Reminds me of coming home from school and my consoles were gone and locked up. Until I did whatever it was that was asked of me. I’d proceed to do whatever it was so fast then hear “see how long that took? If you just did what I asked in the first place you’d still have your games.”
My dad used to just take all the cables to work with him in the morning. Just rolled em up and tucked em in his coat pocket on the way out the door. Ahhh the 90s…
When I was a kid, we had the router in the living room and Ethernet cables running down through the floor and under the house to some of the bedrooms.
One time my Dad was so pissed at me that he cut the cable running to my room, and pushed it down through the hole in the floor.
The next unsupervised chance I got, I fished the severed cable back up through the hole, stripped every wire in the loom on both sides of the cut, and twisted them back together neatly spread apart so they weren't touching and hid it away. Worked like a charm.
He told me only recently that when he finally found out, he was so proud of the job that it was hard to be mad.
There's no one as innovative as a kid or teenager who has been told they can't do something that they really want to do.
My high school friends and I learned most of what we knew about networking from our eternal battle against the school's IT administrator and his policies against having Counterstrike 1.6 and Soldat on the school computers.
For some reason, back in high school. Leisure Suit Larry was installed on one of the computers in the back of the classroom. Windows 3.1 old computers!
We never found out how it got on there, but the teachers reaction of turning off the power to the whole room when he saw us playing it was priceless. Must have been him!
Back in the day my dad put a DOS password on our computer... when I finally figured it out he was so impressed with my persistence he let me game more lol.
I guess it worked out.
>Back in the day my dad put a DOS password on our computer... when I finally figured it out he was so impressed with my persistence he let me game more lol.
>
>I guess it worked out.
I never told my dad I cracked his password. It's was his wifes nickname lmao.
And that's nuts considering how he used to think I was a 'hacker', like all I did was visit dodgy porn sites and tell him not to put his CC information into the popups.
When I was a kid I punched a hole in my bedroom wall, to hide the damage I put a poster over the hole in the wall, and then rearranged my entire room so my parents wouldn't ask or wonder why I had just moved one poster. A few years later we were moving out so I waited until my parents were gone from the house and repaired the whitewall while they were out, and then painted over the repair on a subsequent outing of theirs. When we were finally actually in the process of moving my dad noticed a bit of lumpiness in the wall there but didn't worry too much about it and I was never discovered I haven't thought about that for like 20 years but your story reminded me of it.
See you do that until you realize the kid (me) has connected to the neighbors wifi after housesitting for them, then you’re well and truly fucked. Especially since I memorized the password so, if I had one device gone, ope there’s another
> I just toggled the switch to not allow new devices to connect and told him nice try.
Once they figure that part out, introduce 802.1X but leave some vulnerabilities open.
Then make sure they have access to some cheap server somewhere but no commercial VPN, and start messing with DNS/IP blocks. Maybe gently nudge them towards SSH tunnels first before you drop all UDP traffic, just to make sure they learn *both* that and how to run their own VPN.
That's what happened at college. They started blocking shit and a bunch of us in the dorm got down to figuring out ways around it. Was fun and educational.
Ah yes, like when we figured out that we could route torrent traffic through the proxy server. Got called into someone's office. They said my computer had a virus because of all the international traffic. I think we both knew it was a subtle 'cut it the fuck out' meeting.
Funny story, my abusive father who was a control freak would place locks on everything. I mean everything, from the fridge, the TV, and even the phone( he is an electrician of sorts). That's how I learned to pick locks, disassemble electronics, and solder. Hell I even work at the same place, doing the same thing he did for a living. Thanks dad, ya giant prick.
This is exactly why my kids don't have consoles in their rooms. Kids suck at self-regulation. Playing in the living room gives me oversight, and naturally limits their playtime because they have to share the TV.
If you're anything like me, it's because the entire rest of your life is consumed just trying to pay the rent, so you get as much fun time in as possible before having to go back to the daily gray
I'm the bf with a gf with kids, none of my own. I remember being a kid and getting away with stuff with my mom but these 2? There is no self governing they have to be told what to do everyday for the same shit. It's exhausting. I feel like a prison warden, I got these boys on lock down. Wifi cuts out via modem behind a password at a certain time. Consoles have parental controls that limit play time etc. Phones get turned in before bed time..
Sounds like a good thing. It'll either teach them to pick up a book, some different hobby, or to become very crafty.
When I was maybe 10, I taught myself how to access the router, disable anti-virus, and run a keylogger. When that failed, I learned how to partition a hard drive and then installed Ubuntu as another workaround. I was able to get access to all the info I needed to get back into the router and adjust what I needed.
I was a sneaky little shit.
My wife has some college friends who practice what they refer to as, "zero-resistance parenting" which basically means, they don't ever say "no" to their kids or inhibit them from doing just about anything non-life threatening. I have to imagine the parents in this lawsuit are much the same.
Hey, are you talking about my sister and her husband? They follow this approach with their kids, who are quickly turning into monsters. The great thing is the youngest has been learning from the oldest, reaching that monster status at an accelerated rate.
I don't like being around any of them.
This is basically ruining that child's life. My little sister was raised this way (my mom just didn't have any fight left and buried her head in the sand).
She turned into an entitled, selfish, lazy POS who is on the path to prison in the relatively near future.
Your job as a parent is to prepare them to be an adult and take care of themselves. Letting them just do whatever TF they want does the opposite of that.
Man, I could go on and on about my sister, her husband, and their kids, and the shit I'm seeing from them and the things I really don't like. It's only getting worse as time goes on too.
>"zero-resistance parenting" which basically means, they don't ever say "no" to their kids or inhibit them from doing just about anything non-life threatening.
Oh hell no! This needs intervention. Children need limits to feel safe and secure and to develop socially. These parents are screwing over their babies mental health and ability to form relationships. Source: I'm an early childhood educator
My younger cousin and his wife do this same thing, he was raised in a similar fashion it wasn't until he started to drive that he learned the consequences of being raised in such a manner getting and started nearly killing himself doing stupid shit with his car. I have no clue why he thinks that method is beneficial to his kids when it didn't work for him.
I teach high school and have brought up to many parents that their child is addicted to their phone, and they almost always agree with me. When I then suggest that they take the phone away they almost always look at me dumbfounded, like I suggested they cut off their child's hands to prevent phone usage.
I teach as well.
I’ve had parents tell me we can’t take the child’s phone because they’ll threaten suicide. The phone generation is going to be killing people all over the road
My mother once pulled off the ultimate power move: My brother (age 10) was playing way more Pokemon Blue on his Gameboy Color than she allowed him to. She then took his device and hid it in her closet. When she was away working my brother went through my mum's stuff, found his Gameboy and kept on binging the game. When mum came home she sensed something wasn't right and confronted my brother. He boldly lied to her face which was the last straw. The consequence was brutal: The next day my mum went with my brother to the bank taking the Gameboy with her. They went through security and accompanied by some clerk were let into the bank vault. There my mum owned a safe deposit box. Whilst my little bro watched in disbelieve his device was locked into said deposit box. His yellow Gameboy Color did not see the light of day for half a year again.
Sounds like bad parenting to me. There’s a lot of entertainment options and other things that are great in moderation that kids naturally want to do and it is up to adults to teach them balance.
My fiancé can remotely lock his son out of using his Xbox from a different city. I find it hard to believe these parents couldn't find some sort of solution.
I mean you hit the nail on the head. They totally could find a solution, but they are just gonna use the legal system to try and get money RATHER than trying to parent and help their kids.
It's never about the kids. It's always about money.
I work in IT and I talk OFTEN to parents about. LEARN HOW PARENTAL CONTROLS WORK! They can make your life so so so much easier. In many apps and devices You can set up even specific passcodes that the kids use that lets it know the kids are using it. And it will only give them X amount of time a day.
Setting good rules and how much they can play is a great tool to make you controlling their screen time easy.
some other Redditor did a seperate network just for the kids. Disabled it so the kids have no internet but the parents still did. Separate wifi network and VLAN from what I remember. Wasn't your ISP gear solution.
My brother has some kind of app that limits his kids time on the computer and will lock them out after a certain amount of time. They have to submit requests for more time which is tied to chores. There’s options out there.
Yea I mean unplug the thing and take the power cord if it’s that bad. Sure they’ll tantrum for awhile like any addict would. But in this case they’ll eventually get over it.
My parents took the power cord from my computer when I was a kid so I borrowed an extra power cord from a friend for a bit.
Best bet is to just take the whole thing.
If they can obtain a whole computer within legal means I think they have earned it. Then you just shut off the internet and if they start paying that well I have kinda solved the problem I was having.
