Playing with my son (2014) | Hacker News Reader

Playing with my son (2014)

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76 pointsTomte55 comments

I don't have studies to back it up, but my anecdotal experience with growing up with video games is that it's not a good use of your youth if you take into account the opportunity cost of doing other things. I noticed this once I stopped playing them, and I didn't even play them that often to begin with. Of course, I'm sure there are plenty of examples where video gaming led a kid to having a fulfilling life (even ignoring the sample who actually turn it into a professional career), but in general it feels as though games are not the optimal conduit for this as the skills gained by playing them are generally not transferable to anything else other than titles in the same genre.

The boost in mental acuity comes at the price of many hours spent. They say time enjoyed isn't wasted but I've found that there are different types of enjoyment and some are more rewarding than games in terms of pound for pound satisfaction. Looking back, most of the time I spent gaming yielded relatively few memorable moments and periods of personal growth, and all of these were actually more about the people I played games with than the hobby itself. As I said, it's all anecdotal, but I think worth investigating all the same.

That said, I'm sure the author's kid will be fine as he seems to be a smart lad. I also wonder how he would fare against "I Wanna Be the Guy", although I hope the guy doesn't put his son through that!

I may be old fashioned, but 4 seems way too young to start video games. Especially non kid friendly ones with so much action on the screen.

But then again my wife are trying to delay any interactive screen time as long as possible.

I was mouth agape through the whole article. Call me old fashioned too, but I don't want my 5 year old killing things with swords when their grasp on what is real and imaginary is so blurry. It blows my mind that most of the kids in my daughter's junior kindergarten class have seen Star Wars movies, Spiderman, and other violent movies.

I'm not against a 4 or 5 year old using a tablet for a limited account of time for interactive educational 'games' but guns and swords is well over the line.

Edit: Contra at age 6!

When I was 4 and 5 I played with plastic swords, squirt guns and watched Power Rangers. shrug My 6 year old nephew plays Super Smash Brothers. When I was 6 I explicitly remember my friends playing Sonic and Super Mario and X-Wing/Tie-Fighter. None of them grew up to be school shooters.

I'll limit the exposure time, but I'd let my kids play contra at 6. My parents went the educational-games-only route until 6th grade, and I was shut out of a lot of social situations as a result. No desire for my kids to go through that.

"None of them grew up to be school shooters."

Please don't put implications in my post that aren't there. I'm not aware of research that suggests video games are or are not a factor in school shootings and similar events.

Letting a kid play a game about killing people with machine guns at age 6 is crazy to me. I was also shut out of social situations like seeing movies and playing video games at a young age and I imagine my children will be to. It hurt at the time sure, but life ain't always about getting what you want or doing what everyone else is.

You implied that cartoonish violence like Contra will have substantially negative psychological effects on children. I've never seen any support for that and my own experiences tell me the opposite. A quick google search shows evidence going both ways, so lacking time for an exhaustive analysis I'm sticking with my experiences.

Take my anecdotes with as big a grain of salt as you like, but analytically the benefits didn't outweigh the cons in my case. Not having access to the same video games, movies and entertainment as my peers greatly damaged my ability to form relationships at a young age. The only upside was perhaps a marginal increase in analytical thinking skills, which was easily offset by the anxiety/insecurities and resultant academic underperformance I had as a result of underdeveloped social skills. Your kids' mileage may vary.

Sure I grew up and that's all long in the past now, but that doesn't mean it was useful, justified, or harmless. When the fiancée and I decide to have kids, I intend to give them every opportunity I can within reason, that includes the resources for a vibrant social life if they want. Obviously I won't be buying them Grand Theft Auto at age 6, but Star Wars? Absolutely.

"You implied that cartoonish violence like Contra will have substantially negative psychological effects on children."

I do believe they have negative effects on children but I don't believe that extends to school shootings.

Are you sure it was a lack of video games and movies that let you to have trouble forming relationships? My anecdote is that even though I had virtually no video games (except at friends houses) or television until highschool I was still able to form (and maintain for 30+ years) friendships with my peers who had very different rules than I did, and had a full social life all through school (I do consider myself a strong introvert and have had social anxiety issues in past, but I would never point at lack of TV/games growing up as a root cause).

Like you said, neither one of us has hard data, only anecdotal stories with different outcomes for similar "media" parenting strategies.

Even if there is no negative consequence on an individual child relative to their peer group, I still believe (can't support with evidence obviously) that exposing children to violence in video games and movies is a net societal negative that I don't intend to contribute to.

edit: Just wanted to say I appreciate your perspective as it's one I hadn't even considered before and gave me some food for thought.

