In spite of what I do for a living, the Fortnite craze took me by surprise last spring. If I’m being honest, the most surprising to me was the fact that my middle school-aged son, who had previously never identified as a gamer or cared that much about video games, was all in. I mean all in. In my research life I had talked to many gamers and felt that I understood the opportunities and challenges in the gaming space, but it wasn’t until last spring that I really saw it up close and from the parent perspective. Motivated 100% selfishly, I started to dig into the research on gaming and am surprised by what I have learned. In this post I want to share some of my current thinking and recommend an incredible book SuperBetter by Jane McGonigal. I don’t know Dr. McGonigal, but I am a super fan and want to make sure more people hear her ideas! Overall, I actually came out of this research binge less worried about my son’s gaming and more excited about helping him apply the benefits he gets from gaming (yes, there are benefits, Dr. McGonigal’s book has convinced me!) to other aspects of his life. Spoiler? It has actually worked really well for us!
Before I dive into the details, I have one request: if you have a gamer at home, game with your child. Okay, so everyone says this, but parents (talking about myself here) often don’t want to do it. I have so much to do and I don’t particularly like video games, why waste the time? Reframe: It is a tremendously good use of your time! Why? Playing the game (or if you’re me and you’re hopeless at games, just watching your child play for extended periods) allows you to see it in action. This opened up a whole new world for me because while watching him play Fortnite I figured out what questions to ask him (which created those warm and fuzzies of “she gets me” for him and led to some really interesting conversations). In addition, it helped me see that while it isn’t my dream game for my child (i.e. a creative math games that allows him agency over his learning and skill retention), it wasn’t as bad as I imagined. And I could sort of, kind of, see the draw for him (it’s like the Hunger Games with cool dance moves). So, watching him play really helped start my reframe of gaming. I really encourage you to try it out. Indeed it has made such an impact that I would say gaming with your child is the most important thing you can do.
Once you have played/watched your child play, it is critical to have follow-up conversations (i.e. “shut that off we have to get to soccer practice” is probably not the way to round out this bonding experience). The first thing I did that worked really well was I told my son what I thought was really cool about Fortnite and what I thought was impressive about his play. Yes, I had to reach a bit to come up with things, but it made a huge impact on him. He was so excited to explain things to me and be the expert (see my blog post from October 2018 for more on the power of letting your child be the expert). After that, I followed Dr. McGonigal’s advice from SuperBetter and asked him “what have you gotten better at since you started to play Fortnite?”
Real talk here: He’s 11, so he didn’t use a metacognitive approach to consider his skill set and executive functioning ability. But, with some prodding and examples (“do you try out different strategies when you don’t win,” etc.) he got there. Moral? Don’t give up, and the younger they are, the more framing you have to do. That’s okay.
In Superbetter McGonigal argues that there are a lot of positive psychological characteristics on display when we game—creativity, optimism, determination and collaboration (this one applies to multiplayer games)—just to name a few. The challenge for many of us is that we have been so caught up in the narrative that there is nothing positive in gaming, we don’t even look (another reason why watching him game was helpful; I saw him do some creative problem solving). In addition to pointing out that positive characteristics are on display when we game, McGonigal argues that we can carry these skills forward into our non-gaming life. We need to be more mindful of the positives and, she argues, apply our positive gaming skills to live a “gameful life” offline. Hence her question “what have you gotten better at since you started gaming.” Whatever your child’s answer, help the child see how this new skill can be applied to daily life. If for example, your child tells you that it has gotten easier to communicate with friends in the game to beat out competitors, dig in deeper and find out specifically what about communicating has gotten easier. Who knows, the next time your child struggles in a group project at school you may be able to remind him/her of times when he/she managed gaming communication challenges and apply those skills to the group project.
McGonigal’s book goes through many really interesting examples of the ways to apply positive gaming characteristics to daily life. As someone who doesn’t game at all, I love the idea of living a “gameful life.” To me it implies fun, resilience, and optimism. In 2019 I certainly could use a dose of all of that!