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'Fortnite' May be a Virtual Game, But It's Having Real-life, Dangerous Effects (bostonglobe.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: "They are not sleeping. They are not going to school. They are dropping out of social activities. A lot of kids have stopped playing sports so they can do this." Michael Rich, a pediatrician and director of the Clinic for Interactive Media and Internet Disorders at Boston Children's Hospital, was talking about the impact "Fortnite: Battle Royale" -- a cartoonish multiplayer shooter game -- is having on kids, mainly boys, some still in grade school. "We have one kid who destroyed the family car because he thought his parents had locked his device inside," Rich said. "He took a hammer to the windshield."
A year and a half since the game's release, Rich's account is just one of many that describe an obsession so intense that kids are seeing doctors and therapists to break the game's grip, in some cases losing so much weight -- because they refuse to stop playing to eat -- that doctors initially think they're wasting away from a physical disease. The stress on families has become so severe that parents are going to couples' counselors, fighting over who's to blame for allowing "Fortnite" into the house in the first place and how to rein in a situation that's grown out of control. Further reading: 'Fortnite' Creator Sees Epic Games Becoming as Big as Facebook, Google.
A year and a half since the game's release, Rich's account is just one of many that describe an obsession so intense that kids are seeing doctors and therapists to break the game's grip, in some cases losing so much weight -- because they refuse to stop playing to eat -- that doctors initially think they're wasting away from a physical disease. The stress on families has become so severe that parents are going to couples' counselors, fighting over who's to blame for allowing "Fortnite" into the house in the first place and how to rein in a situation that's grown out of control. Further reading: 'Fortnite' Creator Sees Epic Games Becoming as Big as Facebook, Google.
Their parents were raised in the era of video games! They know exactly what it's like!
A "vidogames are bad" story presented uncritically on Slashdot? My how we've fallen from a nerd-centric site. Jack Thompson would be proud of what Slashdot has become.
Err, high-UID Slashdotters do know who Jack Thompson is, right? Get off my lawn!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
It's always fault of something.
"We have one kid who destroyed the family car because he thought his parents had locked his device inside," Rich said. "He took a hammer to the windshield."
Who finds out about that and then thinks its a video game issue.
Seems to me the parents suck ass.
Although, video games to have an impact on people, and to thing there is no effect, especially to a developing mind, would be foolish.
But this? this is bad parenting. Should have had his system removed from him a lot sooner.
Give him so old laptop that can't run it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
They make it sound like gaming devices just pop into existence, out of the ether, into children's hands, especially when parents aren't looking.
Well, that's nonsense.
These parents are utterly failing their children in the most objective way; you can't argue with a measurable nutritional deficit. This is proof that these "parents" are not up to the task of guiding a new person into an independent, well-rounded adulthood. They are damaging these kids.
As pretty much always, the problem is the [fake] parent. Charge these parents; force them to attend parenting classes.
Get real, folks. Breaking the windshield doesn't destroy the car; it's still completely drivable, it just needs the windshield replaced.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
...in some cases losing so much weight -- because they refuse to stop playing to eat -- that doctors initially think they're wasting away from a physical disease.
I'm guessing this could have the opposite effect on deterrence one might think, kinda like the "if you have an erection lasting longer than 4 hours..."
I mean really.
My parents would steal the cables for my consoles, take away my Gameboy, and not allow any internet based on my systems MAC address.
I was allowed books, radio, and outside.
http://progressquest.com/spoltog.php?name=Son+Of+Son+Of+DarkRookie
The premise seems to be the kids should stop doing things they like and start listening to the experts and nannies running civilization.
I can tell you this: the big shots tying people down with weird nanny rules are not happy people. I don't think children should listen to them.
Video games are the new sports just like sports were the new war.
You know what beats obesity? Self control
I'm pretty sure everything would have suffered. School, social life, family life. I can totally see that. I'd like to think my mom and dad would have put some kind of limits on it, but honestly I kind of doubt it.
My 12 year old stopped playing it, voluntarily. He now plays Rainbow Six: Siege and Apex Legends. And Terraria.