Fair enough, I imagine it largely depends on peer group as well. Literally everyone I had anything remotely in common with growing up played video games, watched adult-ish TV, saw PG-13+ movies, etc from a young age. My parents outright refused to let me have any of those things, and as a result no one wanted to come over and play at my house, I always sucked when playing with the other kids at birthday parties, I wasn't allowed to see any PG-13+ movies with them, etc. It got to the point where I actually started academically teaching myself the rules of video games by reading websites and strategy guides, and memorizing summaries of TV shows and movies just so I could participate in conversations at lunch. I'm not saying it was the only issue (I was meh on sports and shy in general), but it was definitely a big hurdle. Like being the only one forbidden from playing cards at a poker tournament where literally everybody else is playing.

If my peer group's interests had been more varied maybe it would have worked out differently. So I imagine it depends on the school/neighborhood.

Edit: At any rate, I appreciate your perspective as well. An upbringing without TV (let alone the rest) where it wasn't a hindrance is about as alien to me as it gets, pretty sure both my parents' families had TVs growing up. :) As it stands I see such things as ultimately harmless, but I'll admit that if I didn't experience media as such a crucial social lubricant, I'd probably strictly limit (although I'd stop short of forbidding) my kids from the more violent stuff as well, at least until they were 8+, just in case.

One aspect I find interesting about this argument is that children are actually much more cruel than adults seem to remember or realize. Kids will often expose their classmates to real violence (whether physical or psychological) at an early age and without the input of fictional violence to guide them. Of course, it depends on the specific school and I was lucky enough to grow up in a sheltered environment where this wasn't frequent.

The danger of movies and games inspiring violence seems comparatively meager. The risk of wasting time through addiction to these things is the more immediate danger.

Hell, I learned to shoot at age six, and got my first Daisy air rifle not long after. Can't say as it did me or anyone else any harm, except for the one time I bounced a ricochet off the bridge of my nose and had a welt for a couple of days - I've never so much as aimed a firearm at another human being, and that includes the air gun wars which were the occasional recreation of the more reckless among my cohort.

On the other hand, nine might've been too young to take my first deer; I've never had any particular desire to hunt since then, although if it were that or starve, I suppose I'd do the former - not that it'd be hard around here, where whitetail are abundant and have no fear of humans. It did teach me a great deal, though I might rather have learned it a few years later than when I did; on the other hand, I doubt I'd have been able to. In any case, while I certainly still eat venison when the opportunity presents, on the whole I'm still much happier to shoot deer with a camera than a rifle.

I never really noticed much one way or the other about video game guns. Seems like a lot of stew from one oyster, but I don't suppose anyone should take the word of a Mississippi Borderer brat for much of anything.

I am not "anti-gun". I don't own guns but I did grow up in rural Canada and had plenty of exposure to guns, hunting, and have enjoyed skeet and target shooting myself etc. Guns are a tool which can be useful. It's the violence and normalization of it that I'm opposed to.

I'd seen Star Wars by the time I was 5. I'd played various NES games, at least including Duck Hunt. My wife grew up around 3 brothers who included her in various things that would've made my parents blush.

You don't sound old-fashioned, so I won't call you that. I was thinking more like "alarmist". I think it's possible to harm a child through exposure to violent content, but I don't think it's as easy as you seem to. In particular, I'd consider cartoonish violence essentially harmless. My son won't be around FPSes for a number of years, but NES-style games? Can't be worse than 80s Saturday morning cartoons.

I'm a prospective parent wondering how to approach this for my future kids. How do you think about the categorization of "screen time" vs. non-"screen time"? Is there a reason I should be more concerned about my 6-year-old playing Final Fantasy than if they spent the same time reading young adult fiction? Playing Spelunky vs. playing softball?

(I get that there are object-level differences; maybe young adult fiction is better than Final Fantasy at teaching something about culture, or they get more reading practice. But maybe Final Fantasy is better at teaching simple math. So I'm mostly interested in the general "screen time" vs. "not screen time" distinction.)

before I was a parent I was anti screen time. Now that I am a parent of a 3yr old I'm pro screen time within reason.

I was really surprised to the huge amount of language development that occurs through screen time. My son at age 2 could name all the Thomas the Tank Engine characters. There are probably 30+ of them! I was blown away by the phraseology he absorbed/adapted from children's cartoons. There is real learning that happens in front of a screen. It's certainly not as passive as it would seem!

A child's expression when watching a screen can be disturbing at times (zombie like is a good description), but I've overcome my initial misgivings. Mixed in with play, exposure to other children, outside time etc. it's really a great tool.

It also gives mum and dad some down time which is nice ;)

> But then again my wife are trying to delay any interactive screen time as long as possible.

See, interactive screen time I don't mind at all. It's the passive screen time—YouTube, Paw Patrol, or even when my wife watches football during football season—that I have a problem with. As long as my kids are thinking and responding to what they're watching, I'm okay with it.

interactive screen time I don't mind at all. It's the passive screen time—YouTube, Paw Patrol, or even when my wife watches football during football season—that I have a problem with. As long as my kids are thinking and responding to what they're watching, I'm okay with it.

