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I’m often asked to speak on the topic of how parents can manage kids and video games. If I’m appearing on TV, I have less than five minutes to offer parents tips and ideas on how to limit, choose and manage the video game obsession that so many kids today seem to have. Five minutes? How fast can I talk...
As I go over and over the interview in my head, I’m always struck by the realization that five minutes is not nearly long enough time to cover a topic that drives a 10 billion dollar industry.
If I were covering pogo sticks, I could fit my tips for safe hopping (hands on the stick, please), appropriate gear (helmets required!) and boundaries (no jumping in the street or near the neighbor’s flower bed) into a five minute time slot pretty neatly. If I was covering chewing gum, baseball cards or board games, five minutes would be plenty of time. Block building, bike riding, fort making, tag playing...all manageable topics for a five minute interview. But video games? I could write a book about it. Or at least a chapter in a book. Oh yeah, I did.
How do I jam the most important helpful tips into my mini-time slot? As I consider which nuggets to share with parents each time, I keep coming back to one word: Understanding. Understanding the nature of the games kids play. Understanding the rating systems. Understanding the influence it has on their social culture - how even when they aren’t playing, the conversations at school center around video game characters, strategies, tips and high scores. Understanding where kids play, and who they play with and what they are playing. And understanding why they love it.
I guess it would take just about five minutes for us parents to understand why kids might like a pogo stick, or baseball cards or chewing gum. Because we experienced these childhood past times ourselves. But video games have evolved far past the Pong and Pac Man versions of our arcade-playing days. And for parents to understand the draw of today’s video games, they may have to pick up a joystick. And play for more than five minutes.
Sharon Miller Cindrich is an author, columnist and mother of two tech-savvy kids. Her work has appeared in magazines and newspapers across the country including The Chicago Tribune, Parents Magazine and FamilyFun Magazine, where she is a contributing editor. Her self-syndicated column Plugged In Parent is published in parenting magazines around the country, and her book E-parenting: Keeping Up With Your Tech-Savvy Kids (Random House 2007) is available on Amazon.com.