Should I Let My Kid Make In-App Purchases in Video Games?

The Ask Lisa Podcast does not constitute medical advice and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice, diagnosis or treatment. If you have concerns about your child’s well-being, consult a physician or mental health professional.

The following transcript has been automatically generated by an AI system and should be used for informational purposes only. We cannot guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of the information provided.

Reena Ninan:
My 12-year-old son constantly asked to spend money on skins and loot boxes.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Loot boxes, it is straight up gambling. It also has within it all of the properties that make gambling really dangerous. There’s value in having fun with our kids and doing nice things for our kids.

Reena Ninan:
Free to play games. They actually make money off of you spending money, but the kids don’t quite get that.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
We’re being marketed to all the time, but we still want to be in the driver seat.

Reena Ninan:
You were the one who, in the height of COVID back in 2020, made me pay full price for the one thing I’ve never paid full price for anything in my life, but for that Xbox in the middle of COVID, which was actually hard to get, I did because of you.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
And your son was fifth grade at the time, is that right?

Reena Ninan:
That’s right. Yeah. He was fifth grade at the time. And I was still like a mom who didn’t know how to navigate video games. And when you emphatically said, “Buy him that Xbox,” I bought him the Xbox.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
It’s so weird to think about it now. And my insistence was because as everyone was desperately lonely and struggling to figure out how to stay connected, the fifth grade boys had it totally figured out, which is that they were playing their communal games. And in the crisis that we were in, I’m like, okay, if somebody can be living their best lives, let the fifth grade boys be living their best lives.

Reena Ninan:
But Lisa, you were so right about that. And I never would have done that ever because it was almost counterintuitive. But the reason you were right was I got so much joy off of hearing those fifth grade boys all together and seeing what they’re laughing about and joking about all in my living room.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Right. And when everyone else was so miserable, those were the happy kids. Those were the happy kids.

Reena Ninan:
Totally.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah. It’s such a weird, it feels like it never happened and it feels like it happened a hundred years ago and it feels like it happened yesterday. I still can’t quite integrate the pandemic.

Reena Ninan:
I want to read you this letter about a parent asking about in-app purchases and video games, a whole other aspect.
Dear Dr. Lisa and Reena, my 12-year-old son plays a popular online game that is free to download, but lately he’s constantly asked to spend money inside, most on skins and something called loot boxes. I don’t love the idea of spending money on what seems to me like wasteful gimmicks, but he keeps coming back to the topic and keeps pushing for new purchases. I’m torn. Is this just the modern version of buying trading cards or are these systems designed to keep kids spending? We’ve said no to loot boxes, but are considering allowing an occasional cosmetic upgrade if he uses his own money. How should parents think about this and how do we set limits without turning it into a constant battle? Sincerely, a conflicted gaming parent.
I love this because we got into the skins. The skins, just so you know, are little purchases you can make for like you can buy a new person, you can put a coat on them. I’m making this up. My son being mortified that this is how I’m describing it, but they’re little things that you can, almost like pieces in the game that you can sort of purchase. I know that’s a horrible way of explaining it, but that’s the mom’s version of it.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
No, no, but it’s like weapons. But I think it’s a lot of it is just like look and style. It doesn’t-

Reena Ninan:
Cool.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Very little, but I think actually changes the kids’ capacities within the game. It’s just the look of it.

Reena Ninan:
And whoever’s designing the skins is brilliant because they are pretty cool. And, “Hey mom, look, I bought this.” And I have to admit, they do look pretty cool, but it sucks to him.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Okay, so how’s he buying it? How is your son buying it? What’s the financial setup?