My 8yo son has been watching YouTube videos for inspiration for a few years now. He gets excited about something he sees in a game on youtube — Minecraft, Scrap Mechanic, Cities Skylines, Garry's Mod — then starts working on something similar himself, coming up with his own "challenges", setting up races for himself and me to compete against each other in, and making his own videos (which are really rough, but then we have a chance to talk about appropriate content in shared videos, and we review them together before making them public).

He's had a few situations where he couldn't figure out how to make things work, like Minecraft redstone machines, and we go back over the video he saw it in and work through it. It's a great way to spend time with him, working on something together, and learning something and doing some critical thinking. I monitor his usage (I have a chrome profile that is logged into his account under my domain) to check the viewing history and (un)suggest things for him, to open up a dialog about the content of some videos.

> He gets excited about something he sees in a game on youtube — Minecraft, Scrap Mechanic, Cities Skylines, Garry's Mod — then starts working on something similar himself

See, that seems good. My oldest is still a bit young for that, and usually ends up on the "people playing with toys" subset of YouTube, which is... a lot less stimulating.

>people playing with toys

I've got a 3 yr old. He loves these videos. Before he came along I didn't know they even existed. I find them disturbing. The overt consumerism is very off putting. We don't allow our son to watch these videos.

> Before he came along I didn't know they even existed.

There are entire worlds inside YouTube that I had no inkling of until I had kids! And I have no idea how they found them!

Agreed. These videos are horrible and kids (mine included) love them for some reason.

Why? Is there some research I haven't seen that conclusively demonstrates some danger from interacting with electronics at an early age? Or is it a social or personal preference?

Personal preference. I feel as entertainment, it's too "low barrier?" and I see too many parents using electronics as a distraction/anti-boredom tool.

It also helps me be "more present" when I'm not using electronics (my phone) when I'm around my kid.

I don't know of any research, but the issue is that it's too highly stimulating. Real life can't compete with carefully engineered intermittent dopamine rushes. So you end up with fidgety kids who are uncomfortable unless they're getting some sort of "fix".

It's a silent epidemic. Some years ago I went hitchhiking through Iceland. Gorgeous country. Of all the cars I rode in, maybe half a dozen had children. In every instance - EVERY single instance - the child had an iPad or phone, and was playing with that instead of admiring some of the most beautiful scenery in the world.

I started playing games on my Atari at 4, was PEEK & POKE "programming" by 5ish and at 7-8 was modifying my own games based on source code copied from Atari User magazine.

Nothing wrong with engaged, mindful, and productive interaction.

I started playing the NES around that age. I now have an infant and have to think about how to introduce electronics to her. I too have reservations, but (I think) I turned out fine so maybe it's not too young?

The first game I remember playing was Millipede in the arcades at Chuck E. Cheese's when I was 4. And Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. very shortly after that (maybe the same day). I'm sure I was garbage at it, but they attracted my eye and I begged until my parents relented.

My brother started playing the NES with me when he was about 4 years old (maybe 5, can't quite remember). We played the hell out of hard games like Contra together.

And my parents aren't particularly into video games.

I actually started learning the basics of how to write software when I was 7 or 8 years old (copying and tweaking BASIC programs out of checked out library books, playing around with Hypercard on the one school Macintosh in the library). I think people can handle things much younger than most older people assume.

i think the only unfortunate thing about this story is the lack of experiencing life on old pcs. the kiddo has definitely mastered video games and learned a whole bunch doing it but it's too bad he didn't have that same experience on a computer. one thing a computer gives you is a tool, which really taught me all about hacking things in so many ways. hand eye coordination and reflex gained from playing video games is awesome but problem solving skills are way more useful in the long run. the old school adventure games taught patience and problem solving like few games do these days.

Hi, I wrote the article! We played a bunch of PC stuff along the way, including a good chunk of the Lucasarts catalog. We skipped the text adventure genre entirely when he was little, but we're making up for that now that he loves reading for fun.

https://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/868668282953318400

We just beat Wishbringer last week. Thinking Planetfall or Zork next.

So what's a good machine to play games with kids 4-6 on? I have a wii, but the games suck, and a steam tv streamer thing but by the time I habe the remotes configured correctly they are back to playing with their legos... Are there any machines with an hdmi connector that have a bunch of games appropriate for that age?

Not sure on a machine, but Steam is getting a lot of great indie party games these days that might be appropriate.

Recommend any favorites?

Towerfall, Monaco, and Jamestown are my go-to indie party games. Rocket League, Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, and Rayman Origins/Legends are also very good local multiplayer.

What about a recalbox on a raspberry pi ? Or a raspicade ?