"They are not sleeping. They are not going to school. They are dropping out of social activities. A lot of kids have stopped playing sports so they can do this."
I can recall when this happened when I was a kid and it was Pitfall, then when it was Elite and then when it was Everquest and then what it was....
“Enough games, [go outside and play / do your homework / do these chores / let’s do something else ...]”
I was a kid once, they had video games then too, and they were very compelling and if I had my way I would be playing them all the time. When my parents told me to stop I was mad at them. Because I was so close to winning and or I was having a good run.
But turning off the video games isn’t abuse. And you shouldn’t be allowing your kid to play games at the cost of their health and education.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I've heard from colleagues how they struggle with getting their kids off Fortnite to engage in normal social activities, corroborating the article.
I'm torn, because it looks like good fun. And I believe I have a good enough relationship with my children that I could get them to stop without the level of tantrums the article presents. But, it might be one of those "thin end of the wedge" things, so we think it's safest all round to avoid it completely.
Are they missing out on a social aspect where everyone else is talking about it? Probably - but I don't think that's a big enough loss given the reported level of addiction it can generate.
Of course the article presents the worst cases, because the balanced ones (playing for a few hours a week) aren't interesting for an article. It would be useful to see a distribution of time spent in game per week, perhaps for each age demographic, to get a better idea of what's really going on.
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
In my day we had Everquest to ruin our lives.
Oh no it's the video game! Video games are bad m'kay!
I mean, it couldn't possibly be that we have an entire generation of parents that can't be bothered to actually do what they're supposed to and be.. you know... parents? Parents have gotten into the habit of treating electronic devices as babysitters. I was in a restaurant the other day and was stuck beside a family with a toddler. The toddler wouldn't stop making a scene until they dropped a tablet in front of them and played some annoying youtube video. I ended up having to move to a different table cause it was so breathtakingly annoying.
It's called disciplining your child. They won't stop play to come eat, you make them stop, by whatever reasonable means necessary. Your children are not your friends. They're your effing children. YOU are responsible for teaching them what it means to be a healthy well-functioning adult. If you can't handle that, then don't have children.
There is literally *always* something for a child to obsess about. Fortnite is nothing special.
But naturally people won't take responsibility for their actions, so "blame everything but me" circlejerk resumes anew.
My daughter is young but she gets .5 - 1 hour of game time max. My wife tries to make that screen time period, but I'm not so heartless. Stop being a little shit and parent your kids. Stop trying to blame it on video games. There are way more addictive and damaging things than video games and your kids are likely to find those as well if you let society babysit them for you.
describe an obsession so intense that kids are seeing doctors and therapists to break the game's grip, in some cases losing so much weight -- because they refuse to stop playing to eat
I thought America was facing a childhood obesity crisis, it appears you inadvertently found the solution!!
So why are we not making more kids play Forrtnite? Set a sunlamp next to them and a regulated amount of food within reach to maintain a specific level of body weight, and you'll not have to do anything else with them until they have to move out of the house!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This article is meaningless without statistics to back it up and if those stats are any less than 1%, then it would be fairly "normal" abnormal behaviour.
FFS, when I was 13, I pawned my watch & my bicycle and used the proceeds at the local arcade. (Yeah, I'm old).
My folks held back my allowance for six months after going to the pawn shop to get them back.
That solved the problem.
If you're, say, 25 or older, you've probably been socialized enough growing up to at least be less susceptible to it, but if you're younger than that, you've grown up around the cancer we refer to as so-called 'social media', and as such have been spoon-fed the falsehood that 'sharing' on the internet is somehow being 'social', when in fact all it does is give you an excuse to be anti-social, avoiding actual human contact. These days, you could theoretically go through your entire life never having any substantial direct contact with another human being, thanks to 'social media' the Internet in general; you can order literally anything you need to sustain your life right of the internet and have it drop-shipped right to your door and never even have to talk to the delivery person, even, and they're working on eliminating the need for humans to deliver packages, too. Add all this to a popular online multiplayer video game like Fortnight, and of course you end up with people ruining their lives over it. By the way the same thing happened with World of Warcraft, as you may recall, but it's probably even worse this time with Fortnight.