Reena Ninan:
Grandparents, he’ll ask for birthday and Christmas to have a little Microsoft card that he purchases and I’m totally cool with that. You know what stood out to me in this letter, Lisa, was she asked if this is like buying trading cards and it does kind of feel like the modern day version of getting a baseball card.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I think that’s great and right. And it’s so fun for me when themes recur over a season. And one of our themes is with teenagers and tweens, there’s very little that’s new. There’s just the new version of it. So when we were talking about influencers, well, kids used to want to be rock stars. When we were talking about fan fiction, it’s not that kids didn’t try to look at slightly naughty fiction before, it was just not online. And here we are with this thing where an adult could easily be like, “What is that? Or who cares or why collect that?” But we had things that we did that with too. And I do like anytime that we cannot look askance at what teenagers are doing, I’m happy. And I think the baseball analogy is good. And I think what you’re describing is that your son is using money that he’s getting for gifts to buy himself treats, right?
Which like-

Reena Ninan:
Yes.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Okay, that’s cool.

Reena Ninan:
Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
That’s cool.

Reena Ninan:
Yeah. I have no problem with that. I think the problem that I have is sort of understanding the business model. These free to play games, they actually make money off of you spending money, but the kids don’t quite get that.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
They don’t. I think that’s right. I mean, I think it’s one of those things that like, be wary of anything that’s free. I think that that’s a good place to start with our kids about all of these digital platforms. If anything is free, it’s not really free. So if we think about these video games that they may be free to download, but then within that, they’re going to try to get you to buy all sorts of stuff. And we could even say the same about social media platforms. These are advertising platforms. And what they’re doing is they’re harvesting data while they’re showing us videos. So it feels free, but it’s not free. We’re the ones who are paying with our information for them to show us targeted ads. So I think there’s always room for just conversations about clarifying that because it’s free and I’m having a good time and now I want this skin and helping kids see that that’s actually how these companies can afford to quote unquote give away the product.
There’s something else, and I’d be interested if you’ve seen this and how your son operates with it. When kids use real money, because you have to use real money to buy these skins, the money gets converted to some gems or robux or-

Reena Ninan:
They’re like tokens. Yes.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Tokens. So it stops feeling like real money. And I think that’s not an accident, right? I mean, they’re not giving a countdown of how much you’ve just spent in money terms and the transactions are small. I think these things are inexpensive, but they add up. But when you’re just spending gems, it doesn’t feel like it’s adding up. Is that something that you’ve been aware of in talking with him about it or does he sort of register that? What do you think his take on that is?

Reena Ninan:
And do you know what? He is now 15 and I’ve never once had a conversation about this with him. And you always say conversations are important, but I do remember there was a point when he was trying to buy more gems and more skins and all, and there was a point where it felt like he just couldn’t stop. It couldn’t stop it. And then finally I said, “Look, you’re being marketed at. It’s fine to have a couple, but we shouldn’t be spending hundreds of dollars on this.” He goes, “I know mom, I know, I know, I’m going to have a gift card coming.” And I do think it’s great. I’m a big supporter of video games because I saw what it did for creating community for my son, but I also know it can be a slippery slope.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Exactly. They’re not all good. They’re not all bad. And this is such a nice … Causing real harms in the world, it’s not going to do it. I mean, this isn’t great, but this is just sort of a normal tension of raising kids, but it does open the door. And don’t worry about the fact that you haven’t talked with them about this. Very few parents have talked with their kids about this, but it opens the door to all sorts of things of the value of money and what it’s worth and how we want to spend money. And will there be buyer’s regret in six months that a lot of barmitzvah money went to something that actually they’ve stopped, they’ve lost all interest in. I mean, you don’t have to ruin it for the kid to also be having conversations about using money carefully.

Reena Ninan:
So can you walk us through these skins, loot boxes, a little bit more about what they are and do you worry that this is kind of like gambling?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I do. I do. The skins, there’s a component that can get kind of gambly about the skins. There’s ways in which that can happen. And the loot box is 100% for sure. And there’s some governments that are actually trying to ban loot boxes because it is like straight up gambling.

