This week, Vox senior editor and video game enthusiast Alanna Okun is guest-writing the newsletter. Read on for her conversation with 10-year-old Wolfgang and his mom, Chloé, all about why video games have some rarely talked-about positives for our kids. —Liz
I almost can’t remember a time before I played video games. I got my first system — a purple GameBoy Color — when I was 8 years old, and now, at 32, gaming is my primary form of entertainment. It has helped me navigate these past few years of uncertainty and isolation, provided me with a creative outlet, and above all given me a whole lot of joy.
According to a report from the Entertainment Software Association, more than 200 million Americans played video games in 2020. Still, video games are something of a boogeyman for many parents, who (often rightly) have concerns about screen time, stranger danger, expense, and isolation, among others. I’m not here to dismiss those fears. I'm here to argue that there’s a whole lot more to games than scary headlines and worst-case scenarios.
I spoke with my friend Wolfgang, a 10-year-old living in Brooklyn, and his mom, Chloé (also my friend), about his gaming experience. He and his dad both love video games, and they’re an important part of their relationship, Chloé says, adding with a laugh that they are not a part of her and Wolfgang’s own. (“Hard pass.”)
Almost immediately, Wolfgang revealed to his mother on the record that he sometimes plays a game where you play the stock market with harvested alien organs, which we all agreed sounds like a parody of a game any parent would be horrified to discover their kid playing. Mostly, though, he prefers virtual reality (VR) games like Rec Room, which have become a lot more accessible to regular consumers over the course of the past half-decade or so. He’s also a fan of Xbox’s Game Pass service, where, for a monthly fee, users can access thousands of titles, a fairly dramatic departure from when I was growing up and had to painstakingly allot my allowance to a single cartridge at a time.
“If I’m not feeling great,” he says of playing in VR, “it’s an amazing escape from reality. When I take the headset off, I immediately remember I have to take care of my hunger, this bad thing is going to happen tomorrow; I immediately become not as happy.”
Although that escape from reality is what has some parents concerned, Wolfgang believes it’s worthwhile in moderation. He also thinks that games have made him better at planning and organizing his brain. Chloé, for her part, agrees. “I don’t love video games,” she says, “but I think that he has learned a lot. I think that his vocabulary has grown —”
“— Do you know what ‘kakorrhaphiophobia’ is?” Wolfgang asks me. I don’t, and he tells me it means an abnormal fear of failure.
Clinical psychologist Naomi Fisher recently wrote a viral thread about the fears parents bring to her about their kids gaming, arguing that she sees plenty of benefits: that video games can give young people a venue to feel confident and competent; that they can be a safe social outlet; that they can provide a space for a parent and kid to play and interact together, on the child’s own terms. “When we demonise screens,” she writes, “we risk demonising the things our children love. We denigrate their choices. We give them the message that the things they value aren’t worth the time, that they can’t be trusted to make decisions.”
That sense of trust, of being allowed and even encouraged to play around in a world that’s maybe not immediately legible or accessible to parents, seems like a huge part of this conversation. Of course, it’s not just about trusting your kid — there’s plenty to be worried about when it comes to gaming, from other gamers hurling toxic abuse to predatory pricing models to concerns about desensitization toward violence. Those are real issues, and it’s up to any individual family to decide exactly how they address them.
In order to foster that trust, there’s value in talking to the kids in your life about how to navigate these situations, to log off when they need to or find the people with whom they can connect on their own level. There’s value in having open conversations about, for example, how they themselves treat strangers online, rather than issuing unilateral edicts based on assumptions.
Wolfgang and Chloé seem to be on that same page. There aren’t hard and fast rules in their house when it comes to games. “We’re not big rule people,” Chloé says. “I think all three of us don’t stick to rules very well — that’s a family trait — but I think all three of us also really like balance, and we can typically get a sense of when we’re getting out of balance. When it feels like too much time apart, or too much time not experiencing things in the world, we seek that balance. And sometimes that just means getting off one screen and watching a movie together!”
Above all, what matters in their family is kindness, including toward the people inhabiting on-screen avatars. Wolfgang is no stranger to taunts and rudeness from the people he encounters in multiplayer games, telling me that he feels as though many people have two selves, their real self and the one they hide behind online without any consequences.
“I try and be nice,” he says of his own comportment, adding that he “has a breaking point” when it comes to less-than-sporting behavior from other players. Still, he would never yell insults at someone, IRL or otherwise, and Chloé says she’s proud to see how well he conducts himself. If he ever doesn’t, he tells his mother, she has his permission to “lock him up forever.”
—Alanna Okun, senior editor for The Goods
