Boys Online: What the Latest Data Shows

22:26And now no more of that, you're home. Most importantly, it's displacing sleep.

22:31Amy Wilson:For sure. And this, I mean, I'm a huge believer in this. And since we talked to Jean Twenge, I have reinstated our turning the phones in thing because, I mean, we've all done this as adults, right? Burning eyed, bleeding from the eyeballs tired. And I'm like reading Reddit threads about mothers-in-law who showed up to weddings in a white dress. Like, what am I doing? This is adding zero value to my life. It is costing me dearly in health and sleep, but I can't seem to stop doing it. But you can't seem to stop. It's got to be like the phone goes away. Yeah. Somebody pointed out that this gaming stuff doesn't even count the cost to homework and sleep and in-person activity that kids are spending watching other people play games on YouTube or where have you.

23:19Yeah.

23:20Amy Wilson:I feel like my kids were in the peak era of that, that a lot of time was spent watching other people game online. Yeah. I mean, is it the worst thing in the world? No, but it is if they're doing it in the middle of the night. And then I thought this was an interesting quote. Some teachers say that gaming has disrupted focus in classrooms. So this is a primary school teacher named Joanna. She was in the New York Times. She responded to their article with this comment. She said, as a teacher, I can point out the five boys in each class who spend the most time gaming because they're also the five with the hardest time focusing, the hardest time making friends, the most impulsive behavior, etc.

23:52And then she says, what I don't know is if gaming is the cause or the effect.

23:57Amy Wilson:Wow, this is really true. And as you started the quote, I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, Johanna. And then she got there. I think that gaming can be particularly attractive and calming and a great outlet for kids on the spectrum with ADHD. It's hard to know which is which. And I think that we often see things as an effect when really they're not. It's a kid who has trouble socializing, a kid who doesn't have the motor skills to be on the soccer team. They're gaming more. They have harder time sitting still. I'm really not sure which is cause and effect. No, no. And I don't think we need to know. But to that end, the things that you struggle with, these kids, here's the issue, I think.

24:39Boston Children's Digital Wellness Lab did a study. They have a side they're taking in this game. It's that digital wellness is a possible stance to have in this world. Some of the people are gamers themselves and scientists. So like you're sort of have digital wellness and it isn't like throw your games away. But they found in their research that lonelier adolescents tend to game more. For example, like you were saying, like the kind of kid who game more is a kind of kid who is socially awkward or socially anxious. But the gaming, the time they're spending gaming doesn't alleviate the loneliness and it doesn't address their social skills.

25:11It's like allowing a kid who's really anxious about bugs to not have to go outside if they don't want to because there might be bugs, right? It doesn't address the anxiety of the bugs and it just makes their world smaller. Similarly, if I game because talking to people is hard, talking to people will actually get harder while you're gaming instead of talking to people for 10 hours.

25:28Amy Wilson:That's interesting to me. I'm not sure if I'm sold. I think that some of what I have seen in gaming, I get the big picture, but I do think that I have kids who have found things in online worlds. One kid in a forum about filmmaking, another kid in gaming with a group of friends from school that are like the seven kids, they're either playing outside or they're playing together on the game. Yeah. I don't know that it's a net negative. Well, it depends. It depends on what game you're playing. Yeah. Depends on if you're playing with other people or not, right? Yeah. It depends on 70 % of boys who game report witnessing bullying and harassment regularly.

26:09So if your kid's not one of the kids being bullied or harassed, then it's fine. If they are being bullied or harassed, it's not. I mean, it just seems like you can. I totally agree. You can create you yourself a gaming situation that is net positive or at least net neutral. and it brings you relaxation and joy and you can turn it off before you go to bed and it's not costing you sleep. Like, I think that's totally possible. And I think we'll get to the reasons why that's worth honoring. And also the New York Times made this point that they didn't talk to a single expert researching what this data said and what the data means.

26:41Not one person was like, and so no more games. So take the games away. So there shouldn't be games. Not one person said that.

26:48Amy Wilson:None of this is zero sum, right? And I think that that plays out. I think that probably where I come out on it is that gaming is life. When I think about my kids, they played a lot of Fortnite in the day. It would be like, well, we were playing with this other team and they cheated and we were yelling at them. And it's like an interaction. Then at dinner after the game, we're having a conversation about, yeah, it's so frustrating when people cheat at games or people don't play fairly. I think that the more you can keep gaming in the real world, you know what I'm saying? It is an extension of anything else in the world, but it's not its own world.

27:27Amy Wilson:It's not separate from the world. Does that make sense what I'm trying to say? It does. Like saying, okay, well, you have this group of friends and you all are movie critics together, right? There's this online site where people just discuss movies, but those kids are from an area of the country with different political beliefs, different religious beliefs. You guys are fighting maybe over those things and that's what's going on in the rest of the country. Being able to make the online world comparable to the regular world, I think is where I have found some agency in it. I think that's one of the, I mean, skipping ahead to takeaways, I think that that is one of the things that's so important is for us to be the askable parent and the chattable parent about this stuff.