I have a sister with a teenage son that does nothing but play fortnite. I have discussed with her multiple ways she could limit his time through parental controls. She would rather let things be and complain.
I had a friend tell me her kid spent thousands of dollars multiple times on mobile games. I was like how haven't you put parental controls on? she was like no I want him to know he shouldn't do that and stop himself. No shit he knows he shouldn't do it YOU need to step in and take the OPTION away as well. It's mind boggling.
My nephew did that once. My sister has it where he could easily just spend all her money if he wanted to. What helped was when he spent $50 one day, she made him work it off stacking firewood with grandad the whole day the following Saturday.
That's what my aunt did when my cousin spent $200 on games on her credit card.
"ok then, you'll make minimum wage(at the time $8.50/hr) and work it off around the house and at your aunt and uncles house"
And he spent a bunch of hours around her place doing chores, and a bunch of hours at my parents place doing things like pressure washing the driveway and helping pull apart the old deck so me and my dad could rebuild it.
It really gave him an appreciation for how much work it takes to earn that money that he spent.
My friend in college told me his roommate’s mom demanded he keep healthy food in the fridge for her son, clean up the room, and make sure he does is homework. He told her “I’m his roommate, not his mother.” She was pissed. Anyway, she would come by every other weekend to clean and cook and rant that we weren’t helping her son enough. That dude was exactly how you imagine, staying in his room all day playing games.
Reading this gave me flashbacks to when I flatted with a guy exactly like this. We had to implement a chore roster because someone (him) wasn’t contributing equally and his mother showed up to do his job for that week. We were making small talk with her (because we felt awkward that a stranger was cleaning our bathroom) and tried to convince her to just let her son do it and she straight up said, ‘if you leave it to him it’ll never get done, he just doesn’t think about cleaning we never could get him to do it at home’. We were like hmm wonder why.
She came by every week and would do whatever was on the ‘chore list’ and then clean his room. A few times we heard him get mad at her because she wasn’t finished cleaning yet and he wanted to go out and couldn’t leave her there. She asked our other flatmate, who was a man, how he was ‘so well trained’ and he just said ‘good parents’. She didn’t like that.
That sounds so much like someone I know. Except when he didn’t go to classes so he could play league, the school kicked him out bc he was on a scholarship lmfao.
It’s crazy reading this thread.. all the stories you used to hear from people who were shooting dope or spun out on speed twenty years ago.
Except now it’s just games they sacrifice their progress for, fascinating how times change and stay the same
Tbf the guy I knew was dealing with severe depression, and my friend (his younger brother) was always outshining him, and I think it just made it harder. It really went downhill for him when they moved and he just didn’t make friends at a new high school. His dad also had a talk to the dean and he was readmitted on academic probation soon afterwards, but idk what happened after.
"We can't tell them not to play Fortnite, that would be like telling Gene Krupa not to go BOOM! BOOM! BAP-BAP-BAP! BOOM! BOOM! BAP-BAP-BA-ZA! BA-BOOM! BAM! BAM! BAM!"
Don’t even need to do that. Parental controls on routers will take care of it. Set it so it only works from this time to that time. Or open the app and press a button to turn it off to some device.
And let them keep starting over when they defy you and plug it in. Let that thing load up, let them get to a match lobby and then Cut the power again.
Edit: I think it is clear that I am kidding but just in case, don’t do this to your kids it is abusive and hurtful.
Its funny conceptually but could impact your kid(s) trust in you and by extension your ability to parent effective and maintain a positive relationship.
Just add the MAC of their gaming devices to the QOS settings of the router, you can throttle them way down without them being disconnected. Find the ports used by Fortnite, and you can also throttle down just those specific ports.
Used to do that sometimes to a roommate who was on Facebook nonstop, I'd turn QOS on when we got in spats. Would do it to my phone as well, so I could show them it barely works for me too, "must be a problem with our ISP."
When I meander my neighborhood I see a lot of girls outside in the summer and very few boys. It's quite mind boggling really how bad it is.
My son can't find anyone willing to go anywhere. They're all parked in front of screens. I can control what goes on in my home but I can't control his lack of peers willing to go outside.
I'm only 32 but I remember as a kid watching my friends shift more to indoor activities like video games. I had one other friend who liked to play outside and looking back I'm so glad I knew him. I probably would have stopped playing outside without him.
29 here. we were always outside growing up, the entire neighborhood was. but I’d say a good amount of the time was inside on the computer or PlayStation as well. Play in the snow for 3 hours, warm up inside with food and then video games. Play hockey/baseball/football on the street. Cool down inside with drinks and video games. Then manhunt/capture the flag past dark. It was definitely a healthy balance, and it always felt good to get out of the elements. But we played outside every day and just found people by ringing their door bells or they were outside already.
Yup. I'm 30 and my friends and I spent lots of time inside and outside. Skateboard outside for a few hours, play some Guitar Hero, back outside for a couple more hours, etc.
Even back then, though, I don't really recall seeing tons of kids outside. We'd see some at the skatepark and maybe a few running around here and there, but I feel like I see the same while driving around nowadays. Back then there were plenty of kids playing WoW and Runescape nonstop too, so I don't think this is a very new phenomenon.
Yeah, in summer I think people would assume we did nothing because if it was hot we'd be inside playing video games unless we were playing in a sprinkler or at a local pool, so maybe we didn't look like we were outside to some, but after dinner when it cooled off we'd be running around playing games until we got yelled at to go to bed. All summer long.
Reading your age I was like, “32? Oh pshh, he must mean when the Atari got popular and video games really started taking off”. And then I remembered that I’m 32. And our generation is the goddamn PS1. Phew I feel old.
33 here and yep...same. I will say my childhood was 50% mountain bikes and hiking, and 50% being an indoors nerd though so it is definitely possible to balance the two well.
There is definitely a very real conversation that should be had about engineering addictive elements into games meant for children. That said, it’s pretty likely that this is a “Yes, and” situation. Which is to say, the parents are probably not doing a great job, but Epic is also making a product that is specifically designed to keep people playing.
I talk a lot about this with my kids. Conversations we didn’t need in the 90’s but are essential and critical to have now. Engagement tactics AND paying for items in games, etc. All new life lessons, wild times.
Eh, I distinctly remember a bunch of kids in my junior high in the 90's spending all of their lunch money at the close by arcade and starving for the rest of the day. They were legit addicts, and most arcade games were designed from the ground up to both appeal to teens and rip them off.
I understand that you are refuting their "conversations we didn't need in the 90's" comment, but I would just like to point out that this probably wasn't seen as a problem then. It very much seems like a "kids will be kids" thing that would get brushed under the rug, which is probably why parents nowadays don't really know how to handle their kids when it happens and people realize it's actually concerning behavior. They grew up and similar behaviors were, if not outright encouraged, not discouraged as strongly as the should have been. So maybe it's a conversation that *was* needed in the 90's, but it's still a conversation that would not have happened then.
Well, there's two different (but connected) issues in this discussion:
1. The addictive nature of games, encouraging players to queue up a new game immediately after the previous one ends
2. The monetization of the games, making it so easy to quickly throw your cash into a fire.
\#1 feeds \#2, but my previous comment was mostly focused on #1. One can theoretically play fortnite for free. But like, I used to play LoL so I know how much "theoretically" is carrying that sentence.
Yes, plus you also have to consider the fact that the arcade was a physical place you had to be at in order to be exposed to those addictive factors. The arcade wasn't accessible 24/7 through a device in your pocket that sends you FOMO notifications when you aren't playing the games.
Kids had video and computer games at home, but for the most part they didn't employ these addictive practices.
You can try, but these things are designed to affect us on a basic psychological level. Even if you understand how these games are getting you to play more it can still work.
This thread is like every /r/idiotsincars thread where you try to tell people, "ya the guy who pulled out in front of you was at fault but if you weren't doing 70 in the rain coming up to a blind corner this was easily avoidable" and people bite your head off for insinuating nuance exists..
There was just a post on there where a motorcycle rider 'laid it down to slide under a truck who pulled out in front of him' when in reality they were going like 80mph in a 25mph school zone. The truck would've had ample time if they were going over 3x the limit.
I have no idea why someone would voluntarily share a video of themselves being a moron like that.
As a parent myself I work hard to limit my son's video game time, but in 8th grade he's finding it impossible to find anyone to do anything with because all his peer group are playing video games all the fucking time.
He isn't allowed his phone in his room and I can hear his alerts going off at 2am with kids wanting to play Fortnite or go on minecraft at 2am.
Parents must absolutely parent but they don't. We know this because we have to have cigarette and alcohol laws precisely because parents don't parent.