In our neighbourhood/school, I'm seeing kids as young as 7 and 8 playing this game, which just seems too young to me. The excuse you get is, "all their friends are playing it, so I feel like they'll miss out." I have no problem keeping it out of my house. The only gaming system we have is an old Wii, and it's rarely played. None of my kids have told me they feel like they're missing out. Not that we're perfect - they watch too much Netflix.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
FFS people, video games are addictive. Are you really this clueless?
love is just extroverted narcissism
Fortnite has Daily quests and seasonal goals to keep you coming back every day and to appear as though you are building towards some long term goal.
Video games are addictive. Addictions, if poorly regulated, lead to a host of social issues. This has been the case since pong and tetris and before. Quarter eaters.
in the film "Ready Player One", the end scenes, the new owners of the VR Game decide to shut the entire game down, one day a week.
except, the new owners portray *ethical* responsibility that, unfortunately, would be financially irresponsible as far as the enactment of the Articles of Incorporation of a profit-maximising Corporation. bottom line: if Epic Games actually tried to do something as socially responsible as shut Fornite off for one day a week, their shareholders could legitimately sue them for adversely affecting profits, and the Directors would be prosecuted and struck off as a result.
Speaking of quarter eaters, Perhaps we should swap back to coin operated devices as a fun regulation mechanism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Blo8XPaLv-8
Well, my car is so old that the value of the car is likely less than a replacement windshield. So, yeah, it's possible it "destroys" the car. But I agree, it's more likely hyperbole.
Their parents not only get to play video games, but they drink a sixpack every night, take various legal opioids, possibly semi-legal pot, and an occasional treat of coke or meth, go to church on Sunday, have one-night-stands to prove to themselves that they're desirable, collect porn by the Terabyte that they'll never have time to watch, blow paychecks at casinos, overeat, check slashdot/reddit/facebook 20 times per day each, and occasionally start a fire or steal something for a little excitement on the side.
They ought to be experts!
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
The vast majority of people that try alcohol, or even heroin don't become addicted.
love is just extroverted narcissism
I will say as a parent that it's very difficult to allow Fortnite as a "sometimes" thing.
The kids themselves have zero self control, there is no self-management of game play. You're literally yelling at them to quit.
You can prevent them from playing at all, but you wind up with the ironic situation where the kids who they used to do stuff with in meat space aren't available because they're playing Fortnite.
The best we've been able to manage (short of a total, permanent ban) is making play contingent on grades and barring it on school nights. You get all As and Bs in school, you can play on weekends or when there's no school. My kid lost it for a month when his grades slipped, and there was constant angling for exceptions or complaining about how unfair it was.
The other strategy we haven't tried is trying to organize a multi-family Fortnite "holiday" where no kid can play. There's multiple challenges here, from the fact that 8th grade boys have a very amorphous and weak social circle in real life to other parents refusing to go along with it for various reasons -- "my kid doesn't have a problem", parents you don't know, and some percentage of parents who see Fortnite as the greatest babysitter ever.
My grandson plays and loves Fortnite. His parents don't let him play long per session and when it's time to do other things (eat, sleep, go somewhere), he simply tells his friends he's gotta go and logs off.
It's called discipline. More parents should look into it.
Most people aren't strung out on heroin.. But we don't declare "Heroin isn't a problem!". Maybe it's time to understand that, for some people, these games are a problem.. I've read a couple of study blurbs that talked about the link between addiction and serotonin levels in people. These same studies show that, for some people, social media / games / you name it will generate these addictive levels of serotonin. It's a small percentage but so is the percentage for heroin addicts..
Few things in life are YES/NO, BLACK/WHITE, ONE/OTHER. There are shades of grey. Most people do fine with video games.. For some people they become life consuming. I've watched it with my own eyes.. This doesn't mean we have to implement regulations.. But maybe we could fun a couple of really comprehensive studies.. Get all the facts and then decide, as a society, what to do about it..