28:12So my kid was playing some Mario Kart type game, pretty harmless, with their friends. and the friends' friends, kids who they don't even know, those kids had highly offensive, highly offensive usernames. Use your imagination. Not good. And my kid, who was an older teenager at the time, was like, how do I feel? I don't even know who this person is, but my friend does. And my friend's playing a game with the kid whose username, probably because they think it's funny, is espousing violence against a group of people. And how do I feel about that? And am I supposed to say something to my friend? And as you were saying before, online is not real life.

28:52What's my responsibility in that space? Should I refuse to play? Should I say something? Should I like, but they mostly were just bothered that their friend didn't seem to care. And I didn't have an answer, but I was glad that we talked about it because how would I know that that was happening in the basement?

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30:13Amy Wilson:And now, things moms say versus things moms do. From the What Fresh Hell podcast. Things moms say. You know what we love to do on a rainy day? Bake homemade scones and then cuddle up in a floor fort and read Swiss Family Robinson aloud. That's a family. Moms in real life. Are you kidding? Who spilled chocolate milk all over the floor? I haven't even finished setting up the pillows. Yes, I know this book is boring. You know what? Fine. Forget it. Take these pillows and hit each other with them in the garage. Things moms say. My children love to cook. Last night, my five-year-old made us a pesto lasagna with kale.

30:55Amy Wilson:Oh, it was divine. Mom's in real life. No, no, it's not your turn yet. It's not your turn yet. Mommy's just finishing the last layer. Okay, all right, come over and I will let you sprinkle the cheese on the top. Nope, nope, not like that. Over here. No, too much. Okay, I'm just going to scrape that off because you added too much, even though I asked you not to. and into the oven. Things moms say. Camp? Oh, no. We don't do camp. I wouldn't want to miss one of the 18 summers I get with my precious ones. We do something we call Mommy Camp, and I do enriching activities with them all summer long. Moms in real life.

31:33I spent$2 ,000 on that trampoline. Go jump on it. And if you can keep your sister occupied out there for 25 minutes, I'll give you each a popsicle. Things Moms Say. Children's ears are like a delicate pitcher.

31:47Amy Wilson:You must fill them carefully with words of love and wisdom. Moms in real life. Get your shoes on or I'm putting a children for sale sign on the front lawn. We're late. This has been Things Moms Say versus Moms in real life. From the What Fresh Hell podcast.

32:07Amy Wilson:I feel like as a parent of younger kids, you're in the warm bath of control in a way that you don't really realize. When you have a four-year-old, they don't know how to turn on the TV, right? So you are making all these decisions about what they're seeing, what they're playing, any given activity is. And then, you know, I was very clear at that time with young kids of, we're going to watch this, but not this. And we're going to talk about this and not that. And we're going to game on this, but not that. And then by like 10, I'm going to say, these kids have computers that they get from school, iPads that they get from school.

32:45Amy Wilson:One of our kids is in the basement, basically, of our house. Now, your role in gaming moves away from you much faster than I was anticipating. The idea of, well, we have all these controls over these things. And suddenly my kids all have phones. They're in their rooms. I have no idea what they're doing on their phones, what games they're playing, who they're talking to. And so we try to have a lot of conversations around like, you're not talking to anybody you really know when you're on a game. Oh, this person's really nice. You don't know what that person is. You don't know that that person's nice.

33:22Amy Wilson:You don't know how to handle an offensive screen name. You're just in the basement alone in this world much more quickly than I saw coming. Right. All right. Well, now we've scared everybody, right? Yes. That's terrifying. Let's talk a little bit about the not so bad of gaming because depending on your kid and the way that they use gaming, it really does have some good things. So we were talking about extremely intense interests last week. We'll link to that episode too. Fascinating about why kids get obsessed. And one of the reasons they get really obsessed with Pokemon or Magic the Gathering or whatever is that they love categories and to show mastery and that gaming is a way that kids, boys who game can develop feelings of competence and mastery and autonomy that are important skills to feel that you have developmentally.

34:12Amy Wilson:Absolutely. And I think that for kids on the spectrum, ADD, whatever's going on, who struggle with that mastery in other places in their lives, gaming can feel really good, right? Like if you every gym class get laughed at because you can't kick the soccer ball, right? It is nice to have a place where you feel much more capable and in control. I'm laughing because we used to play Wii Sports or my kids play Wii Sports and I would, you know, participate sometimes, which is another thing you're supposed to do is like pick up the console once in a while and play with them. Anyway, they were better at everything than me.