Reena Ninan:
Can you explain what they are?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. So loot boxes are these boxes that appear, I think they’re usually like a limited time. Like, “There’s going to be a loot box!” And you put down money to then find out what’s in the loot box for you.
What’s in the loot box, it depends on the game, but it can be like some rare skin that everybody wants or some cool weapon or it could be something like, oh, that was easily accessible and everybody already has this. It can be kind of a lower, like less enticing item, but you don’t know when you’re putting your gem down. You don’t know what you’re going to get. And so it is straight up gambling. It is absolutely gambling. And it also has within it all of the properties that make gambling really dangerous, which is intermittent reinforcement. You don’t know what you’re going to get.
Every once in a while you win. And everything we know is that that’s what makes gambling really, really hard to walk away from is this sense of, “But the next loot box is going to be the loot box for me.”
I think there’s enormously valuable conversations to be having about loot boxes, especially since it’s kind of the, I hate to say this, the entry point for a lot of gambling for a lot of boys, right? Because then next comes DraftKings, next comes all of online sports betting. So loot boxes, that is a conversation that we should be having. And I also would say it would be totally reasonable if a parent was like, “We can have a conversation about you buying skins, loot boxes are off the table. That is gambling, gambling is dangerous. It’s not an option.”

Reena Ninan:
When you look at in-game spending, how is it different from like going to the shopping mall and real life spending of going out, buying something that you want and feeling good about the purchase that you made?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
It could be basically the same or it could be different, right? I think that you could make the argument of like, who wants like some digital, something that lives on some platform that you may decide next year that you don’t even care about and now the money’s gone. But I’m like, well, I hope that any adult who’s like feeling cranky about that with a kid can also remember the like Bonnie Bell Chapstick that they felt they had to have and that six months later they threw away. I mean, so I think we want to be gentle with kids about this. I don’t think we want to look down our nose just because it’s not what we would want to spend money on, but it’s a great time to be talking about all of the ways that advertising is manipulative and whether it’s advertising for things that you can buy in real life or advertising for what’s in the game.
These are wonderful opportunities. And I think the challenge is to do it in a way that doesn’t make the kid want to run screaming from the room just to say, “Hey, I totally get it. Actually, I just bought some new makeup because of an ad that did this, this, and this. Hey, the analogy is in your game. They’re doing this, this, and this. This is how advertising works.” You could do it that way to kind of have the conversation you need to have, but not to take all the fun out of it about it.

Reena Ninan:
Okay. So we’re looking at this sometimes. We had a little discussion about the baseball cards and trading cards. I loved a good charm bracelet or charm necklace back in the 80s. How is this different from our charm bracelet era, which still gives me warm fuzzies when I think about all the charms I had on my charm necklace in 1989.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I think we can say it’s the same except for, here’s actually the difference that we want to pay attention to. I have known parents, solid, smart, careful, digitally savvy parents who opened up their credit card statement and are shocked by fees or money that was being spent that they didn’t know was being spent on the games, right? That sometimes this happens through an Apple card that’s already on the platform or something. There are ways that this happens where the parents are like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” I said yes to buying the game, I did not say yes to all of this. And then they find out just sort of by happenstance that the kids have been spending all this money. I think that was harder to happen when we were little kids because it’s not like our parents were like, “Here’s your credit card, go to the mall and have a blast.” I mean, you’re saving up your pennies.
I remember when Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation came out.

Reena Ninan:
Oh, that was a big moment.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
It was a big moment. We pooled our money until we had the $7 we needed for the tape and we went and bought it and we had joint custody of the tape. So when you’re in real life and you’re shopping with your friends, hopefully, of course now with digital cash apps and stuff like that, things are kind of different. But I think that that’s the thing I want parents to be really mindful of is keep an eye on your credit card or be mindful of what is linked to these games in terms of the potential for a kid to buy all these gems without really realizing even. They may not even be altogether cognizant of the fact that this is actual money. So that’s, I think, what’s really quite different from the old days when I was pooling $7 to buy Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation.

Reena Ninan:
By the way, that was like my favorite 13th birthday gift was a double deck cassette where then I can make the tape off of the other tape. That was a big deal.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
That was a big deal.

