Can You Have That Experience with Video Games?

Seeing Panda leave his feet drew a sharp contrast in my mind. I had started a competitive video game league called Bravous Youth Esports. I wanted to create the same kind of environment and camaraderie for video gamers that I'd had coaching youth baseball. I naively assumed all I had to do was provide the same structure. Coaches, Practices, Matches. The results for the kids would be the same, right?

I could not have been more wrong.

I remember being excited to run our first "practice." We picked League of Legends, an uber-popular team game. I joined the game myself — I wanted to feel what the kids would experience. There were three of us, and two other players joined our match to fill out our team of five. The game started, dazzling graphics, and we swarmed toward our assigned positions... and then it was over. Our two new teammates said something nasty and quit before the match had really begun. "What was that!?" I asked. My coach explained, "That's Solo Queue." We played for three hours without completing a single match. Not one. Forget commitment, let alone supporting each other. Online, people bailed at any time for any reason. Or no reason. There was no practice. Just raw, unfiltered competition. The philosophy seemed to be, "To play at a high level, you had to play at a high level."

And if you couldn't, "shame on you."

Literally. Not one time did a player leave our matches without disparaging me and the rest of our team. This wasn't Win or Learn; it was Win or Humiliate. I had never participated in anything so toxic. And this was a game!?

The Leap to Commit

Playing those games made me feel exactly the opposite of how I felt watching Panda stretch out for that ball, both arms extended. He looked like Superman without a cape. Nothing in the online games gave me that sensation, nothing raised those kinds of feelings within me. But why? Why not?

It's the Environment, Stupid

It took me years to piece together what I was seeing. The clue that cracked the case for me was watching the same exact kids I coached in baseball change their behaviors radically when they played video games.

Environment shapes behavior. The human brain is wired to look for support. When supportive relationships are available, everything is easier. A psychologist named James Coan at the University of Virginia calls this Social Baseline Theory. His studies show even something as simple as walking uphill feels easier with a friend! You don't even need to hold hands or push each other. Being present is enough. When you don't feel like you have support, however, you're running in hard mode.

Coan's Social Baseline Theory says we flourish when we have access to relationships with three critical characteristics: interdependence, shared goals, and joint attention.

The baseball game had all three of those in spades. The video game, in contrast, had none of them. How can you be interdependent with someone who can vanish mid-match (and frequently does)? What is the shared goal when everyone is optimizing for their own rank? And what kind of attention is really being shared with someone through a screen, anonymously and asynchronously?

Players might believe video games are just as significant as sports, cognitively. However, the research shows the brain does not register the experience as supportive for the reasons outlined above. The structure, the environment doesn't allow for it. In fact, the video game environment actively undermines it.

And this is why I never saw a video game player act the way Panda did. It was too risky, too socially dangerous. Without support, it was all downside, no upside.

The Catch

I did not even know I was holding my breath until the ball hit Panda's mitt as he hit the ground. I exploded in a loud cheer, which no one heard because they were cheering too. He closed the leather of his glove around the bright white ball, sealing the out and preserving the perfect game!

When I asked him later why he'd gone for it, he said simply, "I wasn't going to be the one to ruin Hollywood's perfect game." And there, in a nutshell, was everything Coan's research revealed: interdependence, shared goals, and joint attention. Panda didn't quit mid-game because he was bored. He didn't dive to show off, and he wasn't distracted in the heat of the moment. He was present, committed, and ready.

You know, as a coach, and a dad, I really thought I knew who all my players were, including Panda. But I'll never forget what he taught me that day: Kids will absolutely shock you if they're given the right environment.

While my team set up the consoles for our competitive video game league, I greeted parents and players as they arrived. The first to arrive looked no different from the kids I coached in little league. Ten-year-old Jason had a tangle of messy brown hair and a Pokemon shirt on. I introduced myself as his mom said, "We've been driving all over town looking for video game tournaments. We're excited Jason can meet some kids his own age." "He'll have fun here," I reassured her, as Jason practically sprinted up to the consoles playing Smash Bros.

Next I met Xander and his dad. Xander was tall for his age, lanky, dressed in black jeans and a JigglyPuff shirt, but his handshake was firm and he looked me in the eye as he introduced himself. His dad, who was clearly very proud of his son said, "Xander's been looking forward to getting some real professional coaching." As he said those words Xander walk/sprinted up to Mikey, our head coach. His father found a table where he could order some nachos and watch his son practice getting better at the game he loved.

I felt good, the league was filling up, and the players and parents seemed happy to be here. When Janet appeared, her son was standing uneasily behind her. She put out her hand and I took it welcoming her and her boy to the league. "I'm glad you're here, thanks for signing up," I said with a smile. She responded in a serious tone, "William is not autistic, I had him tested."

I think I actually blinked. "Excuse me?" I said not quite sure what I had just heard.

"My son. William," She motioned to him. "He is not autistic. We had him tested."

"I," I said. "I see." I didn't see at all. Why on earth had she introduced him like that? I turned to face William and introduce myself. He could not meet my eyes. I slowly extended my hand, not wanting to overwhelm him, it took him a minute to notice, then he sort of grabbed my hand like a limp fish and let me move it up and down a few times. I let go. That was when it hit me. William wasn't excited like the other boys. He scanned the room with a blank expression. Where Xander and Jason had locked in on what interested them most, William looked lost.

"Does he play a lot of video games?" I asked his mother. "Oh, he plays all the time," she explained. "In fact, that's all he does. That's why I signed him up for this league. I want him to make some friends."

Janet's goal was exactly why I had created this video game league. I knew that video games attract a lot of kids on the spectrum.^[1] Video games appeal to these kids because the games are structured, clear, and satisfying.^[2] Video games have one other feature children on the spectrum appreciate. Players control the sound volume. This makes a video game a safe, sensory controlled space to get lost in mental pleasure.

After meeting William, I could see why his mother had him tested. After his initial confusion, he showed a leading indicator of autism, what I call "treating people like things." Children and adults with autism don't know where to focus, especially when it comes to watching other people. They miss social cues, and their eyes dart to what interests them, which is frequently objects, not faces.^[3]

Because video games are inherently iconic, they only present what matters. For both ADHD and autistic kids, games feel reassuringly predictable. Overstimulation is a serious challenge for these kids. Noise or social interaction you and I might hardly notice can cause these kids intense emotional distress.^[4]

That made me think about William. If he wasn't autistic, what was going on for him?

The first day with William as a member of the league passed without incident, but as the weeks rolled on, I began to pick up clues to why his mother had him tested. We had several genuinely autistic children in the league, and their parents were extremely supportive. William blended right in with that group. He did not pick up on social cues, did not like to be touched, and when he focused it was extremely focused.

However, our setup was perfect for this group. Every player had their own Nintendo console, and the large screen TV's around the room played video game matches instead of sports. During each session our coaches taught the players fundamental skills needed to compete in Smash Bros at a high level. In one drill the coaches taught the players how to recover from falling off the stage.^[5]

I felt thrilled to see this program roll out exactly the way I imagined it. We coached the kids in competitive excellence, but using video games instead of sports. You would think a room full of kids and video games would be chaos, but it wasn't. The Coaches established control early. When Mikey said, "Controllers down." Every kid set their controller down. Anyone who didn't listen would have to sit out one minute. That happened once, then everyone got it. The players wanted to be part of something bigger than playing alone.

