The young man sat at a desk in my classroom with his head lowered, avoiding the eyes of five teachers and his own mother. As his English teacher, I was a part of this intervention-style parent/teacher conference in an attempt to halt the downward trend of his GPA. Mom already knew what the problem was: his homework was not being turned in because he was obsessed with playing video games after school. “And there’s nothing I can say,” she explained, “because he bought the game console with his own money.” (Several teachers quickly pointed out that he owned the game, yes, but she owned the TV and the electricity.)
I understand there are numerous arguments in favor of video games: the development of hand-eye coordination and problem solving skills, for instance, and the premise that kids in front of an Xbox are at least “staying out of trouble”. And advances in motion sensing technology mean kids can even now claim games like “Let’s Dance” as legitimate forms of exercise.
Still, I am not a fan of video games. And it really has nothing to do with the most common objection: the violent, gory and raunchy content of so many of the games which are rated (ironically) as “mature”. I do find those games reprehensible, but my concern isn’t so much over what the games put into young people’s minds, it is what the games steal from young people’s lives. The Lego Harry Potter my own kids got for Christmas doesn’t contain any foul language and the “violence” is strictly cartoonish, but even relatively small doses of the game can be insidious, stealing away my kids’ interest in school work, their creativity, and opportunities for meaningful social interaction.
It’s a growing problem nationwide; the popularity and proliferation of gaming shows no signs of stopping. Video game sales are one of the few bright spots in the largely gloomy U.S. economy. According to the Entertainment Software Association, 257.2 million games were sold in 2010. (That means they flew off the shelf at the rate of 8 per second.) That’s a three and a half fold increase since the 1996 total of 74.1 million. And the industry is predicting annual sales growth rates of at least 5% into the foreseeable future.
Those numbers might make investors and retailers happy, but what does it say about this generation’s growing appetite for escapist entertainment? I wonder if anyone has attempted to calculate the number of man hours American teens and tweens spend waving a game controller at TVs each year. I’m sure the number would be staggering.
An experience this past summer really drove home the point to me. I hadn’t truly noted video games’ subtle drain on our family life until my wife and I removed them from our children’s lives for two weeks. Two blessed weeks.
That is how long we were in Haiti. For the sake of our four kids, the trip was intended as a preview of the fulltime missionary service we hope to begin there as a family in August of 2012. Our three oldest children (ages 10, 9 and 7) were allowed to bring their hand held Nintendos for the van ride to Miami, but the games were all left behind when we boarded the airplane.
The results were nearly miraculous. The kids spent hours upon hours outdoors, even as mosquitoes swarmed and temps hit the 90s. They joined neighborhood kids in soccer games, although it meant struggling with the language barrier. They discovered board games and an enjoyment of each other’s company. They kept journals and actually protested if my wife and I did not budget enough minutes for writing before bedtime. Furthermore, arguments and whining were noticeably reduced.
One afternoon I stumbled upon a friendly sibling chat session to find my 10 year old son affectionately rubbing the back of his 9 year old sister as they talked. He was not punching her in the back – he was rubbing it. I thought I was in an alternate universe.
I know our circumstances were unusual and certainly other factors were at play, beyond the lack of video games, but there is no doubt in my mind that my kids’ experiences those two weeks would have been greatly impoverished if the easy Nintendo escapism had been available to them.
And I can’t help but wonder how much life they have missed since we returned to “normal”.
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