Standing up and declaring that "video games aren't a problem" might be 99.8% accurate.. But that .2% inaccuracy (if it exists) would affect a HUGE amount of people in a nation as large as the US (or in a collection of nations as large as the EU). If nothing else, it bears further study and perhaps some level of monitoring/data gathering on how many people are being treated for video game addiction (if any) and data of that type..
But, it's pretty hard to have a useful discussion about anything when the data seems to be lacking..
I said forest, and not woods because some wouldn't get it. If you took 3/4 of the kids, between the age of 12-20, stuck them in the middle of the woods with a compass and map, they would die of starvation (not to mention smartphone withdrawal) in about an hour! I'm THANKFUL that I grew up in a world before computers, before the internet, before smartphones. Heck, even kids in smaller cities & towns would probably suffer the same fate! Kids have no real coping skills if something doesn't go their way, in part because their parents let the smartphone be the "babysitter". I've seen it several times in waiting rooms at various places, restaurants etc. Kid starts acting up, hand them the phone. It's a shame kids don't know how to EXPLORE without their $#*(% phone.
A nationwide chain of for-profit fortnight 12-step recovery centers. And a competing chain (run by the same company) doing basically the same thing but without the whole "higher power" stuff. For those who don't buy into spirituality. Why? Because, anything that can be done by recovering addicts trying to help other people recover can also be done by those who are greedy and prescient enough.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
A couple years ago, my older child started sipping into addiction but with another game title: Ark: Survival Evolved. Once I realized it, I cut his play time to 2 hours Saturday and 2 hours Sunday, either between 10 AM and noon or between 2 PM and 4 PM. Mon-Fri were off limits as far as games were involved.
It was quite a battle at first, when this rule came into place, but with patience and resolve it got sorted out.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
April fools, motherfuckers!
Have gnu, will travel.
In the 1930's B.F. Skinner found that a variable schedule of reinforcement could cause rats to push a lever unto death. In the 1950's an implanted electrode was even more impressively compelling. In the 1970's John B. Calhoun noted modern human behaviors among his rats of NIMH. I recently camped outside a casino in their parking lot and imagined their never-to-be-seen truth-in-advertising sign to read, "WELCOME TO OUR SKINNER BOX RATS OF NIMH!"
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/compass-pleasure_n_890342
http://www.sustainable.soltechdesigns.com/critical-mass.html
As one science fiction author once said, "Think of it as evolution in action."
With no social life and little chance for a decent income, they are far less likely to reproduce than the rest of the population. I used to have this recurring dream of the future where I would drive through what had been a very nice neighborhood in the evening and all I could see was peeling paint and weed choked, overgrown yards. Flickering lights from inside told me everyone was indoors and online every waking moment.
In nature, whenever any species population gets too high, there is a tendency for a catastrophe (a virus or some such) to seriously crash its numbers. Nuclear weapons, insecticides, global warming, plagues, famines, asteroids, volcanoes, etc. be damned; maybe this is ours. It would be more fun and involve less pain, at least, so there's that.
On a personal note, went through this with my kids some years ago and they are now quite functional grown-ups, well educated and employed. I had to make it clear that when there are things that have to be done, then those have to take priority (like leaving a game because the house is burning down and you won't be able to play if you are dead). Likewise, doing poorly in school, followed by a low paying job, means you are going to have to work many more hours and have less time in your life for playing. It also means you won't even have enough money to get the good computers with the nice internet plans. That had to be made very, very clear.
I occasionally get addicted to a video game myself. When that happens I let myself go at completely (other than covering the priorities, work, family, hygiene, sleep although that last might suffer a bit). Eventually you get sick of it and move on. This may not work for everyone but, then again, though the issue might seem in doubt to an outside observer at the time, not everyone who goes to college, not even if it's a party school, winds up as an alcoholic.
As a parent, i have to say: those kids need more present parents.
I wonder if the premise of the South Park episode where every adult was distracted from his real life by playing Read Dead Redemption 2 has any truth to it. I can say that I'm going to play RDR2 some more right after I wrote this comment, but I've never felt inclined to play it like more than 2 hours in succession. Plus it will have a very definite end when the story ends - I'm not playing online, ever.