The first challenge for all of them came when we started to play matches. Some of these kids were going to lose for the first time, and lose with people watching. How would they handle it? I made sure to attend that session and talked to the parents. I wanted to make sure they understood what we taught the kids. Failure isn't final, success isn't permanent. We had them chant before competition started, "You win or you learn!" The kids were into it.

Near the end of the first match, while I was talking to Xander's father, I sensed the commotion. I excused myself and turned to see what was going on. I saw William in the center of it. Mikey had already moved toward him, but my heart dropped. What if I had to ask William to leave? I mean, this was a recreational program, not therapy. Man that would suck asking him to leave. I hastened my pace.

I fully expected to find William in the middle of a melt down. Maybe the room was too loud, or perhaps he'd lost his first match. When I reached his table I could see William definitely was experiencing something intense. His head rolled back, his eyes were wide, but his mouth opened like a frog trying to catch a fly. I flinched expecting a scream, but instead he laughed. I did a double take. My God. William was happy! He had won his match, yet he looked manic. He cackled in an unhinged way that stopped me cold.

I had never seen an autistic kid act like that before. What on earth was going on for him?

After seeing William's reaction to winning, I felt certain he was not autistic, but then why did he present some autistic behaviors?

What caused that? I later learned the answer. It turns out, he spent so much time alone playing video games, day after day, that it disrupted his social emotional development.^[6] Humans have the longest maturation cycle of any mammal. Every other mammal goes from birth to reproductive age as fast as possible. Cats can reproduce at one year old! But people pause for seven years.

Social scientists posit that children absorb their culture during this critical window.^[7] Somewhere between 5 and 12 children appear to absorb social cues. Put simply, humans learn emotional regulation from each other, through social interaction.

I thought about William. Just how much time had he spent staring at a video game screen? Apparently enough to miss these lessons. But it wasn't just the screen time. The interactive games also shaped his behavior. Smart phones, tablets, and video games induce the child to act in ways guided by the software.^[8] William could not see how his behavior affected other people. Screens break that connection. This meant William's internal emotional landscape was like playing hockey on a lake. Without feedback from others to give him boundaries, his feelings could go anywhere, and they did.

It was not so much that William treated people like things. It was more that William lacked the skills and experience to understand how his behavior affected other people. His feedback loop had been cut.

I was not looking at an autistic kid. I was looking at a kid with severely underdeveloped social emotional development.

By the time I reached the table, Mikey stood beside William and calmed him down. A core lesson in our league involved not only helping players deal with losing with resilience, but also winning with grace. You want to be the kind of player that people want to play with again. Thankfully, William responded to Mikey's coaching. I felt some hope.

Over the next few sessions I saw how the coaches' calm, stable presence helped William grow his self control. Gem taught the players "sportsmanship." The boys surrounded him like moths around a flame. He said, "Win or lose, we celebrate a good effort. You can't have a meaningful win until you play someone who really challenges you." He taught the boys respectful ways to celebrate. You honor your opponent. I studied William's reactions during these lessons. Did he get it? Was he able to track? I saw William concentrate on his teammates. He replicated their moves. At first he looked uncomfortable. Then gaining confidence. He wanted this.

"Competitive excellence is being your best when your best is most needed," Gem told the boys before a practice round. "And leaders make more leaders. You do your best, and help each other out."

William was making progress but would it be enough? Would our league deliver what Janet had hoped for? Would he make any friends?

I got my answer on the second to last session. William and Kevin, a small kid a few years younger played a close match with a small crowd around them. William lost. I held my breath. I saw his face redden like a tomato. But he didn't burst. He turned to Kevin, who met his gaze. Kevin took a deep breath. And then William did the same. They let it out together. The boys started to breathe in sync, with Kevin in the lead. Leaders making leaders. In, hold, two, three, four, out, two, three, four. I felt goose bumps watching the two boys.

I doubt anyone else noticed. But I saw it. One kid helped another kid. William wasn't autistic. He was unskilled, but he was learning. Supportive, face to face interaction with other kids was making a difference. Maybe, just maybe, connection could heal boys like William.

Then Janet shared with me, in an offhand way, a piece of news that forever changed how I felt about boys and video games. Janet told me William had been invited to a birthday party. Kevin had invited him. She fought back tears as she said, "That's the first birthday party he's even been invited to." I let that wash over me. William was eleven years old. Knowing that crushed me. I could not imagine that level of loneliness for my sons. I was happy William had made friends, but also I couldn't help but wonder, how many more kids are out there like William? No kid should be that lonely.

1. After running GameTruck for almost 20 years, and entertaining over 14 million players, we have a pretty robust sample set. ↩︎
2. I learned this from my friend Christina Carlson who runs a clinic serving the needs of Arizona's autistic and special needs kids. ↩︎
3. Klin, A., Jones, W., Schultz, R., Volkmar, F., & Cohen, D. (2002). Visual fixation patterns during viewing of naturalistic social situations as predictors of social competence in individuals with autism. Archives of General Psychiatry, 59(9), 809–816. https://doi.org/10.1001/archpsyc.59.9.809 ↩︎
4. In our corporate locations we carry noise canceling earphones for this reason. ↩︎
5. The stage is the in game battle platform inside Smash Bros. Beginning players often lose because they can't stay on the tiny platform and fall off. ↩︎
6. See Scattered Minds by Gabor Mate. ↩︎
7. Minoura, T. (1992). A sensitive period for the incorporation of a cultural context: A study of Japanese children growing up in the United States. Ethos, 20(3), 304–337. ↩︎
8. Eyal, N. (2014). Hooked: How to build habit-forming products. Portfolio/Penguin. ↩︎

The crack of the ball leaving the bat rang through the cement-lined stadium. As the ball lifted into right field, the thought that ran through my mind was "Can of Corn." I heard a coach beside me whisper, "We've got a guy." Yeah, this was an out... or at least... it should have been.

Sparky got a good jump. He read the ball off the bat and charged in. But then... I didn't hear him call for it. Sparky's a quiet kid, but the stadium was dead quiet. My stomach started to turn as I watched him pull up. "No," I whispered... Everyone held their breath. His glove only half raised, like he'd run out of gas, and then he stopped... and the ball dropped. It bounced five feet in front of him. The tiny crowd of parents for the other team exploded in cheers. The batter, who was having his own little meltdown, suddenly looked up and booked it to first base.

He needn't have worried. Sparky trotted up to the ball, picked it up, and lobbed it to the cutoff man at second base. I let out a long sigh and dropped my head.

I didn't feel sorry for Sparky. I felt sorry for the kid on the mound. He needed that out. Sparky turned and trotted back to his position.

Coaching the process clearly had not worked for him.

The question burning in my mind was, "Why?"

Managing Shame

Sparky had found a way to manage his stress. And it worked for him. The problem was, it didn't work for anyone else, especially his teammates. Sparky giving up on that ball was not only about him, it was about the other kids sitting in the dugout who also wanted to play. It was about the pitcher on the mound. In baseball everyone is on an island, there's no wall of bodies to hide behind. And that attention, that relentless attention, can really mess with kids.