34:47I was infuriatingly bad at everything as far as they were concerned. But Wii Sports, Ski jump. I don't really even ski. You were amazing. I was amazing. You had to actually lean your body forward and like jump at just the right time, you know, holding the things in your hands. And yeah, I was like record-breakingly good at ski jumping. And boy, was I happy about that. Like I got a lot of self-esteem from that back then.

35:10Amy Wilson:I've definitely seen kids who their capability exists online. And I have a friend now whose son is on an e-sports team in college. So they are playing sports at a college level by gaming, which makes me feel like an old lady. I'm like, what? That's crazy. But I do think that it can be a sphere in which kids who struggle in other spheres suddenly find themselves feeling confident and capable. Well, Professor Annie Malheur at UNC Chapel Hill would agree with you. Love it. She says, The nuance on boys and gaming is completely overlooked. There's this social outlet for gaming that much of the research has missed.

35:54Yeah, I agree. Studies do show that boys prefer to do activities with friends over like walking and talking. Like my daughter can get frozen yogurt and walk in Central Park with a friend and be very happy. I mean, I guess even that's an activity. But boys, studies show boys don't want to sit and talk or hang out. They want to do something.

36:12Amy Wilson:I was just laughing about this because my youngest girl has started going to these kind of more teenage birthday parties and it's 12 girls go to lunch somewhere. And I was just laughing. I was like, wow, that is a gender difference. Like there, that is something, a party that my boys have never and will never be invited to. Like, let's the 12 of us just go get lunch and sit nicely. Yeah, and just sit and hang out and chat. And it's true that that would just never, ever be interesting to my boys. I wanted to give a shout out to gaming by yourself, because we've been leaning on like, sometimes it's good, it's social interaction.

36:52So one of my kids' games, he plays this game called My Singing Monsters Composer.

36:57Amy Wilson:Oh. It's on one's phone. It is not socializing. You're not talking to big muscles, 3-2-1, whatever, or your friends, nobody. It is a composition game where you can make this monster is going to go bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum like that. And then you can make all the monsters sing different things. This kid's very musical and has for several years now arranged really complicated songs for the monsters on this game for fun. This is Unwind. This is Do It On Plains. And now that has moved into I'm arranging music and using composition software and arranging music for a chorus for a group of people.

37:34It's moved from for fun, relaxation into the real world. An actual skill was learned. It wasn't a social outlet, but that was the point of it. It was just like, let me just be in my own world and do this kind of dumb thing that was fun, but I actually learned something along the way. Like that's a really good outcome from gaming that I could never have predicted.

37:52Amy Wilson:And I think it's important to give kids context about this as opposed to just rules. Treating the online world, although I just said my new motto for the year was online is not life, but treating it like life in a certain way in terms of saying, this is the kind of people you're meeting. These are the differences. You're also having a fight with someone you have no idea who that person is. And I think I'm going to make a parallel. When I had three kids under four, I was very resistant to ever having a kid on a leash. I was like, oh, it was like this big debate of like, should you have leashes?

38:26Amy Wilson:At a certain point, I had to travel with like three kids in an airport by myself. and I was like, all right, I'm going to put a kid on the leash backpack. I actually ended up never using it, but I was like, if I need these supports, I'm going to make it about the practicality of the situation. And I've found for online world, the same thing is true. Like if I need supports like a parenting app or timers, I'm going to use them. But I think the first line of defense is having more control, not just having the leash as the only option. Having kids who listen to you and know how to behave in spaces so that they're out of danger is the ideal.

39:06Amy Wilson:But if you need the support of the leash, go ahead and do it. And I think gaming is a similar thing for me. I try not to rely on parental controls or apps that tell me what's going on. I try to rely on the relationship I have with my kids. And so tell me about the racist or inappropriate username you're seeing versus I have an app that alerts me to it and I have to start the conversation. Right. Well, if the kids won't talk to you, then sometimes that's useful. But getting involved is one of the best ways to sort of mitigate the risks of gaming. All right, let's move to the things to do because there are some, I think, very concrete things to do.

39:46And that's the first one is take an interest, play the games with them, see what they're playing, really understand the benefit risk of what they're playing in. Be bad at the singing monsters and let them show their mastery over something. These are all good.

40:00Amy Wilson:I think another piece of that that we often talk about, the first step is setting expectations in anything. Like, what do I want out of this marriage? What do I want out of this parenting relationship? What do I want our relationship with gaming and online activity to look like? Because sometimes I think we assume that we're on the same page with our kids about what's dangerous and what's good and what's bad, setting an expectation very early on. And one of the things I've often said to my kids is, anything you do online, I want you to imagine me and your school principal sitting and reviewing with you in the principal's office.

