Our children’s online lives can feel like a bit of a mystery. Especially when they are playing, they can sit for hours on end – headphones on and behind closed doors, so you can wonder who they are interacting with and what those conversations look like. If so, one popular gamer has advice for parents: you need to listen.
David Marchese recently spoke to Tyler Blevins – better known as ‘Ninja’, a popular video game among teens and young adults, for the New York Times. Blevins says he regularly encounters children who say racist things or are aggressive and threaten women while streaming.
It would be great, says Blevins, if you could somehow track down the children’s parents to let them know what kind of hurtful or inappropriate language their tweens or teens are using online, but that’s not possible, which means parents should be vigilant about what they own child says. As Blevins says:
It all comes down to parenting. Want to know who your child is? Listen to him when he plays video games when he thinks you are not. Here’s another thing: how does a white child know he has white privilege if his parents never teach him or do not talk about racism? If they play and their first interaction with racism is that one of their friends says the N-word and they have no idea what it is – what if it was in my stream? Is it my job to have this conversation with this child? No, because the first thing that goes on in my head is: This kid is doing this on purpose to troll me.
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This is the inherent problem with the arguments “just let kids be” and “talking about racism and sexism only divides us further”. If we as parents do not talk to our children about these problems, society (especially their peers) will wait to do it for us. They can learn and use words they have never heard before in offensive ways, without even realizing how offensive they are, and they may not think to ask what a word or phrase means before putting it into their own vernacular will not use. , to hurt or offend others along the way. Not to mention, they might say things that could lead they be reported.
I’m not usually one who strives for the legacy of a child’s privacy (unless there is a compelling security reason to do so), but Blevins’ suggestion to keep an ear out for your child’s play is a good one. I do not advise you to pull up a chair and stick an ear to their room door for an hour, but a short listen, every now and then as you walk by, can give you a little insight into how communicate them online with playmates and whether there are some conversations you need to have.
It’s at least a good idea to visit them every now and then and ask about the game friends they met online and how they played with the friends. As long as you are engaged and interested, chances are better that you will open up about these interactions, which can help pave the way for productive conversations.