You see, for Sparky, this was not an issue of "getting better." He knew how to catch a fly ball. No, this was about avoiding future embarrassment. His logic went something like this: "You can't blame me for not making the play, because I didn't do my best." The implication, of course, is that if he had done his best, he would have caught the ball. By not trying, Sparky had learned to protect himself from the pain of failure. It's a weird and convoluted way to think, but I've seen it a lot. Holding back as a form of emotional protection. Getting yelled at for not trying hard, it seems, is much easier than doing your absolute best and still failing. One failure you already know how to handle. The other? That is just too risky. So Sparky had learned to "sandbag."

But sandbagging is not the only way to manage shame. It has an evil twin. I call it the rage monster. The kid who gets so angry at himself for making a mistake, you'd think his head might explode. The rage monster is like a loudspeaker blaring, "Don't you dare get mad at me, no one could be more mad at me than I am." Dash, our third baseman, was an expert rage monster. If he struck out he'd get so upset his father would walk away because his mother consoled him. On some level, I suspected that was a double win for Dash.

As baseball legend Honus Wagner observed, baseball is "Organized Humiliation." I couldn't blame those boys for managing their shame.

But I did need to figure out what to do about it.

Safe to Try

I realized I did not need to convince Sparky to try. I needed to convince him it was safe to try. Learning to face failure is one of the single most important skills you can develop in baseball. But how to convince Sparky and Dash of that?

By helping them build their identity around their effort.

I learned that "How you do anything is how you do everything" is not just a quip, but a tool. At practice we made everything about effort. And not just any effort. Max effort. Every drill. Every rep. Every time. Some people thought I was crazy, or too harsh on the kids, but not the kids. They knew they could do more, and they wanted to. I don't think a single coach expected more from a player than deep down they expected from themselves.

The Video Game Connection

You might be reading this and thinking, "Great, but my kid doesn't play sports." Yeah. I get that. And you're not alone. During the "change years" (late elementary through middle school), almost two thirds of boys will opt out of team sports. And from where I sit it seems obvious that many of those kids end up playing hours of video games.

While games are entertaining, they do very little to develop player resilience. What's more, in my experience, many gamers have perfected Sparky's defense mechanism. They don't just sandbag. They quit. It's more or less the same thing. Rather than face failure, you run from it. But if you never have to face it, how will you learn to deal with it?

So how do you make players face it?

The Tool: Start With a Strong Finish

Answer: Start with a strong finish.

When we coached youth competitive video games, we adapted the effort strategy slightly for gaming. We translated hustle into commitment. If you start it, you finish it.

That's it. You have to finish. Especially with competitive games, the ones played with and against other people.

We wanted the players to focus on how they showed up. Are you dependable? Are you committed? Can you finish what you start? We coached resilience through persistence.

How do you put this into practice? First, by talking to your child about their gaming. If what they play is competitive, ask them, "Did you finish the match?" And then listen to their answer.

Also, when your child begs for more game time, you can make it conditional on sticking out tough matches. No extra game time for quitters.

Your player should know why you have this rule. You might say, "You need to see yourself as someone who sees hard things through to the end. You're a finisher." Resilience is built through emotional regulation and practice. Someday life will hand them a challenge they can't quit. I know parents who play video games with their kids, and they have their own versions of these exact same rules.

And as for Sparky? He became as dependable as anyone on the team. Not a perfect player, but one good enough to play for his high school team. More than anything, the coaches "loved his hustle."

We coached our kids to be relentless. (In a good way.) I'll bet you can do the same.

Give it a try. Let me know how it works for you.

I want to share with you how changing the way I talked to my boys helped them cultivate mental toughness.

A Championship Lost

I stood in the dugout and watched helplessly as my first baseman reared back to throw. I could hear the other coaches shout, "Step on the bag!" With one out and runners on first and second, the smart play was to record the out and let the runners advance. We had a two-run lead. We were two outs away from a championship. But our kid, a big sixth grader nicknamed "Sarge," wanted to get the lead runner. He was going to try and gun down the kid streaking from second to third. Sarge stepped and fired. The ball sailed over the third baseman's head. Was it a high throw, or had the kid ducked? I'll never know. What I knew for sure, however, was that was not the play. Stepping on first—that was the play. The tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife. Everyone held their breath until that ball hit the fence and ricocheted into left field. That was when the crowd erupted, cheering for the other team.

The runner on second scored easily, and as the tying run rounded third, my left fielder scooped up the ball and threw home, replicating the overthrow at third. That was when I knew the game was over. That was when I knew we had lost. The catcher leapt as high as he could, but he needed to be an NBA player to reach that throw. By the time he tracked down the ball at the backstop, the batter—the one who hit the ball to first—crossed home plate, ending the game and our season. They scored three runs on a ground ball to first.

Our players started to cry as the other team dog piled at home plate. I didn't look at Sarge, and he didn't look at me. I felt betrayed. Why had he done that? Why the bad throw? I didn't get it. Our players had the skill and the heart, but when it mattered most, they pressed. They cracked. And as their coach, I knew that was somehow my fault, but why and how? What could I do about it?

The Summer of Insight

I spent the summer studying the mental game of baseball. Everything I read boiled down to one thing: I focused too much on outcomes. After the championship game, I wanted to ask Sarge, "Why did you throw to third?" (I'm glad I didn't.) Before that summer, I didn't think there was anything wrong with that question. However, I learned that is a terrible question. Why? Because it blames him for the result. That summer, I learned a better way, and it changed everything.

When we returned from summer break to play fall ball, I took full responsibility for the end-of-season loss. While they were prepared physically, I had not prepared them mentally. I told them we would become process-focused. I don't think they understood what I meant until they saw it in action during our first fall game.

Not Again...

In this game, the batter hit a sharp ground ball to our second baseman, a scrawny little kid nicknamed Bandit. Instead of charging the ball, Bandit backpedaled. The ball did what baseballs have been doing for a hundred years to players who back up: it ate him up. It took a wicked hop, jumped over his glove, and bounced into right field. An easy out turned into a runner at first.

A Better Approach

When we finally got out of the inning, I met Bandit as he entered the dugout. He tensed up. I put my arm around him and said in a slow, calm voice, "Tell me about that play. What was going on for you?" He paused for a moment, looked up at me, then thought about it. "The ball had this crazy spin, so I backed up." I nodded and asked, "How'd that work out?" He shrugged, answering in a sheepish tone, "Not too good, Coach." I smiled. "I bet. What would you do differently next time?" He looked determined. "Charge it." I asked, "Do you want to work on that in the next practice?" All the tension left his body. "Yeah," he said. "Great, now go out there and smash the ball. You're on deck."