Posting AC for obvious reasons.
My parents attempted similar approach when I was teenager and was playing too much games. This decision nearly ruined my life, as when I went to university and there was no longer oversight I went off the deep end. Nearly failed out and it took me extra year to finish my degree.
Now I am in my mid 30s, have family, kids, and a well-paying job. I still play computer games, sometimes with my spouse, sometimes with kids. With everything else I do manage at least 5 hours of gaming a week, often more. I still pull all-nighters and book vacation from work when exiting new game releases.
The issue with your approach is that for your kids games are better than almost anything else available. All you are doing is withholding something very desirable. Instead you should try unrestricted game play one summer, once they waste entire summer playing games, with cutting into sleep and hygiene, there will be internal realization that some balance is needed. From there, it will be possible to find balance without constant external oversight.
Well, at least he had an educational opportunity and may have learned something. He hopefully learned that windshields are made of laminated safety glass and are much more difficult to break through with a hammer than the side windows which typically shatter easily because they are made of tempered glass. This will be an important skill to speed his progression through the criminal ranks.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Thank goodness my boy managed to get out of the grip of that game by himself. Certainly I limited the amount of time he was allowed to play it, but basically on his own after about a month of being interested in it he said, "Meh, it's just kind of boring now" and that was that. He definitely does suffer from the fact that many of his friends just want to play it over anything else and he's tired of it, so they don't really hang out any longer.
If you don't provide any proof for your claim "nope" is as good an argument as yours.
I've played Fortnite a few times... I follow the industry, so I know how big it's gotten.
What I don't quite get is whether there's some qualitative difference here between it and -- to pick two random examples -- Evercrack or WoW at their respective peaks. It seems like people are putting in some slight Second Life elements into it, with live concerts and so forth, but isn't that really it? What am I missing?
Or is this next generation now officially Too Young To Remember either of those two games at their peak and we're going to have to go through this whole thing again?
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
The bogeyman has always existed; Once you see him for what he is he just changes his name.
Parents need to step up and teach their kids some self control or the transition to adult-hood is going to be a rather rough one.
( Already have too many entitled parents producing entitled kiddos who go full stupid if things play out differently than expectations. )
Personally, I would rate-limit or QOS that traffic back to the stone age depending upon how obsessed the kiddo is and how it is impacting them in other areas of their life. ( Grades, etc. ) ( The experience will be awesome at 300 baud :D )
It's a great shooter made by one of the best teams in the business (Unreal Tournament team). The mechanics are solid, and it's a fun game. They do inventive limited time game types (they keep it fresh). But then they slap on meta mechanics that deepen the addictive nature of the game: gambling (random loot boxes), dailies, weeklies, and seasonal 'quests' that just unlock token aesthetic items.
Personally, I don't play it because I waited too long and the core mechanics have a distant skill cap (building magical fortresses instantly, and dropping on your unsuspecting/confused opponent from above with a shotgun) and I have other stuff taking up my time (1000 hours in PUBG, for example). Plus the game was clearly designed for the younger audience (... yadda yadda, I suck at it).
Pythia - Battlestar Galactica : "All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again"
World of Warcraft: Stayed up, Launch events (IRL, Online), not eaten, bought special edition expansions, guilds, vent, etc. It is all old news.
Space Invaders: hanging out at arcades.
Rock concerts are the devils work
Every generation of game, or fashionable thing has the same problem
we had Nintendo, and folks would get paid bank to play all day... while most of us over near Lake Bill and other offsite locations... slaved away programming all day.. fast forward 30 years.. same game.. same problem.. same attitude... same solution... get a life..
It was two days a week, Tuesday and Thursdays.
Given how I've seen my nephew act when his parents tell him to get off his computer and actually go play with his friends in real life I have to agree that shutting down the Internet even one day a week would be a good thing. Hell's given how much time I spend playing Final Fantasy XIV I think a weekly shutdown would be good thing.