40:35Amy Wilson:That's a good arbiter of whether or not you're behaving correctly online. Does it pass that test? Right. And they might still do something stupid. It does not mean they're not going to do something stupid, but just trying to give very visceral and real examples of, do you want me sitting in your principal's office and finding out that you have a disgusting screen name that is offensive and rude to people? I don't think you do. Right. And it's also not just about don't do something that's going to get you in trouble. It's like, don't use offensive screen names. Don't be violent and misogynistic and anti-Semitic and don't take part in those things online.

41:12They're not funny. They're not cute. They're not awesome. They're not masculine. They're just offensive.

41:17Amy Wilson:That's a great point. Not because I'm going to catch you, but because I expect better from you as a human being. Right. These are our family values. And overall with the games, I think if it really is the time, it seems like the real issue is way too much time is being spent on gaming. And even if they ask the teenagers what's good and what's bad about gaming, and a lot of them said it gives them a sense of belonging and helps them with friendships, but almost half are like, yeah, it harms my sleep. Yeah, fair. They're admitting to it. And so I think it's coming at it for like you and the kid are on the same side of the net.

41:48Right. The problem is the gaming is so addictive that you're not getting your homework done or you're staying up too late. Sometimes parents only find out when their kids' grades really suffer that there's, you know, games being played under the covers at two o 'clock in the morning. And I think you have to greet that with compassion. Like these games are that addictive.

42:08Amy Wilson:Well, you've said this a lot, and I think it's a good point. I use it a lot with my kids. Getting them in on the idea of like, you know, this is designed to make you not want to stop playing. They're trying to trick you into playing more and putting that really frankly in front of your kids. Yeah. Then there's time tracking, which we talked about that recently, what your kids and your family are doing with their time versus what you set out to do with your time. It's another way where you can ask your kid to time track. Like I want you to for a week, Laura Vanderkam has a time tracker and we put it in the newsletter, our most recent newsletter, and we can link to it from this episode too, just for a couple of days, because I think it might surprise your 14-year-old as much as you.

42:47Like, wait a minute, I did 18 hours of this this week?

42:51Amy Wilson:Yeah. And only 10 hours of homework? Really? When it's black and white, it's not mom being annoying. Yes. Making it the lady versus the mom. The lady is the time tracker. The lady says you did 15 hours of Grand Theft Auto this week. Right, right. Your little color and marks show us the truth. And I don't think it should be only up to parents. It's all in us and it shouldn't be all in us. This is a guy, Bennett Sippel, who works at the Tech and Society Lab. He says, parents' boundaries don't stand a chance against products designed to keep kids hooked. Platforms must take responsibility. I mean, agreed.

43:24And I hate that it's us trying to teach our kids to resist the addictive design of things designed to make them not sleep. But for now it is up to us.

43:34Amy Wilson:Right. That's the thing we talk about that we're at the tip of this huge spear, which is addictive games and everything else. And suddenly it's mom's fault that your kids point too much. It's like, this is a multi-billion dollar industry pointing directly at my child. I think that, especially as my kids get older, just conversations about this, because we've had to deal with a lot of the, I don't even know what the ratings are, but like the mature games and the more violent games, you know, for a while it was like no single person shooter games seem like a good line. But as my kids have gotten older, we do have a lot of conversations where I'm like, this is what I'm reading, that this game is very violent, that this game has misogynistic elements, that this game is really gory.

44:16Amy Wilson:What's appealing about it to you? Here's what I find worrisome about it. At a certain point, you're going to make your own decisions at 17, 18, 19, 20 about what you're going to be doing and how you're going to be gaming. But I'm not saying no, because I'm just a goofy mom prude. I'm saying no, because these are my concerns. Like, how do you react to those concerns? Do they concern you? What do you think the effect of playing a game where you're beating up women? Like, why would you want to do that? That's not appealing to me. Like, explain it to me. I now basically let my kids play pretty much anything they want.

44:50Amy Wilson:But I'm like, you're going to hear from mom about it if it's something that I find gross. Right. Going back to that very beginning that only 69 % of boys say they see problematic gender stereotypes makes me think that maybe they do need sometimes our help putting into context. Why do you think it is always one woman in a bikini and 45 soldiers? Yeah, exactly. I think this all comes down to communication, as you have to do about all other things, and then probably some limits around it as well. Communication. Oh, communication with our children. We have to do it again. I thought we did that already.

45:26Amy Wilson:We did it already. We got to keep doing it. So sign up for our newsletter because you'd already have the time tracker if you did. Once a month, we send what we're watching, reading, listening to. Last week, I sent everybody three things I bought on Instagram that I actually liked that weren't complete 11 p.m. wastes of time. Love that one. Imagine that. Yeah, they really were. And so you sign up for that, go to the link in our show notes or go to wetpresshealthpodcast.com to sign up. we would love to have you join us. And with that, thanks so much for listening. And we will talk to you next time.

45:55So long.

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