My oldest, now 12 and in his “Minecraft is a way of life” era, and I were walking our dog the other night and I asked him, “What do you think I should write about this week?”
I love our walks, however infrequent they are. I love hearing him process his thoughts in a stream of consciousness out loud. I learn so much about how he sees the world.
The other day, I showed him an article that the CDC just reported that nearing 1 in 3 people from ages 12 to 17 had prediabetes. Obesity and diabetes are on the rise among kids, and we talked about how different it is from my generation when we spent most of the day running around outside unmonitored. His response to that was this: Kids today his age, they play online. That’s where they are social. They don’t want to go ride bikes to nowhere or toss a football around until the sun goes down. They don’t meet up at the park or skateboard in empty parking lots where security guards chase them off.
I asked him what he wants, and he says he isn’t always sure. He just likes spending time with his friends. And how that looks has changed.
My worry about the physical health risks of today’s youth are less for him than with kids in general. My son has been training in fencing since he was 7 — since he was very young he loved stick fighting and was shockingly good at it, so I thought, why not. And it stuck like glue. But as a parent, I want our kids to have the chance to be kids. To mess up and learn. To be brave enough to ask questions and curious enough to try and find answers. And I want to say that boredom plays an important role in that process.
After five days of being fully offline last week at sleepaway camp with friends in King’s Canyon National Park with a wonderful organization called Feelospher’s Path, he and his friends hopped back into their Minecraft world and all the conversations that started on trails and in the caves continued over FaceTime. I think it is a bit of “the path of least resistance” and quite frankly, a lot of “so much has become curated and so little is left to spontaneity.”
Sometimes it takes a dozen texts between parents to find a date that works, and that date might be three weeks out. His friends live in different neighborhoods and cities, so having a random hour free here or there often does him no good for increasing quality face time. In this regard, Minecraft plays an important role in filling that social void because it’s much easier to hop online for an hour than it is to convince your parents to reach out to their parents, decide on which parents will host, and figure out transportation and other logistics. In the absence of neighborhoods filled with kids that are around the same age and go to the same school, what other options do they have?
Recommended for you
Brendan suggested I write a column entitled “Yes, you can learn from video games.” So I asked him — what have you learned from Minecraft?
He told me that he learned that you could make fires from flint and stone, and that he actually got to try it at camp. That he learned how to read and use coordinates because it’s how players locate one another. That he learned about solar patterns.
He asked if those things were new to me. I told him no, but I loved how he was learning them. It reminded me that not everything is best learned in a classroom. For many kids today, school may not even be the place where they learn most.
I also appreciate how my son has learned to collaborate, question and celebrate others in games. I’ve seen the skills translate to real-world scenarios, but it doesn’t always look like what I expect to see so sometimes I miss it. But, that’s on me.
People often forget that the current framework for education in the United States was built over a century ago. It was designed for a world that needed workers with specialized knowledge and strong compliance. Today, we’re in a very different time with very different needs and more velocity behind the winds of change than ever before. I’ve frequently referred to it as the shift from a “knowledge” to a “critical thinking” economy — others call it the “creative,” “attention” or “learning” economy. Whatever it’s called, it’s clear that adaptability, reasoning, creativity and continuous learning are becoming foundational skills when they were previously typically only celebrated after “the foundation” was committed to memory. Different times, indeed.
So yes, you can learn from video games. Thanks for the reminder, kid.
(8) comments
Annie - nice spin on the delirious effects of gaming on our children. Or, is your article tongue-in-cheek?
Hi, Dirk
Hmmm... maybe we're on different paths to the same mountain top. Annie certainly recognizes the problem of kids essentially addicted to their screens, but she didn't really seem committed to moving the needle away from the negative effects of that same addiction. It's great that her young son got to spend five days of his young life at summer camp without video games and social media, but as soon he and his pals returned home... they were right back to their screens. The education system refined during the early 1900s was committed to training a regimented workforce to sit in nice, neat rows while learning to perform assigned tasks. Today, kids are being trained to sit in isolation with their screens while learning to perform assigned tasks. Chilling. Kids using screens is preferred over getting them together because their moms and dads face the daunting challenges of coordinating schedules and transportation logistics? Getting kids together is too difficult because they don't live in the same neighborhood or go to the same school? Maybe those moms and dads should put down their own screens and just be parents.
Watching TV for hours at a time every day also isn't great for people -- arguably it's worse, and even more anti-social than the way a lot of kids game.
Do people have too much screen-time? Sure. Have done for years. But pretending games as uniquely deleterious and have nothing of value in them is just the latest iteration of moral panic.
Greek critics in the fifth century BC were convinced that books were going to rot everyone's brains, because they no longer had to memorize epics.
Let's look at fifth century BC Greeks... Socrates said, "Beware the barrenness of a busy life." Gaming will certainly keep today's kids busy. While gaming can be immensely entertaining, how much music, poetry and gymnasium can be learned from gaming?
While you make some points about learning from video games, this article overall made me sad. My 16 year old son recently thanked me for striking a balance and setting limits on screens while exposing him to and encouraging lots of outdoor activities. He said when he has kids he won't let them become "Ipad kids". He's never been the kind of kid who likes to spend hours sitting playing video games but we would not have allowed that anyway. In summer of 2020 he was 11 and all the organized camps, sports etc. were shut down so he and his friends (the ones whose parents weren't scared to let them leave the house) had an 80's summer- riding bikes, exploring, playing outside.
At 12 I would think most kids have some method of communicating with others - phones or email- and don't need parents to organize everything. In addition to bikes, public transportation (busses, CalTrain) is not bad here and my son also started using those by middle school. Are there really NO neighborhood kids your son can hang out with?
Perhaps some of the parents can get together and agree to set screen limits and literally force your kids outside without parents. A week at sleep away camp is wonderful, but this is far from enough.
Games have long since come into their own as a true artform, grappling with how people relate to each other, and moral choices, and complicated questions of philosophy.
Take this for instance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSdxIzXp-fM
This is from the most recent entry in the God of War series. The main character's wife, who is a seer, has prophesied her own death, and is trying to prepare things for her husband and son to succeed when she's gone.
"The culmination of love... is grief," is one of the wiser things I've heard said about the human condition. And something any family that's dealt with a long-term illness can relate to.
Citing The Last of Us -- in which the protagonist, at the end, makes a choice that's at once monstrous, and totally understandable, and the mechanics of the game drag you along with him -- is almost too obvious.
And then there's The Talos Principle and its sequel, which provide a pretty good introduction to transhumanist philosophy.
Lots of great stuff out there. You just have to know where to look.
I'm getting to this late because I just came from a very special time of sharing. A dear friend and neighbor, who was terminally ill, passed away a month ago. My wife sent out invitations for a potluck get together to remember out late friend. More than 60 neighbors showed up to share stories and their feelings about our departed friend. Tonight, the culmination of love was not grief. It was a warm bonding and joy. Joy not grief. Put down the game controller... it's controlling you.
Kids learn a lot more from playing sports and joining outdoor clubs..
Welcome to the discussion.
Log In
Keep the discussion civilized. Absolutely NO personal attacks or insults directed toward writers, nor others who make comments.
Keep it clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language.
Don't threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated.
Be truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything.
Be proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts.
PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
Anyone violating these rules will be issued a warning. After the warning, comment privileges can be revoked.