That might not sound like much, but at the time, it was huge because both of us felt the pressure to perform let up. We moved from talking about mistakes to talking about process. Sometimes a player did charge the ball, and it ate him up anyway. That was fine. But I focused my attention on their effort, their approach, and their intention. As a result, one play at a time, one conversation at a time, one game at a time, the boys and the coaches developed more resilience. When we found ourselves in a tournament championship later that fall, our kids played relaxed and focused. In fact, they were so calm they caused the other team to panic. No matter what happened, no matter how big a lead the other guys built, we just kept coming back. With two outs in the bottom of the last inning and the tying run on third, the other coach panicked and told his player to steal home. Our players never blinked. Our third baseman yelled, "Steal!" and our catcher stepped up the line while our pitcher passed him the baseball like he was leading a receiver in a football play. Mind you, we had never practiced that play. Hollywood caught the ball from Rocket and, in one smooth motion, tagged the runner out six feet in front of the plate. This time we dog piled at home plate.

The win felt great, but the sense of pride I felt in seeing our boys play with confidence felt even better.

Process Focus for Gamers

I wondered: Being process-focused worked in sports, but could it work with video games? In baseball, I could see the play develop as it was happening. I could watch the player. As a parent of a gamer, however, usually all I could see was the aftermath. My gamer would explode in rage. Once my son rage-spiked his controller, breaking it. That was an expensive mistake. How could I use a process focus to handle that? My instinct was this was similar to the sports problem—a loss of composure. But how to handle it?

The first thing I realized is that before I could have a "process conversation," I needed to help my boys get calm. I never found a good way to have a conversation with a kid who was being flooded with negative emotions. So I sent them into the backyard to "run it off." We never treated it as a punishment but rather a gateway for self-control. I would say, "Run a few laps until we can talk." Sometimes they ran. Sometimes they shot hoops. Physical activity calmed them down.

When they would come back in, I'd ask them, "You good to talk?" If they weren't, I asked, "What else do you need?" Sometimes they needed me to shoot hoops with them. But when they were ready, that was when I reached for the process framework. I started the same way I started with Bandit. I wanted them to tell me about it. I wanted to see what they saw and feel what they felt. I learned from them that video games had a dose of "double shame." They felt shamed for losing the video game and doubly shamed for losing their self-control.

I asked my boys how I could help them avoid getting so upset in the game. We talked about early warning signs they could use when they got too wrapped up in a match. They wanted to be able to turn the game off themselves when overheated. Did it work every time? Of course not. Nothing does. However, giving them the chance to bring their behavior in line with their self-image developed their sense of agency and improved their self-control. I wanted my boys to see themselves as people who do hard things. My intention as a coach and a father is to help kids build an identity based upon effort, not outcome. I told my kids, "You win or you learn."^[1] There is no lose.

The Tool

Here is how I think about being process-focused:^[2]

Step 1: Help them find self-control. Key question: "Are you calm enough to talk?" You might need to make it clear there will be no more gaming until after there is a conversation.

Step 2: Find their perspective. Key question: "Tell me about it" or "What was going on for you?" Withhold judgment and seek to make them feel understood.

Step 3: Find a solution going forward. Key question: "What do you need so this doesn't happen again?" Problem-solve together.

I believe every boy has a secret aspirational image of themselves. Using a process focus helps them reach that version. Give it a try.

End Notes

1. I don't recall who said that, but I did not make it up. ↩︎
2. You might want to practice this when the stakes are low. If you wait until your son is howling mad to try it, that puts a lot of pressure on both of you. ↩︎

I hear many well-meaning adults tell children to pursue their passion. I too want kids to be happy and love their careers. However, this advice can create some unexpected pitfalls for boys who are at risk of becoming obsessed with video games.

Let me tell you about Nate, a top 100 Madden gamer. I met Nate because his mother reached out to me. She wanted me to interview her son. As CEO of GameTruck, I interview many gamers who hope to work for us as a Game Coach. A Game Coach is a party host who drives our game theater to the customer's house and entertains guests with video games. We do thousands of parties a month. It's a popular birthday celebration and a popular job. Therefore, I was happy to interview Nate.

Nate showed up on time for the video interview, camera on, wearing a tie. Those were all good signs. He was in his bedroom, which was neat and organized, with a large Xbox poster beside a row of Funko Pop figurines behind him on a shelf. He had a nice collection.

He looked nervous. I tried to put him at ease by talking about his player ranking. There was no doubt he had a lot of skill. The longer we talked, however, the more my heart sank. Nate was in his mid-twenties, not in college, and had no job. He also had no driver's license and did not seem interested in getting one. That was pretty bad (I mean, our company is GameTruck). However, the moment I knew it would never work was when I asked about other video games.

"I only play Madden," Nate said flatly. Only Madden. I felt a mixture of sadness and anger. Sad because I could not help Nate. Angry because someone, somewhere had told this young man that if he focused on what made him happy (apparently to the exclusion of all else), someone would come to him and offer him a job. Not just any job, but a job doing what he loved most: playing Madden.

Nate had pursued his passion, and it had trapped him. Despite developing elite gaming skills, Nate was unemployable because his skill did not serve anyone except Nate.

I let out a heavy sigh. I could not hire Nate even if I wanted to. Perhaps if I had met Nate sooner, when he was younger, when he first started focusing on developing his skill, I would not have told him to give up on video games. Instead, I would have tried to help him broaden his understanding of what being great at video games could mean. How do you broaden a player's perspective on video games? In my experience, it starts with a conversation that begins with an open-ended question.

While there is no perfect question, I ask something like, "How do you think your skill could be applied to help others?" Psychologists call this reframing. Your gamer may not know the answer. He might even get frustrated by your question. That is okay. Because your next statement is, "I'm proud of your skills, but if you want to treat video games seriously, it needs to lead to something you can do beyond the game." You don't have to use those exact words, but you want to position game skill as a starting point to real life, not the end point. You want to help him see it as something he can build upon.

Developing video game skill can lay the ground for future skills. They can be a path for a player to see himself as useful. That is the heart of it. I have hired many talented video gamers who have become awesome Game Coaches. GameTruck is blessed to have awesome people who play video games at a high level. Every one of them, however, has one thing in common. They have what I call the musician's mindset. Their skill is not only for their personal enjoyment; they employ that skill to entertain others. I once worked with a young man everyone called "Gem" (it was his gamer tag). He was absolutely outstanding at Smash Bros Ultimate. However, what he was even better at was teaching young gamers how to get better at the game. Our customers and their kids loved Gem. He worked for us for years until he had built enough experience working with kids to relocate and take a job as a kids club manager near his family. I don't know for sure what happened to Nate, as I never heard from him or his mother again. In all likelihood, he is still living in his childhood bedroom and has become part of the nearly 600,000 millennial and Gen Z young men who have fallen out of the workforce. I find that idea tragic. Which is why I do what I do.

I want to see all young people achieve their potential. If you know a budding elite level gamer, don't wait until they are out of high school. Start a conversation with them today about how video games can be a foundation but should not be an end in themselves. Instead of telling these young gamers to pursue their passion, help them learn how to be of service. In the end, they will get something more valuable than passion. They will experience satisfaction.

Give it a try, and let me know how it works out for you. I'd love to hear from you.

It was a beautiful Arizona spring day. Not a cloud in the sky, cool breeze, and plenty of sunshine. And I was standing on the pitching mound surrounded by a dozen nine and ten year old boys scattered about the baseball diamond. I was throwing batting practice (BP). I turned to face the shortstop, who I had nicknamed "Sport.^[1]" Sport had just fielded a weakly hit ground ball and was about to throw it back to the mound. I held my glove chest high, giving him a clear target to aim for.

