I have officially embarked on the parenting milestone of video games. As someone whose only experience is a passing interest in Super Mario Bros as a tween, I do not feel prepared. Our three children have done some dabbling in video games over the years, but nothing like I hear about from other parents.
That seems to be changing, my friends. Today, I’m going to share my family’s current struggle with finding the sweet spot of limits and autonomy when it comes to a nine-year-old boy and his love of Fortnite.
After what felt like years of begging, we gave in last year to allow our then eight-year-old to play Fortnite. His father and I had long discussed with him our fears he would become obsessed due to his tendency toward hyper-focusing. Of course, our persistent child promised and promised that he could handle it. Surprisingly, he did quite well for almost a year, playing moderate amounts of time with no problems stopping–even going weeks at a time without playing at all. His unexpected lack of obsession helped me relax in general about the fear-inducing hoopla surrounding video games at large. Until now.
(In a recent newsletter I semi-bragged about this same child’s ability to balance his life with video game time. I should have known I was tempting fate!)
“I Just Have to Grind”
Maybe it’s the current Myths and Mortals season dovetailing with my curious son’s fascination with Greek gods. It could be that it’s the first time he earned a Battle Pass, which apparently makes the game better? Whatever it is, we are seeing what I’m calling the Fortnite Creep. It’s creeping insidiously into the center of his purpose for living. And our parenting life.
Not only did he start to plan his days around time on Fortnite, we noticed a convergence of sleep regression, volatile mood, and hyper-focus last week that put us on high alert. One day while I helped lace up his soccer cleats before practice, he looked at me with a crazed look in his eyes and said, “I just have to grind.”
I can see how going all in (zero limits, “play to your heart’s content kid”) or all out (banned outright) is tempting when it comes to parenting and video games because each extreme is clear. Unfortunately, neither approach allows our kids to develop skills--technology skills and emotion management and social skills. Parenting on either end of the extreme creates the opposite conditions for autonomy-supportive parenting. We have to do the work of finding where on the limits continuum best fits our child’s needs at this moment in time. (Because it will likely change.)
I reached out to Education Consultant and Creative Editor of OutThink Media, Cindy Marie Jenkins, for guidance. I include some of her expert analysis and suggestions throughout the rest of the newsletter, but check out her Fortnite Primer for more excellent tips on how to spot addictive behaviors and strategies to prevent addiction and other potential negative effects (e.g., strangers targeting our child, desensitization around guns from gun play).
Friendship and FOMO
The social component of Fortnite is real. Over these cold Midwestern winter months, playing Fortnite on FaceTime with friends has helped my socially oriented son stay connected and content. It’s convenient and accessible because this connection does not rely on busy and overwhelmed parents to coordinate schedules and drive to houses. That’s the top layer of Fortnite serving a social function.
The deeper, more complex layer I recently discovered is that playing Fortnite involves feeling a need to keep up, a form of social comparison deeply wired in all brains—not just fourth graders “grinding.” I admit not understanding the ins and outs of Fortnite strategy but I know there are skins and stars and Victory Royales. The more you have, the stronger you are and the further you can go. This translated to an unexpected negative side effect: a bottomless whirlpool of my son feeling the need to play so he doesn’t fall behind. Jenkins suggested how to approach this with your child, “I'd be blunt about how it's a really fun game, but it is specifically designed and engineered to make you spend money and make you have FOMO.”
Which leads us to how Fortnite can be training grounds for increasing emotional awareness and coping skills if we notice and seize those opportunities.
Jerky Players and “Salsa and Chips”
The peer competition aspect of Fortnite is a microcosm of the beast that is social comparison which pervades adolescence. Using his experience on Fortnite, my son and I discuss how it’s a bad feeling when his friends are ahead of him, but a feeling he can learn to feel and be okay with (learning to tolerate discomfort). When they’re playing and he’s not, he can remind himself he’s doing other things important to him like being part of his soccer team.
When my little master of persuasion is not in the heat of the moment of arguing with us for more Fortnite, we point out what we’re noticing with the increased playing time: sleeping issues recurring after we finally made improvements, getting upset faster and with more intensity, and other interests fading into the background as Fortnite takes up more of his attention.
We ask him, does he notice feeling and acting differently? In calm, reflective moments, he agrees he does notice.
Jenkins advises parents to have open dialogues with their Fortnite gamer about “handling [their] rage and dealing with jerky players.” She adds, “If they continue having trouble with anger or obsession, find a code word you can say to them that will trigger them to be more aware. Ours was ‘salsa and chips’ for a while.”
I’m not naïve enough to think these conversations about FOMO and feelings are sufficient to immediately course correct, but I see these ongoing dialogues as planting seeds for future growth as we muddle through how to pull the weeds while caring for flowers in that which is my son’s gaming life.
Brain Health and Addiction
Jenkins suggests sharing some brain science with our kids to support the rationale for limits: “Show them how their brain works and what a game like Fortnite does to them. Short spurts, sure, but too long in one day, and your synapses will need a vacation. If they point out an older gamer who plays all the time, you can tell them that a brain isn't actually fully developed until their mid to late 20s, so it's your job to keep their beautiful brains on the right path.”
