When my son acquires a fulfilling, creative, and high-paying position as a video game designer someday, will I be able to look back at the countless hours spent with a controller in his hand and deem it career training?
He’s a good student, he writes stories, he plays hockey, and he has a great sense of humour but playing video games is his favourite pastime, gobbling up more of his time than I care to think about. We’ve tried to come to a compromise over the years regarding limits, to no avail. Last summer, when I had him think of a project that was screen-free, he drew illustrations of his video game covers; and when I insist that he spend the same amount of time reading as he does gaming, this hardly ever works and I eventually resort to nagging. I’ve settled for reading aloud to him as he plays with the sound off; however, he’ll be a teenager next year so my time is running out with this manoeuvre. He’s had his PlayStation3 for a year now and we have not allowed online access but I can’t avoid it much longer. This isn’t like his pursuit of passing fads such as Pokémon or Webkinz that I was able to put off until he lost interest. There are many good reasons why I’m hesitant to open his little world into a massive one whose scope I can barely appreciate, but my greatest concern is about how much more time he may spend playing video games. And because my son is a good sleeper, going to bed at 9:30 most nights, he’s also an early riser so he can get in an hour of game time before the sun even shines. Most days, I want to throw those game systems out the door. I’m tired of saying, “Take a break.” or asking, “How much longer is this game?” or in my most frustrating moments of the day, “Get off that thing and get ready for school!”
The genre of the game also makes a difference. I’m better with sports games and car racing, but I lost the battle for a gun-free home when the war games became his favourite thing to play. Ne’er a plastic gun has entered our home over his childhood but now he recites a repertoire of weapons and ammunition that he loves to rhyme off as I shake my head. My reluctant acceptance of violent games seeped under my guard in subtle ways over time. It started with cartoon characters carrying pseudo-weapons in games rated E10 for Everyone over Ten. He quickly graduated to war games where he pointed out, “I only kill zombies, Mom.” Now, when I wince at the blood splattered across the screen during war re-enactment games such as Call Of Duty, he rolls his eyes. I’ve watched for changes in his behaviour but honestly, he does not seem to be ill-affected by them. If anything, his focus and concentration resembles meditation and his memory for the exhaustive details is astonishing.
My resolve was officially undermined when I read an article in The Economist from Sept 13, 2010, which cited a study by cognitive scientists at the University of Rochester that suggested video gamers make faster and more accurate decisions. Subjects using fast-moving action games, such as COD, saw improvement in decision-making skills, enhanced sensitivity to their surroundings, and it helped with multitasking, driving, reading small print, navigation, and keeping track of friends in a crowd.
The best I can do is continue to supervise game-playing and expose him to new things, until he is older and his choice of activities is officially beyond my scope of motherly duties.
Update: We granted permission for online playing this week and all my fears came to light within 24 hours when he was invited to play a game by someone named Mr. McNasty. Yes, this is a learning opportunity and I will take it in stride but the world never gives a parent a break! It also looks like I’m among the last parents of his group of friends to come over to the dark side when he brought home a list of online classmates he can play with. I’ll still be adamant about conveying my views on these games because I hope what I think still carries some weight in my son’s development but just like everything else in parenting, I'll look at it as preparing him for the world because I can’t change the world for him.