He faced me, reared back, and I knew before he threw it what was about to happen. He uncorked a weak lob. The ball traced a weak rainbow as it arced across the infield, bounced once, then rolled to a stop at my feet. I could feel my frustration rise. How many times had we practiced this? I tried to mask the expression on my face by swiftly bending over and picking up the ball. I knew the parents were watching, so I couldn't yell at the kid. Sheesh, why did I need parents watching me to think that? A good coach never needed to yell at a kid.

As I stood up, I could feel everyone's eyes on me. My players knew. Sport had just screwed up. What was going to happen now? I reminded myself, "Don't be that dad, Novis." No, I was not going to yell at him, but I also could not just ignore what happened.

Holding the ball, I turned sideways, showing Sport the proper technique without telling him. KASH up! Knee, ankle, shoulder, hip to target. Then I threw the ball back to him and said, "Do it again, do it right." More of my frustration crept into my voice than I wanted. I knew it sounded harsh, but when he did it right, I would make up for it. I knew Sport could throw a ball well. I had seen him do it. But now, with everyone on the team watching, this was going to be a teaching moment or a disaster. I was praying for the teaching moment.

Sport caught the ball. I gave him a fresh target, raising my glove shoulder high but also a little closer to him. I reminded him, "Throw it through me, not to me." He nodded, then turned sideways, just like I had done, and fired a frozen rope right into my glove. It landed with a solid whack as I closed the leather around it. "Now that's how you throw a ball," I told him, happy to let the pride show in my tone. "That's who you are, that's how you throw. Like that, all the time. Every time." As I turned away I could see Sport nod. It was a small confident gesture, but I felt it. He knew. He wasn't that weak-sauce-lollypop-throw kid. He was a strong-armed shortstop who could zip the ball across the diamond.

Building a Sense of Self

I once heard my high school football coach tell my parents that he did not coach football players. Coach Sutter helped raise good men. I wanted to do the same. So baseball had become my workshop. I coached young boys learning to become young men.

Frustrations aside, it was important to give Sport another chance to throw the ball the right way. He needed the opportunity to prove to himself, and his teammates, he was someone they could rely on. We all make mistakes, but in practice, I could give the boys a do-over. The boys needed to see themselves perform a skill well, under pressure. That was why Sport needed to do it again, and do it right. Actions inform identity. You can say you're a good shortstop. People can tell you that you are a good shortstop. However, if you can't throw the ball across the diamond with any consistency, do you really believe it? My experience said no.

By coaching baseball I could help my son and his friends build their identity as competent, capable young men. But what if you don't coach a sport like baseball? Or, what if your son has fallen out of team sports (or never joined) and now finds himself deeply enmeshed in the world of video games? Is it possible to make that your platform for coaching your son to become a good man?

In my experience, absolutely. I have done it at GameTruck, and so can you. With video games, however, you need to take a slightly different approach. In baseball, I could coach in the moment because I was on the field. I saw Sport's weak throw and gave him another chance right then and there. But chances are you won't be in the video game. So instead of coaching in the moment, you coach about the moments. You do this by helping your son find the game experiences that matter and connecting those memories in a new way.

Here's How You Start

Begin with a question. Ask your son, "You seem like you are pretty good at (fill in the game). What skill did you learn that made you so good?" If you are worried that you don't know his game well enough to understand the answer, you can ask instead, "What makes you good at this game?"

His answer is likely game specific, such as "I'm really good at edgeguarding"^[2] He could say he's really good at "Ramp Rushes",^[3] or he could say he's skilled at "ceiling shots and air dribbles."^[4] It is more important that he answers, than the specific answer.

And if you don't understand the answer, that's okay! Go ahead and admit it! But then ask him for clarification. Say, "I don't understand what that means. Can you explain it to me?" Your curiosity is like a flashlight shining a light on his felt sense of competence. Armed with that information, you can ask follow-up questions such as:

• "Is (fill in the skill) hard to learn?"
• "When does that come into play?"
• "What are you working on now?", or
• "What skill would you have to develop to take your game to the next level?"

Your focus on skills will help him recognize his learning moments. You might even say, "That sounds like it took real dedication to learn."

In practice, I could see Sport make a mistake, then coach him to fix it, and praise him for doing so. I reinforced Sport's sense of self. You can help your son see himself as someone who strives to do the right thing. When you know what your son is good at in the game and the level of effort required to achieve that skill, you can observe he is committed to developing competence. You now have one concrete example he can begin to build a healthier identity around. He faces challenges, develops skills, and persists until he overcomes the challenge.

And the best news is that you don't have to wait until practice to begin. You can start right now, where you are. Give it a try and see how that works for you.

End Notes

1. I gave all the kids nicknames for two reasons. First, if you have three Kevins, two Toms, or brothers with the same last name, nicknames are fast, fun, and easy. Second, they are part of the sport. Who hasn't heard of Shoeless Joe Jackson thanks to Field of Dreams? ↩︎
2. A key skill in Smash Bros Ultimate. ↩︎
3. A Fortnite skill where you use aggressive building to approach an opponent. ↩︎
4. These are advanced techniques for Rocket League. ↩︎

Most free games operate on a business model that can only make money one of three ways:

• Pay to win
• Addictive investment
• Monetizing attention

Pay To Win

Freemium games rely on a variety of techniques that give players an advantage when they purchase special items. One of the most hotly contested and reviled add-ons is the "loot crate." Loot crates, like trading cards, give you some common items, but occasionally a player will get a rare item. If this sounds like gambling, that's because it is. You are paying for a random chance to win something valuable.

These "drops" use the infamous variable-ratio reward schedule to reinforce the behavior of making in-game purchases more desirable to the players. Unlike games like Minecraft that sell digital downloads which help you decorate your world in a new and novel theme, pay-to-win games are selling more than eye candy; they are giving players an advantage when they spend money with the developer.

Most gamers hate the pay-to-win model, but it is often introduced after a gaming community has been established and players are invested in the title. (Sadly, it is not only the freemium games that offer overpowered (OP) items in loot crates or downloadable packs, but those are the games where it occurs the most.)

The other way developers support pay-to-win strategies is to sell "shortcuts" to powerful upgrades. While the main or "core" game is free, purchased upgrades, or buying completed items that take time to craft can give players a signficant advantage in competitive play.

When my son was in middle school, he stopped playing his "free" tablet game because an opponent deployed $200 in _real money_ worth of upgrades on him in a few minutes, wiping out his base. It would have taken him tens or hundres of hours of "real time" to accumulate a similar level of firepower if he played for free. But in a few minutes a player with a credit card had access to "months" worth of weapons. Needless to day. They paid. They won. It was such a ludicrous amount of money to spend, it never even occurred to my son to ask me to buy him any in-game add-ons.

Why would anyone do this? Why not just switch games? Because they almost can't. I'll explain below the techniques developers use, but they are powerful and addictive.

However, what you need to know first is this:

Paying for your games is a good start, but it may not be enough. To make it easier to keep your kids safe, you can follow my second rule: select games that do not require and internet connection to play.

Youc an combine this into one short rule: buy games that don't require an internet connection.

