Listen to your kids as they play

Our children’s online lives may seem a bit of a mystery. Especially if they like games, they can sit – headphones on and behind closed doors – for hours at a time, leaving you wondering who they are interacting with and what those conversations are like. If so, a popular gamer has some advice for parents – you should be listening.

David Marchese recently spoke to Tyler Blevins, better known as “Ninja,” a video game streamer popular with teens and young adults. New York Times. Blevins says he frequently meets children who say racist things or who are aggressive and threatening to women while he broadcasts.

It would be great, Blevins says, if you could track down the parents of these kids to let them know what kind of hurtful or inappropriate language their tweens or teens are using online – but that’s not possible, which means parents have to be vigilant. on what their own kid said. As Blevins says:

It all comes down to parenthood. Want to know who your child is? Listen to him when he plays video games when he thinks you are not. Here’s another thing: How does a white kid know he has white privilege if his parents never teach him or talk about racism? If they’re playing and their first interaction with racism is one of their friends saying the N word and they have no idea what it is – what if it was on my stream? Is it my job to have this conversation with this child? No, because the first thing that happens in my head is that this kid is doing this on purpose to troll me.

This is the problem with the “just let children be children” arguments and “talking about racism and sexism only divides us further”. If we as parents do not discuss these issues with our children, society (especially their peers) will wait to do so for us. They can learn – and use – words they’ve never heard before in an offensive way without even realizing how offensive they are, and they may not think about asking what a word or phrase means before. to start adopting it in their own language. , hurt or offend others along the way. Not to mention that they can say things that might their reported.

I’m generally not the type to advocate snooping into a child’s privacy (unless there’s a compelling security reason to do so), but Blevins’ suggestion to keep an ear on the your child’s play speech is a good thing. I don’t recommend grabbing a chair and sticking an ear to their bedroom door for an hour, but a brief listen every now and then can give you some insight into how they communicate with gaming friends. online and their presence. are conversations you must have.

At the very least, it’s a good idea to check in with them every now and then to ask them what gaming friends they’ve met online and what it’s like to play with those friends. As long as you are engaged and interested, your chances are better that they will open up to you about these interactions, which can help pave the way for productive conversations.