together it gets deeper, it feels richer, it feels better, it feels more meaningful. I think it’s because you can only pick up that level of safety when you’re in the same physical space. Okay, what do you think of my just made up theory?

Reena Ninan:
I think it’s true, but I think you’ve got now I feel like two generations who were raised with tech essentially and don’t have these skills or understand or appreciate because that’s all we knew when we were growing up. Being able to read people and you understand the value of it, but if you’re entire world is texting people, which for so many of our teens, it really is. And then you move into the workforce and you get a younger generation of workers who are always used to texting. They almost, I find shy away from the opportunity in real life because there’s a little bit of anxiety. They are not used to doing it and I don’t know how to work around this or in this situation, somebody who’s gaming and loves to just not be interactive, how do I as a parent get them out the door to do this and not dread it?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Well, so the good news is I think this is fascinating, right? This is its own really fascinating. What do we do about, I worry about 20 year olds, 21 year olds, kids who are early career first jobs. I really worry about them not getting to be around mentors and colleagues and stuff. I mean I think that’s its own really important topic. Here’s the good news on the social skills stuff, whatever else, kids are going to school and school is like a social workout. They’re there together all day. Tons of kids, tons of adults. So it’s not nothing. And it’s certainly not like it was in the pandemic where kids were really removed and still these social skills take time to develop. I don’t know that school is the place that maybe they develop best, just so much going on all at once with so many kids. So I think it’s not that they’re getting none of that in real life stuff, it’s just that we want that in real life stuff to not just happen at school. We want peer socialization that occurs in a whole bunch of contexts. And so I don’t think that we can say that, oh, well they’re talking to their friends on their video games. That’s the equivalent. I don’t think that’s true. I think they still need time with each other.

Reena Ninan:
Something you said, there’s so many nuggets that you say to me that hit and several different moments, but one thing you said was when kids are having difficulty having friends or just in general make sure they have different friend groups like the lacrosse team, the church group, the drama team, the band, put them in lots of different settings where different types of kids come because then if one group shuts them out, they’ve got another. And that I took to the bank and I’ve really tried to do with my kids and you can’t always force it. They become friends with who they want to become. But I have found that really valuable to the point my daughter actually said to me this week, oh, I’m really enjoying this group of friends, but if you hadn’t put me in that thing, I never would’ve met them. So thank you for putting me in that thing. Oh cool. So I think that not having lots of supportive, good friends I found is then it doesn’t matter almost.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
It takes some of the anxiety down because things get bumpy with some groups. And then the other thing, Reena, that I’ve seen kids quickly sort of figure out their roles in groups and so if they only have one group, they only play sometimes one role, whereas if they are in different groups, they actually can try out different sides of themselves, get to know different sides of themselves. We see this for kids who get to go to camp that sometimes they come home a completely different, much more realized person because they were in a space where kids didn’t already have them sized up and have them pigeonholed. So I mean I think what we’re saying here is video games can be fine and they should not take the place of in-person interactions and lots of in-person interactions with lots of different kids.

Reena Ninan:
The line that really resonated with me in this letter was about how this parent lives in a very sports competitive landscape. Boy that line hit. And so the mom’s already saying, I don’t even know if he’s going to make any of the high school teams for this. I hope that he’ll do rec. I don’t know that he’ll still want to do rec and think it’s cool. As a parent, I want them to have something that they love. So is it okay then? Is video games a good option in that situation?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Okay, so first of all, this is a bummer, right? I mean this is a bummer that in plenty of communities, the level of sports as kids, especially as kids 13, so next year is high school. The level that as kids move into it changes so dramatically that kids who are maybe very capable athletes or at least very enthusiastic athletes are no longer able to make the school teams. Then that opens up questions of club sports. I mean it opens up all of these really, really gnarly questions. I think that’s a bummer. I wish that weren’t the case. I think it’s really nice when there’s good rec options that kids can still have access to. Here I will tell you Reena, so my husband’s a high school teacher and he’s also a high school soccer coach in a very, very, very competitive program. They end up cutting. It’s an all boys big, all boys Catholic school. They end up cutting boys who actually really thought that that was going to be their thing.

Reena Ninan:
Wow. So what happens then? Where do they go?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Well, they’re really bummed out and then usually they find something else that is incredibly meaningful to them, whether it’s service or whether it’s art or whether it’s music. Well, music and arts are the same thing, but they sort of find something else that they are really devoted to. Those are the kids who actually end up really thriving is that they take the lemons of getting cut from their teams and turn it into the lemonade of some other extremely valuable, important self-esteem, supporting contributing activity, which Reena, I’ll also tell you is probably going to hold them in better stead over time because the odds of kids going on to be college athletes are vanishingly low. And so if that was never going to happen for a kid and if you can’t make the high school team, it’s definitely not going to happen that you’re going to make the college team probably not the worst thing in the world to reroute that dream towards something else and then find other ways to be physically active.

