Kids and video games: What kinds of limits are best?

A few months ago, I had a conversation with reporter Jocelyn Solis-Moreira for an article she wrote in Motherly about kids and video games. I continued to think about the topic after our conversation, which turned into this post…

As a parent, especially if you’re the non-gaming kind, you may have wondered if all that time your child spends playing video games is healthy or not. Should you be placing (more) limits on what and for how long they play? Ban games outright? Or perhaps throw your hands up and give them free reign to play Minecraft, Fortnite, and PUBG: Battlegrounds, hoping that they’ll learn some residual skills that will serve them well in a tech-saturated world? 

Let’s first consider why video games are so compelling for so many children and teens (and adults!). 

Video games are interactive—they require active engagement, and they respond to players’ behaviors. 

Games give players immediate feedback—with some exceptions, games typically let you know where you are in the game world and how well you’re doing. 

There’s a low cost of failure—if your character dies, no worries, just start again, and again, and again, as many times as you like. 

Games provide an optimal balance between challenge and frustration—they adapt to a player’s skill level so that they’re always just challenging enough to make you want to keep at it, but not so difficult that you throw your hands up and call it quits.

Lastly, many games that kids play provide opportunities for social interaction—whether sitting next to a friend on a couch, in separate houses playing on a shared server, or interacting online with players unknown to them offline, many kids enjoy the opportunity games give them to interact with other people.   

These qualities are precisely why many scholars and educators have spent a lot of time exploring ways to make school feel more like children’s video game play.¹Stephen J. Aguilar, Caitlin Holman, and Barry J. Fishman, “Game-Inspired Design: Empirical Evidence in Support of Gameful Learning Environments,” Games and Culture 13, no. 1 (2018): 44–70. Christo Sims, Disruptive Fixation, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017).

At the same time, these same qualities can make video games very difficult to put down. In fact, in 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that “gaming disorder”—marked by an impaired control over gaming—is a diagnosable condition. 

What’s a parent to do when they’re being encouraged to sign their kids up for Minecraft camps one day, only to read news stories linking video games to mass shootings the next? 

Turning to research doesn’t provide clear answers—it’s easy enough to find evidence of both harmful and beneficial effects of video games on children’s learning and development.²Anderson, C. A., Shibuya, A., Ihori, N., Swing, E. L., Bushman, B. J., Sakamoto, A., Rothstein, H. R., & Saleem, M. (2010). Violent video game effects on aggression, empathy, and prosocial behavior in eastern and western countries: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 136(2), 151; Ferguson, C. J. (2020). Aggressive video games research emerges from its replication crisis (Sort of). Current Opinion in Psychology, 36, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2020.01.002; Ferguson, C. J. (2015). Do Angry Birds Make for Angry Children? A Meta-Analysis of Video Game Influences on Children’s and Adolescents’ Aggression, Mental Health, Prosocial Behavior, and Academic Performance. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(5), 646–666. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691615592234 That’s at least in part because games are different, kids are different, and even the researchers who study games are different (which shows up in the kinds of questions they ask and the methods they use to answer them). 

The answer: Follow the two-step decision tool I introduce in my book, Technology’s Child (and write about here, here, and here): 

1. Is this digital experience self-directed? 
2. Is it community supported?

When it comes to self-direction (the first step), ask yourself who’s in control, your child or the game?

Ideally, you want your child to be able to start—and stop—a gaming session voluntarily, without feeling compelled by the game world to keep at it for longer than they originally intended. During game play, your child should remain in control of their attention, not have it co-opted by the game and its promises of continuous advancement. 

Here are some signs that the game, and not your child, may be calling most of the shots: 

• Your child has difficulty putting down the game controller 
• They prioritize gaming over other activities they enjoy, and you notice they’re spending less and less time doing other things
• They continue to game even if it comes with negative consequences in other parts of their life, such as lower grades in school or losing touch with non-gaming friends

The second step is to ask what kinds of community support are available both within and surrounding your child’s gaming experiences. 

Within the game, consider who your child is playing with and what kind of shared experience they’re having. Perhaps gaming provides a bonding experience with a family member or a group of friends – that’s great! 

On the other hand, perhaps they’re interacting with people online whose conversation and behavior are not what you want your child exposed to. That’s not the kind of community support you’re looking for.  

Surrounding the game, it’s valuable when there are people who can help kids connect their gaming experiences to other aspects of their lives and put them in a broader context. For instance, if a game depicts violence in ways you find troubling, or maybe it’s implicitly (or even explicitly) promoting sexism or racism, these are opportunities for you to talk with your child about these depictions, why you find them disturbing, and how they relate to larger cultural patterns.

Use the insights generated from the two-step decision tool to set limits that make sense for your child and their gaming behavior. These limits will look different across families, and rightfully so. They could take the form of limits to the kinds of games your child plays, how long they play, what part of the day, where (bedroom or living room? home or a friend’s house?), and with whom (could there be room for you, on occasion?). Return to the two-step decision tool as your child gets older so that the limits you place on their gaming grow with them.

Resources

Bark (a parental control service) has a game-by-game list of parental controls for the most popular platforms and games.

Common Sense Media reviews games and curates “best of” lists for games.  

Notes:

• 1
  Stephen J. Aguilar, Caitlin Holman, and Barry J. Fishman, “Game-Inspired Design: Empirical Evidence in Support of Gameful Learning Environments,” Games and Culture 13, no. 1 (2018): 44–70. Christo Sims, Disruptive Fixation, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017).
• 2
  Anderson, C. A., Shibuya, A., Ihori, N., Swing, E. L., Bushman, B. J., Sakamoto, A., Rothstein, H. R., & Saleem, M. (2010). Violent video game effects on aggression, empathy, and prosocial behavior in eastern and western countries: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 136(2), 151; Ferguson, C. J. (2020). Aggressive video games research emerges from its replication crisis (Sort of). Current Opinion in Psychology, 36, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2020.01.002; Ferguson, C. J. (2015). Do Angry Birds Make for Angry Children? A Meta-Analysis of Video Game Influences on Children’s and Adolescents’ Aggression, Mental Health, Prosocial Behavior, and Academic Performance. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(5), 646–666. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691615592234