Why? Because then the developer has a much harder time selling you those in-game add-ons. Now, why are people buying these add on's anyway, especially when they do not help the player win?

Now it is time to look into the second way publishers make money in freemium games.

Addictive Investment

In 1984, Robert Cialdini was among the first psychology professors to publish a layman's guide explaining how sales professionals hack human psychology to influence buyers. (This book is still a great read 40 years later). His landmark book is Influence. Twenty years after Cialdini published his book, Professor B.J. Fogg at Stanford University wrote a book titled Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do.

In his book The Anxious Generation, Author Jonathan Haidt shows how Fogg's work laid the foundation for howmany tech companies would now design software. By 2014, Nir Eyal dubbed this type of technology psychology manipulation as, The Hooked Model in his book Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products.

As a former (some would say recovering) software engineer, I know that "hooking" a program involves intercepting a function call to alter the software's behavior. Modern social media applications and some video games are designed to do the same thing, only with our brains and behaviors. Companies implement the Hooked Model to keep users engaged, using variable rewards and social validation to make it challenging for users to disengage.

The Hooked Model has four parts:

1. A trigger
2. An action
3. The incentive or variable reward / social validation
4. Investment (this is key)

These four are arranged in a loop as follows:

Now, here's the key. Most mammals will willingly respond to just three of these. Trigger → Action → Variable reward. But humans enhance the effectiveness of this behavior and thought-altering model when they invest part of themselves into the platform. This can be through generating content, or modifying their character with skins in a video game.

Once the user customizes the experience to their own liking, they become even more committed to using the platform. And in these instances, this is when the loop really becomes harmful to kids. Think about it. What is the first thing nearly every app you install on your phone or tablet asks you to do? Turn on notifications! This is step one in the Hooked Model. It is the trigger. However, when a player becomes invested in the platform, they can self-trigger. They no longer depend upon the notifications to cause them to want to engage with the software.

Investing accelerates and strengthens how the application modifies the users' thinking and behavior. If this sounds like forming a habit, you're not far off. In another post, I'll compare how the Hooked Model compares to James Clear's Habit loop from Atomic Habits, but for now, let's look at the obvious difference. People read Atomic Habits to change their behavior for their own personal improvement. They are consciously and intentionally hacking their own psychology to improve their lives. Companies, in contrast, use the Hooked Model without making this explicitly known to their users (who are not so much their customers as the fuel for their business model).

In short, it is a manipulation, and it is a manipulation with the intent of improving the business first, with little to no regard shown to the end user.

I hear countless stories of kids purchasing hundreds of dollars worth of "skins" for games. When parents cut them off, some become so desperate to customize their characters that they spam total strangers (who have in no way been vetted or age-restricted from contact with juveniles) in the hopes of getting more in-game currency.

Does this sound like harmless fun to you?

When kids go to this length to not only play a game but to continue to invest in it, they have crossed into the third tier of how companies monetize "free products."

Monetizing Attention

Around the beginning of 2025, Roblox as a public company was valued at $27B. Not because they had millions upon millions of satisfied users paying for a service they loved, which delivered the company high margins. No. Their valuation, like most social media companies, was based almost exclusively on user hours. They reported a staggering number of continuous user hours.

Companies use outrageous usage statistics to not only pump up stock prices, but to sell advertising. The critical factor here, is in order to create mind-bogglingly large usage numbers, many (if not all) of these platforms rely on hooking underage kids as users.

The part of the brain that protects humans from distraction is called the Executive Function. It is part of the Prefrontal Cortex, a part of the brain that does not begin to develop until high school and does not finish until about age 25. Literally, children are the most vulnerable segment of the population to these techniques. Companies can be valued on the attention they can steal because there are no consequences for doing it. This has to change.

What You Can Do

The latest challenge for many parents is that big tech companies have started to infiltrate the schools and are now giving children Chromebooks and tablets to use for school lessons. The gateway to addiction is being brought home from school. Although no teacher I spoke to wanted their name mentioned, they believe this is happening because school districts are experiencing intense pressure from above where they see an obsession over controlling the classroom while trying to obtain highly personalized student test scores.

Even families that swore they would never buy a video game console are finding their weekends and weeknights ruined by devices given to their children at school and now used to play free games.

My recommendation is to displace those addictive technologies. Chose quality games that are developed by companies who actually want to entertain your child, not hook a vacuum to their attention.

When you become the customer of the developer, their incentives are aligned with yours. They want to deliver you, their customer, value for money. Consequently, they implement different algorithms than the Hooked Model. Many focus on what is called Self-Determination Theory. In layman's terms, they want you to face hard challenges, develop skills, and persist until you overcome the challenge. These developers prefer that you earn your victories, (not cheat your way to the end by buying them.) As a result, these games, in general, are much easier to put down and pick back up without addiction-inducing side effects.

At the time of this writing, I have found a variety of games that fit this healthier model. A tiny sampling of my favorites include:

• Minecraft
• Mario Kart
• Pokémon
• Madden
• NBA2K
• Gran Tourismo
• Smash Bros Ultimate
• Any Mario Platformer
• Any Zelda Game
• Splatoon
• And a host of story-driven first-person shooter games (Red Dead Revolver 2, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Ratchet and Clank to name just a few.)

I highly recommend games from Nintendo and Sony first-party development. Microsoft, I think, is doing an admirable job of restoring Activision to its "pre-fall" state, but they have a lot of work to do. The main thing with all of these games is that they can be :

1. Purchased
2. Played multiplayer at home on a big TV in a public space with family or friends
3. Played without a live internet connection

Sure, you might want an internet connection to download updates and patches, but the key thing is the games can be played solo or locally with friends.

When it comes to quality games, you have plenty of choices. However, the one choice I would encourage you to make is to avoid attention-stealing platforms, and the simplest and easiest way to do this is to pay for your games, and choose games that do not require an internet connection to play.

I am a passionate believer in the power of play to unite us, however I recognize there are pitfalls out there and some bad actors. Finding the right games is not easy, but if your family is like many of the families I have talked to, then this advice may work for you. It has worked wonders for them.

But as a coach, I spent a lot more time than two hours for every game. I showed up ninety minutes before the game to begin preparations. The back of my truck was filled with baseball gear. Pitching screens, buckets of balls, batting tees, and more. My F250 was like a mobile baseball training compound. It took me about 40 minutes to set up, leaving me a twenty-minute break. But kids always seemed to show up as soon as the hitting stations were ready.

Fortunately, I had many assistant coaches. I wanted to help fathers spend quality time with their sons, and in theory, baseball was a great way to do it. In practice, we spent as much time asking other dads to talk to our sons because none of them liked to be coached by their dad. But it all worked out. The boys didn't like getting instruction from their dads, but they sure loved it when their dad saw them make a great play.

By the time we had warmed up, played the game, then had a post-game snack with debrief, we had spent between four and six hours on the diamond. Four to six hours! Looking back on it, that is a crazy amount of time.

Yet, in fourteen years of coaching, I never once saw a parent barge out onto the field and demand their kid leave because it was dinner time. This never happened between innings, and I definitely never saw a kid pulled off the field mid-pitch.

As a matter of fact, the only arguments I got into with parents (or players) is when their child did not get to play more. (And I still carry some guilt about that.) Not one time did anyone tell me their kids were spending too much time at practice or in games.