Reena Ninan:
This reminds me of Michael Jordan. Did you know that he got cut from his high school basketball team and do you know what his mom did? She did not walk into that gym and shake down the coach. She said to him, well you got to figure it out and what did he do? He put all his energy and strength into getting better and it was such a great moment for me because you realize that not every time a parent needs to go in and fix it, sometimes kids can fix their own situation on their own.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Well he sure fixed that.

Reena Ninan:
I would have to agree with you.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
And he also Michael Jordan.
So you could say, why don’t you go take a year and if you’re really into the sport, we’ll support you in trying to get better at it through these other routes. You could try again out again next year. I think for some kids that may be an option. I think for other kids it may be like, you know what? You can really sing or we’ve never looked into theater for you and I think you actually might love it. Or speech and debate. I mean the nice thing about high school is the world opens in terms of activities and clubs and things that kids can get into. So it’s not great, especially if the kid loves sports, but it’s not a tragedy.

Reena Ninan:
I want to ask you one more thing. When you’re talking about video gaming, is it ever okay to let your child choose video gaming over maybe a family event or sports?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
It’s interesting, right? That was also in this very thoughtful letter is it’s really sometimes hard to get this kid out of his room to be part of the family life and family activities. I think that’s a fight worth having.

Reena Ninan:
To push him.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah, I think so. I think there’s real value.

Reena Ninan:
Why do you feel strongly about that?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Well, I think there’s a couple of reasons. One is it’s important to spend time with our kids even if they are grumpy about it. You’re grumpy about your colonoscopy and don’t really want to be there. I think still saying, you know what? I’ll take you any way I can get you. I just want, your company I think sends a very strong message of we like you, we value you and we know that you have somewhere else you’d rather be and we still want to be with you. I think that that is important for kids to know in terms of how we want them in our lives. I also know that variety is good for kids. That you can’t just do one thing. Even if that one thing, you can’t just run all the time, even if it’s something that we think is good, you can’t just do it.
That development depends on exposure to all sorts of things. And it’s kind of like what I said about the friendship group thing. Being in different friendship groups pulls on different aspects of your personality, helps you develop different sides of yourself. Spending time at the dinner table, hearing what your sibling did and even if he didn’t want to hear it going on the family outing, grumpily going to the museum because everybody’s going to the museum. The kid can be grumpy the whole time, but it’s probably still good for their overall development to have variety, whatever that looks like as opposed to always doing the same thing.

Reena Ninan:
Alright, well you know what I love about talking with you about parenting is it’s not the obvious thing that any of us, which is why you are the expert. It’s just who would’ve thought video gaming? There might be some value for your child in it. Never, until you mentioned this to me.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Well, I’m glad, I’m glad. And I think the thing is kids don’t watch tv like we watched tv. I’ve watched hours of garbage television.

Reena Ninan:
So did I.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
And kids work really hard these days, a lot of kids. And so I think we just have to be open to the idea that they need entertainment, they need downtime, they need stuff that is either pure pleasure or mindless or both. And we don’t want to be hostile to it out of the gate. We just want to be mindful of how it can get to a place where it’s not so good for them. It crosses the line from being fine to good to being a problem.

Reena Ninan:
Well, thank you Lisa. So what do you have for us for Parenting to Go?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Well, one thing I noted in this letter was that it sounds like he’s got his video games in his bedroom and I just want to flag that. I’m not saying that’s like a never. And I also know in some families that is the place where it works for the rest of the family for that to be an option.
I will say I don’t know that I would necessarily set it up that way if there were other options available. First, the family’s talking about we hardly see the kid, we have to pry him out of his room. Okay, well if he’s gaming somewhere a little bit more in the midst of things, like you said in your living room at least then you have that kind of contact. We also know that if you use your bedroom for things besides sleeping, it can over time undermine the ability to sleep in that room, that your body associates that room with a whole bunch of things as opposed to just sleep. And so when you go in there, your body’s like, are we playing Fortnite or are we going to sleep? And it can make going to sleep a little harder, for some kids. So I think I just want to comment on that or I just want to note that. And families can make the decisions that make best sense for them.

Reena Ninan:
That’s great advice. And I’m also realizing I go to bed with three laptops next to me wondering why I have insomnia. Thank you for solving that problem in this Parenting to Go.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Ya, no, we’re biological creatures and our bodies get used to patterns.

Reena Ninan:
Well, thank you so much Lisa, and I just want to flag next week we’re going to be talking actually about feelings. Is there ever a point when your kid is talking too much about their feelings? I’ll see you next week.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I’ll see you next week.