The games/social media/etc.do such a good a job triggering the release of Dopamine in your brain that anyone saying it isn't addictive is deluded.
my US$.02
Don't sit too close to the TV. The radiation of the CRT will kill you. ca. ~1957
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
You've got the wrong economy.
"Attention economy," is the one you're looking for.
In any given day, we have just so much time to allocate to differing activities.
Fortnite, for some, attracts almost 100% attention. No matter your condition, that's not healthy.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
All this talk of more than four hours a week playing video games being an addiction shows we really, really have lost sight of where we came from. Without the addictive nature of videogames, programming, and technology in general, most of us would not have our sky-high incomes.
The career required putting in tens of hours a week into computers to get the knowledge, skills, and familiarity for our professions. Most of us started that process by playing videogames for far too many hours and now we are denying that to our children, but still expect them to be competitive in a more demanding working world.
We are doing a disservice to them, giving them less opportunities to immerse themselves in the way that led us to excellent careers in an economy where H1-B replacements and globalization did not put us up against the entire world. Our children will not be as skilled as we were at the same age. Our children will not be competitive with technology after highschool without a couple thousand hours of actual experience being competitive with technology.
... "glad I had a daughter" column.
Everyone complains about how fat kids are, now they're losing weight and that's a bad thing!
And heaven forbid kids don't play sports, their bodies will remain in decent condition and colleges won't be able to exploit them for money!
We have similar issues with our kids and Fortnite.... our son will put up a fight when told to quit no matter how long he has been playing. The thing that really makes it so important to them is, surprisingly, the social aspect. They get together with their friends and play online.
The "danger" aspect of this for me isn't the amount of time spent playing a game - we can regulate that quite easily with parental control software on the computer and router - but the lessons of peer pressure and status rewards for doing something incredibly stupid: spending real world dollars on cosmetic online items. They get "status" among their friends for having cool new skins. So they want to spend actual cash on something that makes no difference in the gameplay at all.
We use this as a teaching opportunity - allowing them to make limited mistakes and suffering the consequences. Like spending their V-bucks on some pickaxe skin and then not having any left to buy the next season's battle pass.
It is a pretty good way to teach lessons in being responsible with money and planning ahead for things you want to buy in the future - delaying gratification. Lessons my father taught me using the mini-bike that I couldn't afford to buy instead of video games.
The other thing that is handy about this fad is that it makes for easy punishments. Middle school boys are pretty hard to discipline. They are testing out their limits and finding something to take away can be challenging. Enter Fortnite. Our son is currently sitting through a week without Fortnite (and any other video games, but be realistic... all he really cares about is Fortnite. Maybe Apex is coming up too, but that's not where everyone hangs out.) He has really policed up his attitude in the first couple of days under this restriction, so we definitely got his attention.
Like everything, games are just something they enjoy. It can be a burden, or a teaching opportunity. It just depends on what the parents make of it.
Seriously? Blaming video games for your shitty parenting? Jesus, when will the ad nauseaum attacks end? It wasn't video games the last 20 times, and it's not video games now. Raise your fucking children or sterilize.
Its a problem for a million if that families across the planet. That's a parental problem not a game problem.
Yes, I never understood what people have against education.
What is best in life? Hot water, good dentishtry and shoft lavatory paper.
The career required putting in tens of hours a week into computers to get the knowledge, skills, and familiarity for our professions. Most of us started that process by playing videogames for far too many hours and now we are denying that to our children, but still expect them to be competitive in a more demanding working world.
The world doesn't work in the same way now. You play modern games by clicking a web link, following a couple of prompts and hey, you're playing.
No learning how to tune the cassette player. No typing load commands into the console. No typing programs in from a magazine. No configuring himem.sys to get the damn thing to run. No installing/configuring sound drivers.
We are doing a disservice to them, giving them less opportunities to immerse themselves in the way that led us to excellent careers
Yeah. The only way games are going to allow that is if you buy them a good PC and get them into modding. They're sure as fuck not going to immerse themselves playing Fortnite.
doesn't want to come up to eat when he is playing
At eleven he should be helping make the food.