Reena Ninan:
But I was really ahead of the curve by asking for the double deck so then I can make bootleg copies.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Make the mix tape. Yep. And make the mixtape. And actually I think about the mixtape because I’m like, that was such an extraordinary friendship and romantic gesture to make a mix tape for somebody. And now kids don’t, I don’t think kids do that because it doesn’t make sense anymore. But I’m like, “Oh, that was really special.” That was the cool thing about growing up when we did.

Reena Ninan:
Maybe at some point this season you can tell us what the new mixed tape version of love is for teens.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
That’s a really good question. There’s got to be some version of it.

Reena Ninan:
The other thing about modern day, modern day concerts during COVID, and they still do this, Travis Scott had this concert and it was phenomenal because it was a way to go to a concert and have community. And that’s the other thing I do really believe as a parent.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
But did they actually go to the concert? I don’t understand.

Reena Ninan:
It’s like he did this concert on Xbox in Xbox land.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Okay. And this was during the pandemic. He threw a concert on Xbox.

Reena Ninan:
Unbelievable.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
These are brilliant marketing machines.

Reena Ninan:
Right? Brilliant.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
That’s genius marketing.

Reena Ninan:
I love, it’s all in my living room. I can watch all of it. I mean, he’s on a headset, but you get the gist of it. And the other thing was Travis Scott had limited edition skins and we sure did buy a few of those limited edition skins. And then he knows that I love Christmas. So we got limited edition Nutcracker skins, which I don’t even know why, but he knows I love Christmas and I did okay those purchases.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
You’re like, “I’ll pay for the nutcracker spins.” Well, okay. So as we sort of think through all of the dimensions of what these in-app purchases involve, it’s basically like an entire class on marketing and an entire class on extraordinarily clever marketing, right? Getting a superstar wrapper to get on your Xbox and deliver a concert, right? That is brilliant. And then these limited edition skins, right? These are also like, it’s only going to be available for this little while. And I actually, I had a friend of mine who’s got a 12-year-old son. He was like, “Sometimes my son has asked us to organize our weekend plans around being available to get the skins.” Okay, brilliant marketing.

Reena Ninan:
Totally.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
On that one, I think there’s a couple of paths you could go down around that. So I think you could say, we’re drawing the line at organizing our family plans around your video games. You can play them, but we’re not going to actually organize family life around them. I think there’s that.

Reena Ninan:
Yeah. And I was wondering, what about the limited edition skins?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I mean, even that, right? I mean, you could sort of say like, let’s be reasonable here. But then the other way to go, and I’ve been thinking about this a lot, there’s value in having fun with our kids and doing nice things for our kids, right? And so if it’s not going to cramp your style that much, and if the kid is being responsible about money, maybe using their own money or using an agreed upon amount that you’ve decided on, and you’re like, “Sure, we can adjust things so that you could get that skin you’ve been really wanting.” I’m not going to say don’t do that. The reason is, one, it’s just like sometimes it’s just nice to be nice to your kid, just for no other reason than it’s a pleasure to make them happy.
And also when we go out of our way to be enjoyable and fun and generous and kind, it’s part of how we keep kids acting the way we want them to act because when they’re great, we’re great. And when they act like turkeys, there might be a cost to it. So I’m a believer for both, it’s wonderful in its own right and also in the name of like have a good time with your kids so that before they do something that they might regret, they have a reason to think, “Oh, my folks are so fun when I’m well behaved. Maybe I don’t want to do this thing that’s not such a good idea.” So I can go either way on the, should you rearrange your weekend plans around a skin, I just think you want to think it through.