Speaking of brains, this article covers what we do and do not know from brain research: Kids And Violent Video Games Like Fortnite: How Is the Brain Affected? This review of the research supports the importance of talking explicitly with our children about how games and apps are deliberately designed to be addictive. Limits (courtesy of us parents) help our kids learn how to manage their responses to these addictive technologies.
In the case of a child or teen who shows signs of impairments from gaming life, thinking of brain health reminds us that fundamental well-being trumps autonomy. If gaming has taken over their lives and brains, they likely aren’t able to make their own decision with agency until they have a brain reset.
Setting Limits and Finding Moderation
I empathize with my son’s normal experience of wanting to not fall behind his friends, but this doesn’t mean I give him carte blanche, no-limits Fortnite access. In fact, just the other day as I walked ahead of my son and his friend on our morning walk to school, I overheard his friend naming a couple of classmates who (allegedly) stay up until midnight and 1 a.m. playing. I stopped walking and turned around to face them, “wait, are these kids? How old are they?” Yes, these night owls are fellow fourth graders.
This illustrates how we can’t control what becomes social norms and how hard it can be to work against it in our homes. Thankfully, my son has no desire to play Fortnite until midnight (yet!), but he certainly would play longer stretches than he does now if we let him. As I mentioned at the beginning, he’s probably playing more than is good for him and we need to figure out how to balance the benefits of Fortnite (enjoyment, socialization) with the need for moderation.
Before Fortnite’s Myths and Mortals season began about a month ago, my son’s limits were one hour per day on school days and two hours on weekend days, with no playing after dinner. Over the last month, the time has crept upward and he even convinced us a couple times of the social necessity to play for twenty minutes after dinner. We did not cave easily, but ultimately, we buckled.
Despite my son’s earnest conviction that playing after dinner would not affect him before bed, it surely did. He was cranky and worked up, struggling to fall asleep. We had the evidence we needed to stick with the limit of no gaming after dinner. I talk a lot about experimenting with limits as kids grow and so we experimented with the after-dinner restriction. And we learned.
Autonomy-Supportive Parenting in My Home
Despite some expert advice I’ve heard to not allow any video games for a child like my son because of his executive functioning weaknesses (which make him more prone to experience negative effects), I don’t feel like an outright ban is the best solution. Yet.
As author and professor of psychology and neuroscience, Tracy Dennis-Tiwary, recently wrote in the New York Times, it can be tempting to take a stance of “digital absolutism” to remove these addictive technologies from children’s lives, but it is shortsighted when it comes to equipping our children for living in a digital world. Futhermore, based on other examples of absolutist approaches such as the Just Say No anti-drug campaign, a full ban is likely not effective.
Using an autonomy-supportive mindset, we need to figure out the guardrails that work for our son, glean the growth opportunities for life skills, and keep experimenting. After our week of evidence that he could not handle fewer limits on Fortnite, this is what we’re doing this week:
Implementing one day a week of no Fortnite
One hour and a half max on weekdays
Keep the two hours on weekend days
Zero Fortnite time after 6 p.m. Ever.
As we proceed down this new parenting path, autonomy-supportive principles and strategies to light the way. Empathy and perspective-taking have helped us better understand how playing Fortnite socially connects him and the pure joy he experiences of being active in a story. We can see through his eyes how it’s not all bad.
Yet, for the sake of his brain health, we need to set limits that his brain won’t (can’t) set for himself. We regularly insert this rationale into discussions about the rules. We also identify where he has choice within the established limits so my son maintains a sense of agency within his non-preferred expectation to play shorter duration and less often than he wishes.
I’m finishing the writing of this newsletter near the end of our week of more limits. So far so good. My adorably passionate and intense rookie gamer has adhered to the limits and seems more like himself. He hasn’t said “I just need to grind” once.
**You can order Autonomy-Supportive Parenting: Reduce Parental Burnout and Raise Competent, Confident Children on Amazon and Bookshop.
Bucket List Item Checked!
I’m a total NPR nerd. When the Here and Now producer reached out for an interview about my Washington Post article, Not everyone needs therapy, I couldn’t believe it was real. You can listen to my interview with the lovely Robin Young here. Swoon!
How I’ve Been Relaxing
I’ve been listening to Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter on repeat and I simply can’t get enough of the track, Ya Ya. Trust me, if you’re feeling cranky, this will get you moving and smiling!
What’s been your Fortnite or other video game parenting experience? Share your wisdom and ask your questions!
Most children are going to struggle with the addictive elements of online gaming like open-world novelty, loot boxes, treasure chests, infinitely customizable avatars and games that specifically target "grinding" and extended online play. Roblox checks all of these boxes, and is even more problematic than Fortnite because it is aimed at much younger children.
-Online gaming experiences should not be a child's first lessons in self-regulation, decision making, delaying gratification, social learning, etc. Some foundation in these skills should be a pre-requisite (the more the better).
-A balanced parent/child relationship, where trust, honesty and personal responsibility have been cultivated, will make it more likely that solutions for inevitable online gaming problems are collaborative rather than adversarial.
-There is no downside to delaying access to any of this if parents use that time to help the child develop skills and attributes, which will enable them to better meet the challenges, which we know are coming.
A super helpful look at the challenges of parenting in the age of gaming. Thank you!