"Come and help make dinner"
"No, I'm playing"
Wait three minutes. Unplug gaming device.
"Now you're not playing. Come and make dinner"
They learn fast.
We get a ton of pressure to buy Fortnite skins or other in-game items. So far the compromise is he can buy one item per month, and it has to be bought with his own PS currency cards that he buys with his own cash. One of the limiting factors is he has to get his own ass over to the Walgreens to buy the card.
He started in over wanting some other high-dollar item, headphones I think, and was angling for a parent subsidy. I took out a sheet of paper and did the math on what he spent on Fortnite add-ons and showed how he could actually buy it if he wasn't spending money on Fortnite skins. A light went on, but you could just see the weird, gambler-like cost-benefit analysis going on that said the headphones weren't as valuable to him as having the occasional Fortnite skin.
We make him save some portion of his allowance (which he earns through chores) and the money he makes shoveling for our neighbor, but are pretty liberal about allowing him to spend (or waste..) his spending money on whatever he thinks is useful. I think it staves off some obsession with not buying them and lets him feel in control and make his own choices. He's got a whole life ahead of him evaluating consumerist compulsions.
I agree with the oddly social aspect of the game. He is always playing with 2-3 kids he knows from school or the neighborhood, and the running conversation doesn't stop.
I sometimes wonder if some of this is a byproduct of kids lacking the free-range outside the house options we had as kids. Our moms were always booting us out of the house. And it's not like we were engaging in constructive activities out of the house, we road our bikes far from home, we played in/near the creek where it wouldn't have been hard to drown, and in middle school used to ride our bike to the river (the Mississippi river!) and climb on the undersides of bridges. We crossed the river on multiple bridge archways and catwalks, hugely dangerous in retrospect.
"Nope" is not an argument.
It is when some pulls the original argument straight from out of their ass.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
It is, for arguments presented without evidence can be dismissed without as well.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
And what does he do when he doesn't play computer games?
I'm asking 'cause my parents quickly learned that me playing games in 100% of my spare time is the lesser problem...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Buy all the skins so you can't afford food anymore!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So with Fortnite you can save a lot on computer games, what a great game!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Probably the one with the lowest value car...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Now it's Fortnite, before it it was another game like world of warcraft etc. This isn't anything new, and has been happening since the introduction of the home videogames..
Don't worry. The real offenders got punished.
School shootings are not some kind of killing spree.
They are an act of revenge.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
How to unplug the TV when the detective says "and the murderer is.."? ;)
That's what I learned, at least.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Unfortunately there isn't a good way to deal with it.
In fact, there is a final solution to this problem, but it is wildly unpopular.
ww3 should thin the numbers quite significantly.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
when its a good game. Fortnite is just bad though.
"We have one kid who destroyed the family car because he thought his parents had locked his device inside," Rich said. "He took a hammer to the windshield."
This kid was going to develop serious problems even if he never touched a video game in his life.
Shove it up your ass.
Love your post...
I lived the same youth. It really is sad...
One of the great things about bachelor parties is all the stories about how stupid you and your friends were and how lucky we all were to live to breed. Our kids are going to tell great stories about how they sneaked into the living room at 2am to play video games. Woo-Hoo! You just can't let your kids do dumb stuff like our parents could.
Like your stories, we used to ride our bikes down to the Tennessee river and hang out around the locks at the dam and fish at the hydro-power outlet. We even built a Huck-Finn style raft and floated down a small river to the lake - all without parental supervision or even parental knowledge. You try letting your kids do stuff like that today and you'll get arrested and CPS will come "evaluate" your household.
That being said, some things stay the same. My dad took me to see the Saturn V launch when I was a little kid, and I just took my kids to see the Falcon Heavy launch. And just like I was, they got all fired up about it.
Well, Ok, it wasn't exactly the same. When I was a kid we listened to NASA mission control on the radio and Dad took pictures with a little Brownie camera and a super-8 movie camera. My kids and I watched with the SpaceX live-stream on our tablet while taking video with a cell phone... But in both cases we went swimming in the ocean and chased crabs after the launch.... So some things don't change....