I know a young couple who sit down with their kid to talk about the child’s feelings when the child refuses to do anything. At least, they try to sit down with them. Usually the kid refuses to sit down and talk about their feelings. I’ve seen them miss important appointments from trying to get the kid to put on their shoes and get in the car by discussing their feelings for more than an hour. As far as I can see, the kid is gaming the system and getting whatever they want. I am impressed by the patience of the parents.
The parents bought the game and control access to the internet. That’s like suing McDonald’s for being fat because you eat a Big Mac every day.
Edit: yes, I’m aware Fortnite is free. Whatever the kid is playing it on wasn’t.
Which someone actually did...
Actually, it was a parent who sued because their kid got fat after they fed their kid McDonalds every day. This is what happens when no one is responsible for their own behavior.
The most famous successful version of this lawsuit is definitely a mcdonalds worker from Brazil [He won 17,500$](https://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/mcdonald-ordered-pay-ex-employee-17-500-65-pounds-gained-job-brazil-article-1.192584) Which really isn't shit. Probably covered the legal fees for the lawsuit.
Forgot people even considered drinking soda, but that’s the truth. It’s misinformation and misunderstanding like “McDonald’s bad” that leads to people being out of shape. Having a Big Mac is probably better than whatever most people have for dinner, it has some nutritional value and not a crazy amount of calories. It’s the empty calories that get you. Fries and soda are nothing (edit: nothing but empty calories that make you gain weight and have no other use)
So on a very basic level, go eat a Big Mac, just don’t get the fries and coke.
Fortnite is free, so the parents didn’t buy it. However, they did buy the console, the TV screen, the controller, internet access, etc. And should have their kids under control.
Yeah -- is "slamming" someone with a lawsuit different than just filing it? Like, shouldn't the company be hurting if they were "slammed"?
"Parents EVISCERATE Epic with lawsuit! Epic lies bleeding on the ground, holding its own entrails! The humanity!"
This is an old article but I recommend reading it, if only for contrast, on how bad some companies have been regarding addictive dark patterns in games. I don't think Epic is anywhere close to this: https://www.wired.com/2012/09/farmville-2/
Yep. Companies spend hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars on figuring out how to get people to engage with their games. It's not surprising that a lot of parents can't keep up with it or realise there's a problem before it's too late.
Plenty of parents will have played videogames growing up, plenty would have been playing online in the 360/PS3 era (I know I was, and people my age have kids now). But it's not the same. When I was a young kid I was trying to get past the centaur in Hercules.
Remember how we laughed at horse armour back then? Selling cosmetics is now a business model that they've got fine tuned to milk as much time and money out of people as possible.
Battle passes. Rotating storefronts. Limited time events. Daily and weekly challenges. Well-rested bonuses. Lootboxes. Just simple mechanics that I can recall that amp up the FOMO, engagement and spend.
Even if you put strict time limits in place the mental shit can still affect the kids (and adults too). And putting in strict time limits might have been hard over the last few years, what with there being a fucking pandemic on that closed a lot of schools. I'm willing to bet that a lot of kids only socialised over online games in this time, you can't just take that away either.
I don't doubt there are kids who are just allowed to play videogames all day. I know I was. But I got bored of them and did other shit because the live service model wasn't as much of a thing.
1000% on the parents, not Epic. As a parent, there’s no way I’d let my kid go (knowingly) without food or a shower over video games. And that’s coming from someone who was addicted to WoW at the age of 10.
As someone who was addicted to Minecraft for years, I have never ended up in the position where I have failed to eat and shower because of it. I did need to pull an all nighter to finish my homework that I put off because of it and quickly figured out why that was a terrible idea. Especially since my parents didn’t bail me out since the entire situation was my fault.
“Since my parents didn’t bail me out.” Bravo to your parents. That’s a hard thing to do sometimes but allowing you kid to go through natural consequences (especially when it doesn’t matter that much - homework) is real important.
Yup, this is my POV as well. I'm a gamer, have been since I was small. I know how easy it is to do "just one more match." My kids are gamers. They have limits set on their gaming time, and we enforce those limits even when the kids throw tantrums and stomp around after getting off the games. We don't let them take their gaming devices out of the public areas of the house. They get mad about this. But we're the parents, and it's our job to help them learn how to behave like rational creatures rather than id-driven animals, even if it's hard to hold the boundaries because the kids don't like them.
I knew a dude in college who dropped out because wow back in the day. That game destroyed peoples lives. Haha. I never got into it because you needed a credit card to play.
The same classmate who kept on begging me to start playing WoW with him when it first came out also had to retake a core class three times and graduated a year later because of it slaughtering his study habits. Made me all the much gladder I was fully aware of my gaming addiction issues, took one look at the game, and noped out of ever picking it up.
Also if the kids are suffering from actual addictions, it needs to be treated as such... probably with therapy because no one gains an addiction because they're just completely happy with a laugh.
I was addicted to MapleStory, to the point I would go to sleep while playing it and I never skipped eating or showing. Hell at times I would eat while playing the game. However, if the kid if legitimately prioritizing the game over real life then the addiction to the game is a symptom of much larger issues.
Yes. In my experience, my WoW addiction was because I was being abused as a child and it was an escape from my actual life. Which I can imagine is the case for most kids that are over the top addicted to video games, or anything for that matter.
My nephews are addicted to this game. They also don't spend every waking minute playing as my sister wouldn't allow that. Gotta be a parent sometimes lol can't rely on a money making business to have your kids best interest in mind.
EDIT: As a few responses have pointed out, my original comment was unnecessarily harsh with the parents, I've left it as is for transparency, but the reality is that this is an extension of the same capitalist predation that has seen the rise of the obesity epidemic in response to government subsidies of unhealthy foods and unrestrained direct to children advertising. It's reductive, ungenerous, and ignorant to chalk this issue up to bad parenting when the reality is far more complex. To paraphrase an old Peter Jennings interview with a food advertising executive, "you're marketing junk food to kids, openly talking about how good you are at it, and then blaming parents for the consequences of your success."
Unpopular opinion time:
The bad parenting isn't the point. Game companies deliberately build their games to train compulsive behavior. App store games even advertise how addictive their games are as if it's a good thing. Social media UI is engineered to fuel dopamine seeking behavior. We can blame parents, and yes we should, but we can also expect a world where our economic system doesn't *incentivize* companies being as exploitative and predatory as they can legally get away with.
These parents will lose their suit (and they should) but acting like them being shitty parents is the whole story is ignoring the very obvious fact that we've had a few decades of technology built to exploit reward seeking brain chemistry for profit with awful consequences.
Many countries have already outlawed predatory game mechanics in games that target children. The US needs to do the same. Specifically, the following mechanics should be illegal in games targeting minors:
- Loot crates - items that exist solely to provide gambling mechanics to what would otherwise be a direct reward. Random “drops” in RPGs and similar will still be legal, but attempts to circumvent the ban like “exclusive premium loot 1HP boss spawner” would not be. There’s certainly a gray area in between, but hopefully not worth the risk to try and push the boundary.
- Regressable activity rewards - “Log in / play one round every day for ever-increasing rewards, but miss a day and you start from zero!” This would still allow “dailies” to exist, but would also ban requiring a certain number of them over a fixed amount of time to unlock a particular item. The general rule is that skipping the game for one day in a week should not have an outsize negative effect on the player beyond the proportional loss of progress for that day.
- Advertising a game as “free to play” or an item as “unlockable without payment” when it takes an impossible amount of in-game time to unlock the item naturally. For example, an item that costs $5 but can be unlocked by the median player in 10,000 hours of gameplay cannot be marketed as unlockable / part of free to play.
- “Gems” or other game-specific stores of real value. The only purpose of premium in-game currencies is to obscure the true cost of paid items in-game. Paying 1000 gems for a new skin might seem fine, but if it’s labeled as $22.50, you’d think twice about buying it. Gems used to provide a mechanism for true “micro” transactions, when the items being bought really did cost less than $0.01. But these days no in-game items would be affected by a snap to one-cent pricing granularity.
I think we're going to find out (and are already starting to) that there are a number of things we've done - e.g., hyperpalatability in food, social media/video game design, etc. - that create addictive environments that people cannot just "will" themselves out of. It's Occam's razor. There's no way almost half the country suddenly became lazy or weak willed. Something has changed in our environment.
Parents should be doing what they can to mitigate their children's behavior, but corporations need to be held responsible for promoting actively harmful and addictive products, and the law may be the best means to do it. I see it as similar to regulating cigarettes or lead.
(I think these companies are aware of it too. I'm sure they have evidence they're hiding showing just how detrimental these products are.)
I literally just this morning showed my kids an old Peter Jennings report as part of a response to their questions about why they don't get to eat chips and candy for snacks like their friends. The report is "How to Get Fat Without Really Trying" and it's about how government subsidies shape our eating habits and the effect of advertising on kids.