However, when it comes to video games, I don't know a single parent who is happy with their child's video gaming. And I get it. Video games in many ways are scary. And parents have been told over and over again you must manage screen time. At the same time, however, many of these same kids have smartphones.

This to me feels like telling a kid they cannot have ice cream... but they may eat as many Cheetos and drink as much soda as they want. A variety of factors, many legitimately have made parents concerned about screen time. And I agree, managing screen time is important. Just like managing a young baseball player's health is also super important. Tommy John Surgery used to only be done for professional players. A player on my club team had Tommy John in middle school. (His school coach overpitched him.)

Excessive anything is bad. There is such a thing as playing too much sports.

However, my real concern about video game screen time is that only focusing on screen time masks the real problem with kids and technology.

We know playing video games for too many hours is bad... do you know why?

I think one of the reasons parents intuitively do not like video games is a simple one. They do not get to see their kid play the game; they only see the back of their head. The kid's entire attention is focused on the glass. Add to that, they cannot see their child's teammates or hear them. Gamers almost always wear headphones to mask background noise. (I sometimes wished those were legal in baseball.) Finally, most parents are not aware that their child may be playing in front of an audience. So, while the child is having an experience that is every bit as valid as playing in a baseball game, with teammates, opponents, and an audience - the parents - it appears they are playing alone.

However, the biggest threat to kids playing video games may not even be the video game, but their phone. The concern for screen time is not limited to video games but all screens.

Children between the ages of 5 and 12 need a lot of face-to-face social interaction. Their brains need to learn how to read facial expressions, they need to learn how to pick up on social cues, and how their behaviors affect other people. None of that can happen if you are staring at a piece of glass.

The real issue is that limiting video game time may not solve the real issue: Making sure your child gets enough face-to-face social interaction. Consequently, I recommend to parents that they first focus on how much in-person social interaction their kids are getting. If I have a house full of boys playing Smash Bros Ultimate on the couch, I will be super flexible with time. Making friends shoulder to shoulder is a thing.

However, if they are playing online, together with kids they know and can meet in the real world? I won't be as generous with game time as I would be in an in-person session, but I will have some flexibility.

However, if kids are playing online with total strangers? Ten minutes might be too much time.

The sad reality is that technology companies have completely abandoned their responsibility to keep kids safe online and to provide adequate interaction protections between gamers of different ages. For the most part, legit adult gamers are also irritated by the lack of age barriers. As an adult playing with kids 13 and under is awful. I don't care how mature your 12-year-old is, no thirty-year-old wants to hang out with them online.

But the ones who do... are not the ones you want your child to hang out with.

This is another reason I recommend parents negotiate the end of the game before it begins. This is not only to prevent a fight when game time is over, but because negotiating lets you set parameters around who your child is playing with.

However, my kids did not get unlimited video game time. It is actually really hard to get three or more kids together to play. (Think about how hard it is for you to schedule coffee with three of your friends! - kids' lives are even more scheduled!)

But if they could get a squad together, I would support it. I know remote play promotes teamwork and communication. Having employees who know how to cooperate and work well together online is a bonus.

In Summary

It is important to manage all of your child's screen time, and especially their smartphone time. When it comes to video games, I strive to balance socialization and interaction. I always preferred they played together in person first, online second. It was long isolated play sessions that we actively limited.

There is another reason I also suggest parents think about balancing socialization with screen time. The Buddhists say, "What you resist persists." When you state your goal in the negative, "limit screen time," you are likely to find yourself in a never-ending battle over screen time. It is far more effective to focus on what you are trying to create. Balanced socialization. Now your mental energy goes into finding ways to improve your child's socialization instead of fighting with them over game time.

It might seem like a little thing, but the words we use prime our reticular activation system (the filter of the mind) to let through the information we find interesting, and nothing is more interesting to the human brain than the words we tell ourselves.

So, instead of "managing", or "restricting", or "controlling" screen time. You might try to "Balance Socialization", or "Maximize social interaction." It is not the limiting of screen time that helps children grow into self-confident, self-reliant adults. It is time spent interacting face to face with peers, sharing experiences, and sticking together that helps their brains develop.

Hi, emotion equals low intelligence.

I wish I had known that earlier in my career. There were days as a young manager when my unfiltered and unreflected thoughts came rushing out of my mouth or out my fingertips in scathing diatribes against the offending people.

Fortunately, I was never very active on social media, so I think I avoided most of the gaffes that get people into trouble, but I have definitely had my share of troll-like moments on chat groups where someone said something that caused my blood pressure to rise.

There are two other sources of outrage, however, which do not automatically merit a response. The first is "the news." I often see articles posted online and hundreds (sometimes thousands) of comments. I wonder, is anyone reading all of these? I imagine some poor intern (but it's probably artificial intelligence now) scanning all the responses looking for clues on what to post next to draw a similar level of "engagement."

I can't ever remember adding my stick to the bonfire of opinions in that way. What would be the point?

Then there are the books. It's challenging to comment on a book. I suppose you can leave a review on Amazon or Audible. Does Libby support leaving comments and reviews? But this really is more about the book as a whole.

Yet, some concepts that rouse the most energy for me do tend to come from books. Human Compatible by Russell Stewart drew my concern over the narrow way we define intelligence (it is extremely deterministic). And most recently, Jonathan Haidt's book The Anxious Generation.

Haidt's book brings out into the open how smartphones and, in particular, some technology platforms are adversely affecting kids. As he describes it, the play-based childhood has been replaced with the phone-based childhood, and he has some pretty convincing data to support his claim that this is not good for kids, families, schools, or society.

Now, from my perspective, I noticed in myself a strong desire to shout this news from the rooftops. His message hit me so hard, probably because I am in the video games space, so I can see what he's talking about. Also, GameTruck deals predominantly with kids.

My whole mission was to create feelings of belonging through play. And, if done wisely, video games can help advance that mission. (But we also have games like Laser Tag, ZTAG, and Foam Parties in many markets.) Yet, Haidt's warnings opened my eyes to platforms like Roblox, which are using the same design methodology as Instagram and TikTok to hook users and monetize their attention.

Heck, if I did not know about this, and I am in the industry, what chance does a parent have who doesn't have time to play games or may not understand the risks these platforms pose to their children?

One reason it is hard for parents to assess the risk is that as a parent, your brain has largely finished forming. It takes until age 24 or 25 for the part of our brain that regulates distraction (the prefrontal cortex) to finish forming.

And as a friend and I observed last night, we parents have a hard time putting our phones down and breaking away from social media. Now imagine you literally had almost no ability to defend yourself from distraction. That's our kids. They are absolutely the most vulnerable to having their attention hacked. And now it happens continuously and daily.

The moment I understood that, I wanted to start screaming from the top of my lungs to everyone who would listen. Okay, I have never screamed, but I definitely started to engage in some intense conversations with parents. But does that help? Is it enough to just shout fire from the top of your lungs? And if you do, how does it help if there are no clearly marked fire exits?

If you go watch a movie, or enjoy a drink in a bar, the exits by law are clearly marked. If things get dangerous, people know where to go and what to do.