Only a few bucks, hdmi output, a lot of different gamepads compatibility. Works with my 7 years old kids !

I've been thinking of this for a while. What gamepads do you recommend? Is recallbox/raspicade better than the retro pi project ?

Xbox USB controllers are great all rounders.

> So what's a good machine to play games with kids 4-6 on? I have a wii, but the games suck…

My kids loved the Lego games for Wii. Another benefit: They're co-op games, so they can play with you or a friend.

Just get some Xbox controllers and Steam should be fine with minimal set up. Or set them up before asking them to play.

Alternatively get an emulator and some ROMs old SNES games. Very fun.

Plenty of good games for kids on any platform.

I use an Xbox 360, Kinect & the Kinect party game.

If they're going to be in front of a screen they might as well exercise.

As an aside, riffing of the messing with kids head's theme... I've convinced my boys that marshmallows are made from those large round bales of hay that farmers wrap in white plastic.

It's pretty easy to get the Wii to run emulators, and I wouldn't be too quick to write off the Wii library. You've got the Lego Star Wars/Indiana Jones/Batman games, Mario Kart, Wii Sports, some Disney Princess games if your kids are into that. There are also some good games like Mario Galaxy that give the second player a limited role, so they get to help without the whole game having to be tailored to their level.

Feeling a little maker-minded?

Raspberry Pi 3 + RetroPi + a case + USB Xbox controllers === cheap game console with HDMI and all the games you want.

Basically instant on too.

> by the time I habe the remotes configured correctly they are back to playing with their legos

That seems like a pretty good outcome!

Shouldn't half the fun be in hooking the games up to an old CRT tv? Blowing on the cartridges? Cheating to use that modern Plug-and-Play joystick console!

None of that was ever any fun. I think unless you actually care about the game or system as a physical artifact, emulation's the better way to go.

Even nostalgia can't cast a rosy glow over that huge pain in the proverbial. The fun was in playing the games - getting them to run in the first place, especially the battered rentals which were so often the only option when a single cartridge cost $50 or so, was anything but.

It's not too bad. Keep the pins clean, and the ones in the console itself bent straight, and getting a game to run only takes a couple tries ;-)

I tried some of the NES games with my 4.5 yo. Many original games are very unforgiving with their controls and he quickly favoured Dr Mario where there was less immediate penalty for a mistake. And even with that, he quickly went back to Lego and chess.

What gets me about this article is the header graphic showing an Atari 2600/VCS, but the version of Pac-Man on the screen is clearly the Atari 400/800 version!!! (grin)

Reminds me of how Laszlo Polgar decided to (successfully!) demonstrate that any child can become a prodigy with the right upbringing, by teaching his three children chess starting from age 5.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/30/hungarian-education-iii...

I'm a parent of two young children and I thought this was atrocious when I read it in 2014. You're not raising buddies, you're raising independent adults. You're there to help them find their direction, not tie them to yours. Letting a young child with a developing mind and a growing body spend hundreds of hours pressing a button when a few pixels overlap in order to fuel your pride and self-satisfaction is almost literary in its patheticness and its potential personal consequences. It's the geek equivalent of toddler beauty contests and for my part just as well thought of.

Hi, I wrote the article! Thanks for your commentary, snidely passing judgement on me and my family. Much appreciated.

The article was intended to be a little provocative, more than a little tongue-in-cheek, but suffice it to say, I never would've continued playing videogames with him if he didn't show interest.

He was nothing less than absurdly enthusiastic about it, and it was a way for us to kill time together, but I never pushed games on him for a moment. Eliot, like many of his friends, loves the creativity and collaboration that comes with the medium of games, and the social aspects of playing them with his friends and family.

He's turning 13 this week, and has taken classes on making games himself in GameMaker, and is now modding the games that he loves. I'm happy he's found a hobby he loves, and I'm proud of him.

I had a similarly negative view about your article and "passed judgment on you" for making the choices you made for your kid. In particular I have a very negative view about e.g. 6 year olds using guns to kill enemies in video games. If the article was about what I would consider to be more constructive video games I probably wouldn't have given it a second thought (eh I probably would still judge but not so negatively!). Did you ever worry about a game like Contra having a negative effect on Eliot? Thanks for chiming in :)

Have you played Contra? The weapons are about as realistic as Mega Man's.

It looks more like using bubbles to pop an endless stream of bad guys, Bubble Bobble-style.

https://media.giphy.com/media/DpXqHdILXRRDi/giphy.gif

So, no, I never worried about anything in an NES game having a negative effect on him.

Yes I've played/beaten Contra. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree because to me it looks like shooting a lot of people with guns.

You're right. Expressing my disagreement did not have to be so over the top. Or even expressed. Apologies for internet assholism.

I think you read a different article than I did.

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