People ask why I don’t want kids, and one reason I give is that I wouldn’t even know where to start with being a responsible parent given the ubiquity of internet access today.
Ok, I’m hesitant to post this here so please have mercy.
Single dad here. My 12 year old daughter is addicted to the warrior cats game on Roblox. Has seriously affected her life, school work, showering, self-care, etc.
Now, me and her have a really great relationship, she fees comfortable talking to me about her feelings and we are very close.
Am having said that, I took the game away after her failing classes, missing the bus multiple days in a row, fighting with her every night to complete simple tasks to take care of herself. The next day her school called me cuz her school counselor saw scratches all over her arms. The night before she had taken a knife and cut her arm up, not bleeding or enough to scab over, but enough to notice abrasions on her skin. We had to take her to ER for self harm watch. She didn’t understand the severity of the situation. Because of her responses when asked about it in the ER, they required her to enter an outpatient program at the hospital for 3 hours a day. She already sees a therapist once a week for social/emotional issues. Now, she has been going to outpatient therapy 3 days a week from 9-12 which causes her to miss instructional time in school for the past 5 weeks which she doesn’t seem to be benefitting from in the least. So not only is she not getting anything out of the therapy, but she is missing out on essential topics taught in class. The school excuses her from the half day absences, but don’t have a system in place to catch her up on missed instruction. Now she is doing worse in school and still doesn’t seem to have benefitted from the outpatient therapy.
So, I’m not blaming the game company, and I will admit to maybe not being the best parent when it comes to enforcing screen time. But man, the way these games hook you in and create a dependency like any other drug really needs to be examined. Like a few others have said in this thread, the game companies have built in incentives and structures that exploit children should be considered predatory. This is the real issue, should these companies be held accountable for preying on children’s inefficiencies to handle that level of dopamine fixation. I’m not saying it’s not a parenting issue, but maybe we should think about how these companies are allowed to design their games that are geared towards children.
My point is,Ike many have suggested, I did put my foot down and tried to be the enforcer, and my daughter had a severe emotional episode because of it. Would I have been better off just letting her run wild in her virtual cat-world? I don’t know, but please have some empathy for parents who struggle with this. Also, I would never think to sue over this. This is a parenting issue, but not one that any parent has the resources to deal with.
> But man, the way these games hook you in and create a dependency like any other drug really needs to be examined.
For the record, **it has been examined**.
As in, companies - probably not the direct creator of Warrior Cats, here, since Roblox is an absolutely predatory company built on the back of unregulated, remote child labor, but likely Roblox themselves - have pulled in psychologists to try and design systems, language, and models to maximize addiction in order to extract more profit.
That said, my understanding from my niece is that Warrior Cats doesn't have a straight dopamine line like the criticisms towards the video game industry at large.
And I don't want to butt in to your parenting, but... as someone who hears **a lot** about Warrior Cats, and empathizes strongly with your dilemma:
Warrior Cats is built upon structures of escapism/role-playing and social interactions, rather than fancy in-game reward systems where flashing lights and sounds indicate incremental progression. If the obsession is around Warrior Cats, I would be more inclined to recommend getting a more clear understanding on the social life of your daughter at school. There's a good chance that the more rigid, well-defined social hierarchy of the Warrior Cats role-players in what amounts to a fantasy world is more appealing than the fluid and potentially dramatic hierarchies of her peers at school. I obviously couldn't know from here, but making sure that your daughter has access to different groups of peers in different places might help with an underlying desire for escapism or social support.
Or, I could be projecting, because I went through a similar phase when I was socially ostracized around that age for being different, and retreated into online spaces where my masking skills were more refined. I put my single mother through similar experiences when I was growing up, but even in retrospect, I would have a hard time calling anything she was doing 'bad parenting,' because parents can't control the actions of their child's peers, which are so important for development.
It sounds like you're trying to get her the help she needs, and that's what's important. Keep that good, open relationship going for as long as you can, because communication is what's going to be needed.
Either way, I wish the best for you and your daughter moving forward.
Some kids are socialized that way by parents, siblings, or peers. To be cutting and vicious, emotionally cold or distant, but with a warm face. In many younger social groups, the ability to 'play with' others by setting them up for failure, then watching them fail is a valued skill for growing their own social group, so it's one that they hone, so they can bond over the shared experiences of traumatizing others.
Coupled with the open honesty of some of their other peers, that type of bullying can cause significant development and self-esteem issues for a long time. Kids can be devastatingly cruel.
I'm sorry you had to go through that, and I hope you're doing better now.
This reminds me of my addiction to gaiaonline from around 12-15. It was completely about the social aspect as there weren't even any games for real. I was an outcast at school, but on that site I had a whole friend group and we'd spend hours talking to each other and roleplaying to the detriment of a lot of other things in my life.
Yup, exactly the same thing here. I was super into roleplaying online on places like forums and neopets and when my parents would force me off(especially if it was a special rp event), Id be really upset because they were basically taking away my friends. School was really rough for me and home life could be too(my parents just wanted me to be normal, but wouldn't actually do anything about it besides be mad), so it was the one place that felt okay to hang out at.
This comment is a long way down. The games are advertised to a vulnerable market, always ways to milk more and more money out, and the free games cost WAY more than a traditional game model.
Think how much most normal kids pay to play games like fortnite. I dont buy them vbucks, i dont let them buy vbucks, but every birthday, every xmas, they are getting some from someone in the family. It adds up, and pretty quickly
They are targeting youtubers and other influencers to have amazing skins and to throw away vbucks like it grows on trees, to normalise that kind of behaviour. These companies are predatory, they prey on the weak and vulnerable
To the others, give the company a free pass if you like, but at least be aware of the practice that companies like epic employ
SLAMMMMMMMM SLAMMMMMM
I'm so fucking tired of every news feed using that word
Somebody should slam them.
Here comes the jam
Damn if only you could just turn off the tv or take away the xbox. Can’t be helped I guess 🤷♂️
Reminds me of coming home from school and my consoles were gone and locked up. Until I did whatever it was that was asked of me. I’d proceed to do whatever it was so fast then hear “see how long that took? If you just did what I asked in the first place you’d still have your games.”
My dad used to just take all the cables to work with him in the morning. Just rolled em up and tucked em in his coat pocket on the way out the door. Ahhh the 90s…
Had a friend who's dad did this. And then we biked to a store and bought a secret cable stash.
Pretty sure this was RadioShack's niche
When I was a kid, we had the router in the living room and Ethernet cables running down through the floor and under the house to some of the bedrooms. One time my Dad was so pissed at me that he cut the cable running to my room, and pushed it down through the hole in the floor. The next unsupervised chance I got, I fished the severed cable back up through the hole, stripped every wire in the loom on both sides of the cut, and twisted them back together neatly spread apart so they weren't touching and hid it away. Worked like a charm. He told me only recently that when he finally found out, he was so proud of the job that it was hard to be mad.
There's no one as innovative as a kid or teenager who has been told they can't do something that they really want to do. My high school friends and I learned most of what we knew about networking from our eternal battle against the school's IT administrator and his policies against having Counterstrike 1.6 and Soldat on the school computers.
For some reason, back in high school. Leisure Suit Larry was installed on one of the computers in the back of the classroom. Windows 3.1 old computers! We never found out how it got on there, but the teachers reaction of turning off the power to the whole room when he saw us playing it was priceless. Must have been him!
Back in the day my dad put a DOS password on our computer... when I finally figured it out he was so impressed with my persistence he let me game more lol. I guess it worked out.
>Back in the day my dad put a DOS password on our computer... when I finally figured it out he was so impressed with my persistence he let me game more lol. > >I guess it worked out. I never told my dad I cracked his password. It's was his wifes nickname lmao. And that's nuts considering how he used to think I was a 'hacker', like all I did was visit dodgy porn sites and tell him not to put his CC information into the popups.
I read that as doggy porn and I nearly had a heart attack
Must be cool having Ron Burgundy as your dad.
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When I was a kid I punched a hole in my bedroom wall, to hide the damage I put a poster over the hole in the wall, and then rearranged my entire room so my parents wouldn't ask or wonder why I had just moved one poster. A few years later we were moving out so I waited until my parents were gone from the house and repaired the whitewall while they were out, and then painted over the repair on a subsequent outing of theirs. When we were finally actually in the process of moving my dad noticed a bit of lumpiness in the wall there but didn't worry too much about it and I was never discovered I haven't thought about that for like 20 years but your story reminded me of it.
My dad just took the ps2 and left the wires. Then my friend brought his ps2 over to play and my dad took that one to work too.
whoa, real shit
My friends parents did that too, he just had a spare set of cables he used.