Reena Ninan:
The funny thing is you mentioned when he got his Xbox in 2020 and he was so excited, he’s like, “Mom, I want you to game with me. I want you to do it.” And so I was like, “Okay, we’re in the pandemic. I’m going to learn how to game.” I did it. The dad next door came and helped set up the Xbox for us because we kind of didn’t really know how to do it. And my husband’s not a big gamer. And so he set it all up and he said, “What do you want your login to be, like your screen name?” And both of the boys who are in the fifth grade, very innocent, said, “She should be cougar mom.” And that was to this day, I won’t tell you the whole account, but it is like the running joke. They had no idea.
They thought that was the coolest name.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
You should take that as a compliment. Man, I would take it. I would take it all day, right?

Reena Ninan:
It would make it great and had no idea, but they thought it actually meant a cougar and mom would be pretty good to have as a Xbox idea.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
From now on, you are a cougar mom to me.

Reena Ninan:
Oh God, isn’t that hilarious?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
It’s awesome.

Reena Ninan:
So I’m just curious, how do we, I just want some tangible takeaways, Lisa, of when we’re talking about video games, what we should do, the conversations we should have, how do we openly talk about the game design and talk about what’s being marketed without shaming these kids? Or as you say, you give kids something nice, don’t take it away. And you had this great thing around Christmas and we were talking about gift giving. So we want them to feel part of it without demonizing them.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I think you just said it all, right? I think that’s exactly right which is, if you’re going to let your kid play video games, well then it should be fun for them. And you don’t want to stand over them being like, “Oh man, look at you’re getting played here.” I mean, that just takes all the fun out of it. I do think though that if kids are asking for purchases, that’s a great moment to say, “Okay, well who’s money and how much and if you run out, what happens then? Do you have to wait until your next allowance?” That’s a great time to talk about money and it’s spending. If your kid wittingly or unwittingly spends a whole bunch of money on your credit card without you being aware until you see the statement, that’s a whole other conversation about how this works. I think that the biggest takeaway, I’m going to give you the takeaway and then I’m going to give you how I think you don’t take all the fun out of things by making this takeaway.
I think the biggest takeaway is when we’re buying, we want the thing to drive our buying, to be what we really want to be in line with our values, to be in line with our own personal, just how we want to be in the world. We don’t want all of our decisions about purchasing to be in reaction to very, very, very clever marketing. I think that that’s the conversation to be had, which is we’re being marketed to all the time, but we still want to be in the driver’s seat. And I’m just going to double down on this. I think the way you do it without ruining things is to become very cognizant of the way in which we as adults are also responsive to marketing and just making that parallel with your kid. Like I bought this because I saw that, you’re buying this because you saw that.
Huh, we just want to be conscious of these things so that we’re making these decisions deliberately. It’s not just sort of happening because we’re being played by these very, very clever marketers. I think that that’s kind of where I’d be with it.

Reena Ninan:
There’s so much here. And I’m just so grateful for your perspective that you’ve always been about technology and video games, not anti and putting up red flags and saying walk away, but being realistic about where we are in life and where our children are with technology and these types of devices. I love that. So what do you have for us, Lisa, for Parenting to Go?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I want to go back to those moments where we put money in the relational bank with our kids. And this was something I was trained on, that when you write disciplinary checks, you’re writing them against that account, right? You want to have a good time with your kids so that there’s a reason for them to not do things that will make you upset and less fun. Separate from the question of how much and how often purchasing should happen in games, if at all, I think there’s such a value. If this is what kids are into, there’s value in being curious about it. Tell me about the skins. Tell me about this game. You love this game. What do you like? And there should be no gotcha there. Now that you’ve told me, I’m going to use this against you. It matters what our kids are into.
And part of how we show them warmth and build relationship with them is to be curious about the things that they are really invested in. Even if it’s really not our cup of tea and not that exciting for us or in fact something we’re not even all that drawn to, these skins, these things like kids love them and use them as a chance to get to know your kid better and to build your relationship.

Reena Ninan:
Be curious about the things your child is interested in. Great advice. And next week we’re going to talk about prom night. Should you trust your teen or do you trust your instincts about being a little bit nervous about the night? Lisa will walk us through. I’ll see you next week.

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