This discussion is an answer to the question and answer which can be found here. For those who don’t feel like clicking links, here are the headlines:
As an avid teen gamer, I’d say only under a few circumstances:
They’re playing entirely too long. The maximum I’ve ever played in a day is 6 hours, and I highly recommend not doing that. On average, I play 2–4 hours a day, normally closer to 2, and I’m perfectly okay with that amount of time to get my fix. There is such a thing as playing so long that it’s unhealthy. I would absolutely not go longer than 6, but I recommend more like 3–4.
They’re neglecting basic necessities to play. I absolutely do not understand the people who neglect eating, sleeping, etc to play video games. If this is happening with your teenager, then you definitely need a limit, because somewhere along the line, their priorities have been misplaced.
Their grades are dropping. School should be a priority, and gaming should be used as a leisure reward when schoolwork is completed. If your teen is doing great in school, this isn’t necessary. I also wouldn’t recommend taking it away completely, because your teen will likely just fight you back on it and it could have a negative effect on their mental state.
Overall, though, if none of these aspects are an issue, I’d say that your teen is fine and can continue the way they are. Gaming is great for de-stressing and I personally advocate it in healthy doses.
I greatly disgree with you!
While the second and third points MIGHT sound alright, the first doesn’t even sound plausible.
First of all, because of my teenage summer holidays of staying at PC playing games all day long, I now have a better resistance to screen fatigue than most people. And if the teen will follow a path in life that will require him/her/it to stay in front of a screen, it will most definitely help him/her/it to be able to stay more than the average.
Second of all, the whole notion of “playing for too long”, in terms of staying in front of a screen for too long and engaging with something for too long. The advancements in Artificial Intelligence and Automation will create a great disparity between the job types, with increasingly many jobs having to happen in front of a screen, or in growingly inhuman conditions (i.e. Silicon Valley vs. the kids who work in factories in China or India).
Now, the “neglecting basic necessities to play” is more or less plausible, but you have to keep in mind that they, too, will take breaks from playing. If they don’t it’s up to you to teach them that “if you want to be able to have more fun, you have to take a break from time to time and go to the toilet, go to the kitchen to eat, or even bring food in your room and eat in those times when you have to wait for something, or you can pause”. Besides, being able to hold their bladder for longer is a useful skill to have. You know how they say that you should never use the toilet in a dream? I do, with no effect in real life, because of my training due to gaming. Sure, I don’t hold it for too long, just until it becomes uncomfortable, then I go to the toilet, but it does help being able to not go to toilet for hours at a time. I had to drive, to walk, to do all sorts of things, which I could do better because I didn’t have to worry about going to the toilet.
And, finally, the “grades are dropping”… Let me tell you something: It’s not just the overall performance of the kids going through school that’s dropping, but the lack of effectiveness of the schools highly outranks the kids’ bad grades. In this day and age, the schooling system is highly outdated. Sure, there are schools where they teach properly, but they’re not state-financed schools, so not many invest in those.
My suggestion would be to teach your kid to never stop learning, to always learn something new, the internet can teach you anything, be it from text, audio or video, and for free, on top of that. If you cannot make proper use of the tools you have at hand, you’re already on a bad path in life.
A lifetime of learning, just to flip burgers.
Ever wondered why people have to have 12 years of school + 3–7 years of university, in form of bachelors’, masters’ and doctors’ degrees in order to get a good job? Natural erosion.
The school system started good, and was good at the time of the reform, but since a century ago many things changed, and people have switched from working in a factory all day long, staying in line without moving a muscle out of the expected quota, to going through all sorts of enviroments.
People have to adapt, to survive, but the school remains the same, which caused the need for “higher” (levels of) education, which have been added on top of the existing ones. However, increasingly more people switch to online education, and building a portfolio or a resume which to prove one’s worth.
Many choose to stop after high school or do an easy bachelors’ degree and learn what they want to do in the process, and those, usually, have more success in life than the others.
Your strictness might be useful in some jobs, but those jobs are either going to get a lot more difficult in the following decade (requiring even more years of formal education before an entry level job) or a lot different from what is taught in school and university (and more similar to what’s found online).
That being said, I do suggest having passing grades and having relatively high score on those tests which let you study in a university, but aside from that, I highly recommend you to educate your children into studying for themselves. It might save their live, and maybe even yours.
Aggressive behavior is not made worse by games, but by the society we live in.
And without proper counseling on how to handle one’s feelings, people are easily swayed by what they see in their family or in the media, and gaming is just a tiny part of all that.
One should be more careful with the TV and how the parents interact with the teens, than whether or not they play “aggressive” games.
The correlation between aggression and playing aggressive games is reversed:
It’s not that people become aggressive because of the games, it’s that mostly aggressive people are drawn to aggressive games, allowing them to not be nearly as aggressive in real life, if they can be aggressive in games.
Games act like a relief valve. If you’re drawn to architecture, you’re likely to play games like Cities Skylines. If you’re drawn to adventure, you’re likely to play adventure games, if you’re drawn to strategic thinking and logic, you’re likely to play strategy games, if you’re drawn to violence, you’re likely to be drawn to violent games.
One last thing…
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