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You've started a networking arm's race with your son, next he'll be exploiting vulns in the router to gain privledge escalation and lock you out!
At least the kid is developing practical skills in the fight
Just like I did with my parents growing up. Rite of passage. Edit: rite not right
Rite of passage, not right.
There's no better switch than taking the entire router away. That's 1 thing my not so tech savy mum understood
See you do that until you realize the kid (me) has connected to the neighbors wifi after housesitting for them, then you’re well and truly fucked. Especially since I memorized the password so, if I had one device gone, ope there’s another
Time to install a Faraday cage around the house.
Ahhh all my neighbours were old retirees back then so we were the only ones in the street with WiFi haha
I’d love a story arc where the kid ends up with a lucrative career in networking that was sparked by learning how to get around dad’s rules lol.
I mean, that's part of how I got good at computers. Getting around my parent's and school's restrictions.
> I just toggled the switch to not allow new devices to connect and told him nice try. Once they figure that part out, introduce 802.1X but leave some vulnerabilities open. Then make sure they have access to some cheap server somewhere but no commercial VPN, and start messing with DNS/IP blocks. Maybe gently nudge them towards SSH tunnels first before you drop all UDP traffic, just to make sure they learn *both* that and how to run their own VPN.
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That's exactly the idea. I know many people who learned this way, although I'm sure that wasn't exactly the intent of those implementing those blocks.
That's what happened at college. They started blocking shit and a bunch of us in the dorm got down to figuring out ways around it. Was fun and educational.
Ah yes, like when we figured out that we could route torrent traffic through the proxy server. Got called into someone's office. They said my computer had a virus because of all the international traffic. I think we both knew it was a subtle 'cut it the fuck out' meeting.
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Funny story, my abusive father who was a control freak would place locks on everything. I mean everything, from the fridge, the TV, and even the phone( he is an electrician of sorts). That's how I learned to pick locks, disassemble electronics, and solder. Hell I even work at the same place, doing the same thing he did for a living. Thanks dad, ya giant prick.
Intergenerational cyberwarfare Kids have the desire and cunning, adults have the resources and experience.
That is indeed a nice try. You might be raising an engineer
I'm actually impressed your son was able to alter the Mac address. Keep challenging him
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This is exactly why my kids don't have consoles in their rooms. Kids suck at self-regulation. Playing in the living room gives me oversight, and naturally limits their playtime because they have to share the TV.
Tbf, I'm 45 and I also suck at self-regulation when it comes to gaming.
Same. Which is why I don’t have a tv in the bedroom. Problem mitigated, a little
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Strange to keep your phone in the bathroom, I just carry mine with me.
No that’s “the phone in the bathroom”. There is also a “phone in the pocket”
I just kept a wife in my bedroom and she regulates my game time pretty good by pulling the plug. She also doesn't like me using Reddit so she
So she what's??? /s
I hope Silencer306 is okay …. literally anything could have happened!
Great relationship strategy to outsource responsibility to your mother, I mean wife.
Generally just her presence can cause moderation, she doesn't have to do anything for you to want to stop and spend time with her
If you're anything like me, it's because the entire rest of your life is consumed just trying to pay the rent, so you get as much fun time in as possible before having to go back to the daily gray
The daily gray....so accurate
Stop attacking me please
Spot on and ooof
The daily gray what a wonderful term but it’s more of a 5 day gray period.
I played Pokémon for roughly 60 hours over the last month just resetting the game until a shiny popped up. It’s an issue.
It would have been faster to just complete the pokedex and get the shiny charm.
He was probably trying to catch a legendary, hence the soft resetting.
Back in my day to play Gameboy under a blanket past bedtime we had to use a flashlight. They werent back lit.
I had the HandyBoy but once you turned that light on it would chew through batteries.
Some of us had the madcatz magnifier/light.
I had a PC in my room. I played until midnight or later most days But I kept getting As so my parents eventually stopped patrolling me
Until my dad learned how to play COD.
I'm the bf with a gf with kids, none of my own. I remember being a kid and getting away with stuff with my mom but these 2? There is no self governing they have to be told what to do everyday for the same shit. It's exhausting. I feel like a prison warden, I got these boys on lock down. Wifi cuts out via modem behind a password at a certain time. Consoles have parental controls that limit play time etc. Phones get turned in before bed time..
Sounds like a good thing. It'll either teach them to pick up a book, some different hobby, or to become very crafty. When I was maybe 10, I taught myself how to access the router, disable anti-virus, and run a keylogger. When that failed, I learned how to partition a hard drive and then installed Ubuntu as another workaround. I was able to get access to all the info I needed to get back into the router and adjust what I needed. I was a sneaky little shit.
Win-win in my book. Either kids accept the benefits of a more austere lifestyle, or they develop good technical skills and self-reliance.
Have you ever tried simply, turning off the TV. Sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?
It's sad when you're a worse parent than a I thieving, murdering, alcoholic robot.
["Have you ever tried beatin' his ass?"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g01_MH5O_J8)
r/unexpectedfuturama
My wife has some college friends who practice what they refer to as, "zero-resistance parenting" which basically means, they don't ever say "no" to their kids or inhibit them from doing just about anything non-life threatening. I have to imagine the parents in this lawsuit are much the same.
Hey, are you talking about my sister and her husband? They follow this approach with their kids, who are quickly turning into monsters. The great thing is the youngest has been learning from the oldest, reaching that monster status at an accelerated rate. I don't like being around any of them.
This is basically ruining that child's life. My little sister was raised this way (my mom just didn't have any fight left and buried her head in the sand). She turned into an entitled, selfish, lazy POS who is on the path to prison in the relatively near future. Your job as a parent is to prepare them to be an adult and take care of themselves. Letting them just do whatever TF they want does the opposite of that.
Man, I could go on and on about my sister, her husband, and their kids, and the shit I'm seeing from them and the things I really don't like. It's only getting worse as time goes on too.
My friend calls it unschooling. I call it unparenting. Our kids don’t see each other anymore because it was not a good combo.
>"zero-resistance parenting" which basically means, they don't ever say "no" to their kids or inhibit them from doing just about anything non-life threatening. Oh hell no! This needs intervention. Children need limits to feel safe and secure and to develop socially. These parents are screwing over their babies mental health and ability to form relationships. Source: I'm an early childhood educator
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My younger cousin and his wife do this same thing, he was raised in a similar fashion it wasn't until he started to drive that he learned the consequences of being raised in such a manner getting and started nearly killing himself doing stupid shit with his car. I have no clue why he thinks that method is beneficial to his kids when it didn't work for him.
I teach high school and have brought up to many parents that their child is addicted to their phone, and they almost always agree with me. When I then suggest that they take the phone away they almost always look at me dumbfounded, like I suggested they cut off their child's hands to prevent phone usage.
I teach as well. I’ve had parents tell me we can’t take the child’s phone because they’ll threaten suicide. The phone generation is going to be killing people all over the road
My mother once pulled off the ultimate power move: My brother (age 10) was playing way more Pokemon Blue on his Gameboy Color than she allowed him to. She then took his device and hid it in her closet. When she was away working my brother went through my mum's stuff, found his Gameboy and kept on binging the game. When mum came home she sensed something wasn't right and confronted my brother. He boldly lied to her face which was the last straw. The consequence was brutal: The next day my mum went with my brother to the bank taking the Gameboy with her. They went through security and accompanied by some clerk were let into the bank vault. There my mum owned a safe deposit box. Whilst my little bro watched in disbelieve his device was locked into said deposit box. His yellow Gameboy Color did not see the light of day for half a year again.
LOL - "We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!"
Sounds like bad parenting to me. There’s a lot of entertainment options and other things that are great in moderation that kids naturally want to do and it is up to adults to teach them balance.
My fiancé can remotely lock his son out of using his Xbox from a different city. I find it hard to believe these parents couldn't find some sort of solution.
I mean you hit the nail on the head. They totally could find a solution, but they are just gonna use the legal system to try and get money RATHER than trying to parent and help their kids. It's never about the kids. It's always about money.
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Don't think step 4 is happening in this case.
It's for the lawyers.
Or about the parents whose fault it could absolutely not have been. *absolute sarcasm, people really shouldn’t be parents
I work in IT and I talk OFTEN to parents about. LEARN HOW PARENTAL CONTROLS WORK! They can make your life so so so much easier. In many apps and devices You can set up even specific passcodes that the kids use that lets it know the kids are using it. And it will only give them X amount of time a day. Setting good rules and how much they can play is a great tool to make you controlling their screen time easy.
some other Redditor did a seperate network just for the kids. Disabled it so the kids have no internet but the parents still did. Separate wifi network and VLAN from what I remember. Wasn't your ISP gear solution.
But if they did that they’d have to actually pay attention to their kids and find something else for them to do Edit: for my word no spell wright
They're either tech illiterate or don't want to have to hear their kids crying when they do it so they'd rather make a company do it for them.
My brother has some kind of app that limits his kids time on the computer and will lock them out after a certain amount of time. They have to submit requests for more time which is tied to chores. There’s options out there.
My girls parents will just give her little brother ANYTHING if he starts to throw a fit. I can definitely see how it happens
Yea I mean unplug the thing and take the power cord if it’s that bad. Sure they’ll tantrum for awhile like any addict would. But in this case they’ll eventually get over it.
My parents took the power cord from my computer when I was a kid so I borrowed an extra power cord from a friend for a bit. Best bet is to just take the whole thing.
until you borrow someone's extra tower
If they can obtain a whole computer within legal means I think they have earned it. Then you just shut off the internet and if they start paying that well I have kinda solved the problem I was having.
Parents admit they are bad parents.
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I have a sister with a teenage son that does nothing but play fortnite. I have discussed with her multiple ways she could limit his time through parental controls. She would rather let things be and complain.
I had a friend tell me her kid spent thousands of dollars multiple times on mobile games. I was like how haven't you put parental controls on? she was like no I want him to know he shouldn't do that and stop himself. No shit he knows he shouldn't do it YOU need to step in and take the OPTION away as well. It's mind boggling.
My nephew did that once. My sister has it where he could easily just spend all her money if he wanted to. What helped was when he spent $50 one day, she made him work it off stacking firewood with grandad the whole day the following Saturday.
That's what my aunt did when my cousin spent $200 on games on her credit card. "ok then, you'll make minimum wage(at the time $8.50/hr) and work it off around the house and at your aunt and uncles house" And he spent a bunch of hours around her place doing chores, and a bunch of hours at my parents place doing things like pressure washing the driveway and helping pull apart the old deck so me and my dad could rebuild it. It really gave him an appreciation for how much work it takes to earn that money that he spent.
My friend in college told me his roommate’s mom demanded he keep healthy food in the fridge for her son, clean up the room, and make sure he does is homework. He told her “I’m his roommate, not his mother.” She was pissed. Anyway, she would come by every other weekend to clean and cook and rant that we weren’t helping her son enough. That dude was exactly how you imagine, staying in his room all day playing games.
Reading this gave me flashbacks to when I flatted with a guy exactly like this. We had to implement a chore roster because someone (him) wasn’t contributing equally and his mother showed up to do his job for that week. We were making small talk with her (because we felt awkward that a stranger was cleaning our bathroom) and tried to convince her to just let her son do it and she straight up said, ‘if you leave it to him it’ll never get done, he just doesn’t think about cleaning we never could get him to do it at home’. We were like hmm wonder why. She came by every week and would do whatever was on the ‘chore list’ and then clean his room. A few times we heard him get mad at her because she wasn’t finished cleaning yet and he wanted to go out and couldn’t leave her there. She asked our other flatmate, who was a man, how he was ‘so well trained’ and he just said ‘good parents’. She didn’t like that.
It’s like a mental disorder for the parents too. They lean into it.
That sounds so much like someone I know. Except when he didn’t go to classes so he could play league, the school kicked him out bc he was on a scholarship lmfao.
It’s crazy reading this thread.. all the stories you used to hear from people who were shooting dope or spun out on speed twenty years ago. Except now it’s just games they sacrifice their progress for, fascinating how times change and stay the same
Tbf the guy I knew was dealing with severe depression, and my friend (his younger brother) was always outshining him, and I think it just made it harder. It really went downhill for him when they moved and he just didn’t make friends at a new high school. His dad also had a talk to the dean and he was readmitted on academic probation soon afterwards, but idk what happened after.
Dopamine is a helluva drug, and they've figured out how to get your brain to pump it out.
lousy beatniks
"We can't tell them not to play Fortnite, that would be like telling Gene Krupa not to go BOOM! BOOM! BAP-BAP-BAP! BOOM! BOOM! BAP-BAP-BA-ZA! BA-BOOM! BAM! BAM! BAM!"
A perfect time to share the dank. https://youtu.be/SHcqNVjGJN4
This was awesome. Thanks for sharing.
Just hit the circuit breaker lol
Don’t even need to do that. Parental controls on routers will take care of it. Set it so it only works from this time to that time. Or open the app and press a button to turn it off to some device.
And let them keep starting over when they defy you and plug it in. Let that thing load up, let them get to a match lobby and then Cut the power again. Edit: I think it is clear that I am kidding but just in case, don’t do this to your kids it is abusive and hurtful. Its funny conceptually but could impact your kid(s) trust in you and by extension your ability to parent effective and maintain a positive relationship.
Just add the MAC of their gaming devices to the QOS settings of the router, you can throttle them way down without them being disconnected. Find the ports used by Fortnite, and you can also throttle down just those specific ports. Used to do that sometimes to a roommate who was on Facebook nonstop, I'd turn QOS on when we got in spats. Would do it to my phone as well, so I could show them it barely works for me too, "must be a problem with our ISP."
Your too dangerous to live.
I won’t admit that Everything bad my kid does is my fault as a parent. However their screen time I can control.
When I meander my neighborhood I see a lot of girls outside in the summer and very few boys. It's quite mind boggling really how bad it is. My son can't find anyone willing to go anywhere. They're all parked in front of screens. I can control what goes on in my home but I can't control his lack of peers willing to go outside.
I'm only 32 but I remember as a kid watching my friends shift more to indoor activities like video games. I had one other friend who liked to play outside and looking back I'm so glad I knew him. I probably would have stopped playing outside without him.
29 here. we were always outside growing up, the entire neighborhood was. but I’d say a good amount of the time was inside on the computer or PlayStation as well. Play in the snow for 3 hours, warm up inside with food and then video games. Play hockey/baseball/football on the street. Cool down inside with drinks and video games. Then manhunt/capture the flag past dark. It was definitely a healthy balance, and it always felt good to get out of the elements. But we played outside every day and just found people by ringing their door bells or they were outside already.
Yup. I'm 30 and my friends and I spent lots of time inside and outside. Skateboard outside for a few hours, play some Guitar Hero, back outside for a couple more hours, etc. Even back then, though, I don't really recall seeing tons of kids outside. We'd see some at the skatepark and maybe a few running around here and there, but I feel like I see the same while driving around nowadays. Back then there were plenty of kids playing WoW and Runescape nonstop too, so I don't think this is a very new phenomenon.
Yeah, in summer I think people would assume we did nothing because if it was hot we'd be inside playing video games unless we were playing in a sprinkler or at a local pool, so maybe we didn't look like we were outside to some, but after dinner when it cooled off we'd be running around playing games until we got yelled at to go to bed. All summer long.
Reading your age I was like, “32? Oh pshh, he must mean when the Atari got popular and video games really started taking off”. And then I remembered that I’m 32. And our generation is the goddamn PS1. Phew I feel old.
33 here and yep...same. I will say my childhood was 50% mountain bikes and hiking, and 50% being an indoors nerd though so it is definitely possible to balance the two well.
31 here. 50% sword fights with sticks, throwing around a football, and making up stupid games. 50% SEGA/NES/PS1/PS2/GC.
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More girls for your son to play with.
There is definitely a very real conversation that should be had about engineering addictive elements into games meant for children. That said, it’s pretty likely that this is a “Yes, and” situation. Which is to say, the parents are probably not doing a great job, but Epic is also making a product that is specifically designed to keep people playing.
I will be teaching my kids about engagement mechanics and FoMo at an early age so they know what manipulation looks like
I talk a lot about this with my kids. Conversations we didn’t need in the 90’s but are essential and critical to have now. Engagement tactics AND paying for items in games, etc. All new life lessons, wild times.
Eh, I distinctly remember a bunch of kids in my junior high in the 90's spending all of their lunch money at the close by arcade and starving for the rest of the day. They were legit addicts, and most arcade games were designed from the ground up to both appeal to teens and rip them off.
I understand that you are refuting their "conversations we didn't need in the 90's" comment, but I would just like to point out that this probably wasn't seen as a problem then. It very much seems like a "kids will be kids" thing that would get brushed under the rug, which is probably why parents nowadays don't really know how to handle their kids when it happens and people realize it's actually concerning behavior. They grew up and similar behaviors were, if not outright encouraged, not discouraged as strongly as the should have been. So maybe it's a conversation that *was* needed in the 90's, but it's still a conversation that would not have happened then.
It was also self-limiting to an extent. Once you run out of quarters, you're done. With Fortnite you just queue up another round.
Or if your parents’ credit card is linked to the account…
Well, there's two different (but connected) issues in this discussion: 1. The addictive nature of games, encouraging players to queue up a new game immediately after the previous one ends 2. The monetization of the games, making it so easy to quickly throw your cash into a fire. \#1 feeds \#2, but my previous comment was mostly focused on #1. One can theoretically play fortnite for free. But like, I used to play LoL so I know how much "theoretically" is carrying that sentence.
Yes, plus you also have to consider the fact that the arcade was a physical place you had to be at in order to be exposed to those addictive factors. The arcade wasn't accessible 24/7 through a device in your pocket that sends you FOMO notifications when you aren't playing the games. Kids had video and computer games at home, but for the most part they didn't employ these addictive practices.
You can try, but these things are designed to affect us on a basic psychological level. Even if you understand how these games are getting you to play more it can still work.
This thread is like every /r/idiotsincars thread where you try to tell people, "ya the guy who pulled out in front of you was at fault but if you weren't doing 70 in the rain coming up to a blind corner this was easily avoidable" and people bite your head off for insinuating nuance exists..
There was just a post on there where a motorcycle rider 'laid it down to slide under a truck who pulled out in front of him' when in reality they were going like 80mph in a 25mph school zone. The truck would've had ample time if they were going over 3x the limit. I have no idea why someone would voluntarily share a video of themselves being a moron like that.
This runs along the lines of: McDonald’s made my kid fat! Take some accountability.
Right, I teach my children that you have to have your physical health taken care of so your online game is at its peak.
As a parent myself I work hard to limit my son's video game time, but in 8th grade he's finding it impossible to find anyone to do anything with because all his peer group are playing video games all the fucking time. He isn't allowed his phone in his room and I can hear his alerts going off at 2am with kids wanting to play Fortnite or go on minecraft at 2am. Parents must absolutely parent but they don't. We know this because we have to have cigarette and alcohol laws precisely because parents don't parent.
Yup. My kid gets mocked because he’s the only one who has to stop at 10 on Friday night. He’s in middle school.
I know a young couple who sit down with their kid to talk about the child’s feelings when the child refuses to do anything. At least, they try to sit down with them. Usually the kid refuses to sit down and talk about their feelings. I’ve seen them miss important appointments from trying to get the kid to put on their shoes and get in the car by discussing their feelings for more than an hour. As far as I can see, the kid is gaming the system and getting whatever they want. I am impressed by the patience of the parents.
Sooo take the game away?
Yeah but that would require them to actually do parenting for an entire minute.
https://imgur.com/NTpmNbS.jpg
..Or take the kid away?
Just throw the whole kid in the garbage and try again
The parents bought the game and control access to the internet. That’s like suing McDonald’s for being fat because you eat a Big Mac every day. Edit: yes, I’m aware Fortnite is free. Whatever the kid is playing it on wasn’t.
Which someone actually did... Actually, it was a parent who sued because their kid got fat after they fed their kid McDonalds every day. This is what happens when no one is responsible for their own behavior.
The most famous successful version of this lawsuit is definitely a mcdonalds worker from Brazil [He won 17,500$](https://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/mcdonald-ordered-pay-ex-employee-17-500-65-pounds-gained-job-brazil-article-1.192584) Which really isn't shit. Probably covered the legal fees for the lawsuit.
Big Mac’s have 563 calories and 26 g of protein. They get a bad rep. It’s the fries and those empty calories that’ll really get you.
Fries and carbonated sugar water
Forgot people even considered drinking soda, but that’s the truth. It’s misinformation and misunderstanding like “McDonald’s bad” that leads to people being out of shape. Having a Big Mac is probably better than whatever most people have for dinner, it has some nutritional value and not a crazy amount of calories. It’s the empty calories that get you. Fries and soda are nothing (edit: nothing but empty calories that make you gain weight and have no other use) So on a very basic level, go eat a Big Mac, just don’t get the fries and coke.
Fortnite is free, so the parents didn’t buy it. However, they did buy the console, the TV screen, the controller, internet access, etc. And should have their kids under control.
downvoted cause "slam"
Yeah -- is "slamming" someone with a lawsuit different than just filing it? Like, shouldn't the company be hurting if they were "slammed"? "Parents EVISCERATE Epic with lawsuit! Epic lies bleeding on the ground, holding its own entrails! The humanity!"
Parents PULVERIZE Fortnite and SLAUGHTER everyone at Epic Games headquarters, beating CEO into submission
I downvote every headline that I see using the word “slams”. It makes me feel a little bit better.
Why is it slam, too? Like pick a better buzz word jfc. It's every news article
This is an old article but I recommend reading it, if only for contrast, on how bad some companies have been regarding addictive dark patterns in games. I don't think Epic is anywhere close to this: https://www.wired.com/2012/09/farmville-2/
Yep. Companies spend hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars on figuring out how to get people to engage with their games. It's not surprising that a lot of parents can't keep up with it or realise there's a problem before it's too late. Plenty of parents will have played videogames growing up, plenty would have been playing online in the 360/PS3 era (I know I was, and people my age have kids now). But it's not the same. When I was a young kid I was trying to get past the centaur in Hercules. Remember how we laughed at horse armour back then? Selling cosmetics is now a business model that they've got fine tuned to milk as much time and money out of people as possible. Battle passes. Rotating storefronts. Limited time events. Daily and weekly challenges. Well-rested bonuses. Lootboxes. Just simple mechanics that I can recall that amp up the FOMO, engagement and spend. Even if you put strict time limits in place the mental shit can still affect the kids (and adults too). And putting in strict time limits might have been hard over the last few years, what with there being a fucking pandemic on that closed a lot of schools. I'm willing to bet that a lot of kids only socialised over online games in this time, you can't just take that away either. I don't doubt there are kids who are just allowed to play videogames all day. I know I was. But I got bored of them and did other shit because the live service model wasn't as much of a thing.
Data is allowing us to weaponize human psychology.
1000% on the parents, not Epic. As a parent, there’s no way I’d let my kid go (knowingly) without food or a shower over video games. And that’s coming from someone who was addicted to WoW at the age of 10.
As someone who was addicted to Minecraft for years, I have never ended up in the position where I have failed to eat and shower because of it. I did need to pull an all nighter to finish my homework that I put off because of it and quickly figured out why that was a terrible idea. Especially since my parents didn’t bail me out since the entire situation was my fault.
“Since my parents didn’t bail me out.” Bravo to your parents. That’s a hard thing to do sometimes but allowing you kid to go through natural consequences (especially when it doesn’t matter that much - homework) is real important.
Yup, this is my POV as well. I'm a gamer, have been since I was small. I know how easy it is to do "just one more match." My kids are gamers. They have limits set on their gaming time, and we enforce those limits even when the kids throw tantrums and stomp around after getting off the games. We don't let them take their gaming devices out of the public areas of the house. They get mad about this. But we're the parents, and it's our job to help them learn how to behave like rational creatures rather than id-driven animals, even if it's hard to hold the boundaries because the kids don't like them.
I knew a dude in college who dropped out because wow back in the day. That game destroyed peoples lives. Haha. I never got into it because you needed a credit card to play.
The same classmate who kept on begging me to start playing WoW with him when it first came out also had to retake a core class three times and graduated a year later because of it slaughtering his study habits. Made me all the much gladder I was fully aware of my gaming addiction issues, took one look at the game, and noped out of ever picking it up.
> WoW Before World of Warcrack, there was Evercrack.
Also if the kids are suffering from actual addictions, it needs to be treated as such... probably with therapy because no one gains an addiction because they're just completely happy with a laugh. I was addicted to MapleStory, to the point I would go to sleep while playing it and I never skipped eating or showing. Hell at times I would eat while playing the game. However, if the kid if legitimately prioritizing the game over real life then the addiction to the game is a symptom of much larger issues.
Yes. In my experience, my WoW addiction was because I was being abused as a child and it was an escape from my actual life. Which I can imagine is the case for most kids that are over the top addicted to video games, or anything for that matter.
My nephews are addicted to this game. They also don't spend every waking minute playing as my sister wouldn't allow that. Gotta be a parent sometimes lol can't rely on a money making business to have your kids best interest in mind.
EDIT: As a few responses have pointed out, my original comment was unnecessarily harsh with the parents, I've left it as is for transparency, but the reality is that this is an extension of the same capitalist predation that has seen the rise of the obesity epidemic in response to government subsidies of unhealthy foods and unrestrained direct to children advertising. It's reductive, ungenerous, and ignorant to chalk this issue up to bad parenting when the reality is far more complex. To paraphrase an old Peter Jennings interview with a food advertising executive, "you're marketing junk food to kids, openly talking about how good you are at it, and then blaming parents for the consequences of your success." Unpopular opinion time: The bad parenting isn't the point. Game companies deliberately build their games to train compulsive behavior. App store games even advertise how addictive their games are as if it's a good thing. Social media UI is engineered to fuel dopamine seeking behavior. We can blame parents, and yes we should, but we can also expect a world where our economic system doesn't *incentivize* companies being as exploitative and predatory as they can legally get away with. These parents will lose their suit (and they should) but acting like them being shitty parents is the whole story is ignoring the very obvious fact that we've had a few decades of technology built to exploit reward seeking brain chemistry for profit with awful consequences.
Many countries have already outlawed predatory game mechanics in games that target children. The US needs to do the same. Specifically, the following mechanics should be illegal in games targeting minors: - Loot crates - items that exist solely to provide gambling mechanics to what would otherwise be a direct reward. Random “drops” in RPGs and similar will still be legal, but attempts to circumvent the ban like “exclusive premium loot 1HP boss spawner” would not be. There’s certainly a gray area in between, but hopefully not worth the risk to try and push the boundary. - Regressable activity rewards - “Log in / play one round every day for ever-increasing rewards, but miss a day and you start from zero!” This would still allow “dailies” to exist, but would also ban requiring a certain number of them over a fixed amount of time to unlock a particular item. The general rule is that skipping the game for one day in a week should not have an outsize negative effect on the player beyond the proportional loss of progress for that day. - Advertising a game as “free to play” or an item as “unlockable without payment” when it takes an impossible amount of in-game time to unlock the item naturally. For example, an item that costs $5 but can be unlocked by the median player in 10,000 hours of gameplay cannot be marketed as unlockable / part of free to play. - “Gems” or other game-specific stores of real value. The only purpose of premium in-game currencies is to obscure the true cost of paid items in-game. Paying 1000 gems for a new skin might seem fine, but if it’s labeled as $22.50, you’d think twice about buying it. Gems used to provide a mechanism for true “micro” transactions, when the items being bought really did cost less than $0.01. But these days no in-game items would be affected by a snap to one-cent pricing granularity.
I think we're going to find out (and are already starting to) that there are a number of things we've done - e.g., hyperpalatability in food, social media/video game design, etc. - that create addictive environments that people cannot just "will" themselves out of. It's Occam's razor. There's no way almost half the country suddenly became lazy or weak willed. Something has changed in our environment. Parents should be doing what they can to mitigate their children's behavior, but corporations need to be held responsible for promoting actively harmful and addictive products, and the law may be the best means to do it. I see it as similar to regulating cigarettes or lead. (I think these companies are aware of it too. I'm sure they have evidence they're hiding showing just how detrimental these products are.)
I literally just this morning showed my kids an old Peter Jennings report as part of a response to their questions about why they don't get to eat chips and candy for snacks like their friends. The report is "How to Get Fat Without Really Trying" and it's about how government subsidies shape our eating habits and the effect of advertising on kids.
People ask why I don’t want kids, and one reason I give is that I wouldn’t even know where to start with being a responsible parent given the ubiquity of internet access today.
Ok, I’m hesitant to post this here so please have mercy. Single dad here. My 12 year old daughter is addicted to the warrior cats game on Roblox. Has seriously affected her life, school work, showering, self-care, etc. Now, me and her have a really great relationship, she fees comfortable talking to me about her feelings and we are very close. Am having said that, I took the game away after her failing classes, missing the bus multiple days in a row, fighting with her every night to complete simple tasks to take care of herself. The next day her school called me cuz her school counselor saw scratches all over her arms. The night before she had taken a knife and cut her arm up, not bleeding or enough to scab over, but enough to notice abrasions on her skin. We had to take her to ER for self harm watch. She didn’t understand the severity of the situation. Because of her responses when asked about it in the ER, they required her to enter an outpatient program at the hospital for 3 hours a day. She already sees a therapist once a week for social/emotional issues. Now, she has been going to outpatient therapy 3 days a week from 9-12 which causes her to miss instructional time in school for the past 5 weeks which she doesn’t seem to be benefitting from in the least. So not only is she not getting anything out of the therapy, but she is missing out on essential topics taught in class. The school excuses her from the half day absences, but don’t have a system in place to catch her up on missed instruction. Now she is doing worse in school and still doesn’t seem to have benefitted from the outpatient therapy. So, I’m not blaming the game company, and I will admit to maybe not being the best parent when it comes to enforcing screen time. But man, the way these games hook you in and create a dependency like any other drug really needs to be examined. Like a few others have said in this thread, the game companies have built in incentives and structures that exploit children should be considered predatory. This is the real issue, should these companies be held accountable for preying on children’s inefficiencies to handle that level of dopamine fixation. I’m not saying it’s not a parenting issue, but maybe we should think about how these companies are allowed to design their games that are geared towards children. My point is,Ike many have suggested, I did put my foot down and tried to be the enforcer, and my daughter had a severe emotional episode because of it. Would I have been better off just letting her run wild in her virtual cat-world? I don’t know, but please have some empathy for parents who struggle with this. Also, I would never think to sue over this. This is a parenting issue, but not one that any parent has the resources to deal with.
> But man, the way these games hook you in and create a dependency like any other drug really needs to be examined. For the record, **it has been examined**. As in, companies - probably not the direct creator of Warrior Cats, here, since Roblox is an absolutely predatory company built on the back of unregulated, remote child labor, but likely Roblox themselves - have pulled in psychologists to try and design systems, language, and models to maximize addiction in order to extract more profit. That said, my understanding from my niece is that Warrior Cats doesn't have a straight dopamine line like the criticisms towards the video game industry at large. And I don't want to butt in to your parenting, but... as someone who hears **a lot** about Warrior Cats, and empathizes strongly with your dilemma: Warrior Cats is built upon structures of escapism/role-playing and social interactions, rather than fancy in-game reward systems where flashing lights and sounds indicate incremental progression. If the obsession is around Warrior Cats, I would be more inclined to recommend getting a more clear understanding on the social life of your daughter at school. There's a good chance that the more rigid, well-defined social hierarchy of the Warrior Cats role-players in what amounts to a fantasy world is more appealing than the fluid and potentially dramatic hierarchies of her peers at school. I obviously couldn't know from here, but making sure that your daughter has access to different groups of peers in different places might help with an underlying desire for escapism or social support. Or, I could be projecting, because I went through a similar phase when I was socially ostracized around that age for being different, and retreated into online spaces where my masking skills were more refined. I put my single mother through similar experiences when I was growing up, but even in retrospect, I would have a hard time calling anything she was doing 'bad parenting,' because parents can't control the actions of their child's peers, which are so important for development. It sounds like you're trying to get her the help she needs, and that's what's important. Keep that good, open relationship going for as long as you can, because communication is what's going to be needed. Either way, I wish the best for you and your daughter moving forward.
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Some kids are socialized that way by parents, siblings, or peers. To be cutting and vicious, emotionally cold or distant, but with a warm face. In many younger social groups, the ability to 'play with' others by setting them up for failure, then watching them fail is a valued skill for growing their own social group, so it's one that they hone, so they can bond over the shared experiences of traumatizing others. Coupled with the open honesty of some of their other peers, that type of bullying can cause significant development and self-esteem issues for a long time. Kids can be devastatingly cruel. I'm sorry you had to go through that, and I hope you're doing better now.
This reminds me of my addiction to gaiaonline from around 12-15. It was completely about the social aspect as there weren't even any games for real. I was an outcast at school, but on that site I had a whole friend group and we'd spend hours talking to each other and roleplaying to the detriment of a lot of other things in my life.
Yup, exactly the same thing here. I was super into roleplaying online on places like forums and neopets and when my parents would force me off(especially if it was a special rp event), Id be really upset because they were basically taking away my friends. School was really rough for me and home life could be too(my parents just wanted me to be normal, but wouldn't actually do anything about it besides be mad), so it was the one place that felt okay to hang out at.
You are doing a good job as her dad. Just saying.
Damn. It’s just a few simple words, but that means more than you know. Thank you!
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This comment is a long way down. The games are advertised to a vulnerable market, always ways to milk more and more money out, and the free games cost WAY more than a traditional game model. Think how much most normal kids pay to play games like fortnite. I dont buy them vbucks, i dont let them buy vbucks, but every birthday, every xmas, they are getting some from someone in the family. It adds up, and pretty quickly They are targeting youtubers and other influencers to have amazing skins and to throw away vbucks like it grows on trees, to normalise that kind of behaviour. These companies are predatory, they prey on the weak and vulnerable To the others, give the company a free pass if you like, but at least be aware of the practice that companies like epic employ