But what happens when the danger is in your pocket? Or worse, in your kids' pocket? Or even worse still, in their hands consuming their attention like a mental vacuum cleaner sucking their concentration away into a digital wasteland?

Where's the exit? How do you help people?

As a kid growing up in Michigan, when my parents moved to a neighborhood with better schools, I really struggled to make friends. That feeling of isolation and being left out haunted me through high school. It was not until I went to college that I started to get my footing on friendships and found my path.

Yet, all I have to do is see a kid at a GameTruck party, isolated and left out to go right back to those days in Farmington Hills, alone by myself. This is one reason we have a "no lone wolves" policy at GameTruck. Our coaches are trained to keep an eye out for disengaged, lonely kids and to get them into games. My belief is that if we play together, in person, we can create those magical feelings of belonging that increase someone's sense of self-worth, and self-acceptance.

Consequently, I tend to be very sensitive to anything that does the opposite. If a technology undermines a child's sense of belonging, or self-worth, to me, that is a big problem.

For the last few years, I've had a blind spot around what kinds of applications, platforms, and yes, games could pose a threat. Armed with better information, it is my mission to share this information with parents, educators, and anyone who cares about kids, but also to help identify solutions.

I believe there is value in being forewarned. If you don't know about the threat, what can you do about it? But just knowing about the threat is not enough. We need tools, resources, and best practices to help raise children to be healthy, happy, and joyful explorers of their future.

Because if we do not take action, we can see what is happening. We are watching a generation of kids succumb to mental illness, feeling timid, anxious, and in some cases, even suicidal.

No one wants that outcome. And it is preventable. And it all starts with knowing.

The heart of my keynote, Cheat Code, a parent's guide to stop fighting with your kids over video games, is rooted in understanding your child's frame of reference. Once you understand the experience your gamer is having, then the solutions become, if not self-evident, at least plausible and worth trying.

I have talked to dozens upon dozens of parents who tell me, after my keynote, they and their kids continued to have frank and productive conversations around video games. Sometimes their children even open up about their own fears about making friends, succeeding in school, or navigating the bizarre world of mediated social interaction. What is mediated social interaction? It is a situation where people only talk to each other using devices. Best-selling author and Harvard Professor Sherri Turkle has written extensively about this phenomenon.

While sad for their kids, the parents are nevertheless grateful to have a better connection with their children. I have not met a single parent who did not want to see their child grow up to achieve their potential. Yet sometimes, neither the parent nor the child knows what is needed.

It is my intention to find the most effective ways to help parents and kids get what they need to— well, if not put the genie back in the box, learn how to live with the genie in a way that the genie remains a beneficial servant. We definitely want to avoid the current path which seems to have set the technology up as some kind of perverse mechanistic overlord dominating children's unconscious behavior.

If you want to do your own research, there are at least two good places you can start. The first is reading The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, and the other is to read Reclaiming Conversation by Sherri Turkle. I will also continue to do my best to share what I learn and what I put into practice. I will also share what parents tell me is effective.

As they say, the struggle is real. However, I do have hope that together we can make it safe for kids to be online. I know that together, with intentionality, we can restore the play-based childhood.

You see, I struggled with how much I had to teach the kids. Despite that fact that most of the time a baseball game looks like people just standing around, every time a ball is put in play, there can be utter pandemonium. My first few games, if a batter hit a pop-up every single player rushed to catch the ball. Imagine it. Nice green field of grass. Kids in the ready position. Umpire crouching down behind the catcher as the batter digs in. The pitcher rears back and throws a strike then POW - that bright white ball with the red strings goes straight up up in the air, and nine kids rush to catch it. I mean every single kid charges to get that ball. I was happy that everyone wanted it but assembling a flash mob at the ball is no way to play defense. And... as you might imagine, most times, no one caught it. You might ask, why didn't someone call for it? That was the problem! Multiple kids called for it! Either no one listened for someone to call for it, or everyone listened and therefore no one caught it. We looked like clowns. Lots of busy activity. No productivity.

After a couple of those, the kids felt embarrassed, so no one tried to catch the ball. Better to just let it hit the ground then chase it. But this was my fault. I needed to find a way to teach these kids something every adult seemed to understand. How to work together under pressure. Perhaps not every adult knows how to work together well under pressure, but most baseball players on TV know what to do. But how did they do it?

In truth, I didn't know. But I figured it was better to try something than to keep leaving the kids to struggle. So I made up three simple rules. I told the players, "Here are you rules. When a batter hits a ball, I want you to run through these three things:"

• Catch it
• Cover it
• Back it up

I made the kids repeat it like a mantra. Catch it, cover it, back it up. Catch it, cover it, back it up. Catch it, cover it, back it up.

Catch It

I then explained each rule. If someone hit a ball at you, and you think you can catch it, call for the and try to catch it. We spent time practicing calling for and hearing players calling for balls by putting two kids in the outfield. One player took center the other right, then we would hit a ball between them. As soon as I hit the ball, they would run toward it - the first kid to call it had to try to catch it. We did that over, and over again, and repeated it on the infield. We wanted them to get a sense of what it was like to read a ball off the bat and call for it, but also to be aware when the other player called. We made sure each player got plenty of both experience, both calling for it, and "calling off." We even changed the words they used to make it simple. The player who was going to catch it yelled, "ball ball ball." The one who was "calling off" (not going to catch it yelled, "you you you").

Cover It

The second rule we taught players was to look for a base to cover. This was pretty obvious if your position had the word "base" in it, like first baseman, or third baseman. The two tricky players? Short stop and catcher. But even the pitcher sometimes had to cover a base. The idea was that if you were not going to catch the ball, we wanted the players to look for a base to cover. Get there and expect a throw. Again, we gave them all lots of practice moving on the hit. We got in a lot of repetitions in a short amount of time. Get to the bag and expect the throw.

Back It Up

Finally, if you were not going to catch the ball, and you had no base to cover, could you back up the play? Going back to the first drill in the outfield, this often meant the player who called off acted like he assumed the player calling for the catch would miss it. They would run to the spot where they expected the ball to be if it got by the other outfielder. Other situations, players tried to imagine where there could be an out. This was often first, second, or third - sometimes home. But they moved to be in position in case a throw from the infield got away from the person covering the base.

We not only practiced those plays in person, during water breaks we used baseball cards and marbles with bases drawn in the the dirt to mentally practice. We setup a field, each card representing a player in the right position, and then I would drop the marble saying, "the ball is hit hear" everyone moved their card to the correct spot, or they didn't and we talked about it. We would practice mentally, then physically.

Catch it. Cover it. Back it up.

We did not have to know every single situation the kids would face, just three. Could you catch it? Could you cover a base? Could you back someone up? We trusted the kids to assess the situation and then do the right thing. And it worked like magic.

Game Time

It took a few games, but soon enough all nine kids on our team went into motion the moment a baseball got hit. Nine kids, seven of whom ran away from the ball as the two closest went to make a play. The other kids covered the bases or backed each other up. It was impressive. They just flew. Smack, ball in play, and nine little kids like a machine spread out, covered the bases and either recorded and out or held the batter to a base or two. No more "little league" home runs.

These simple rules completely changed how our team played defense. Catch it, cover it, back it up became a simple checklist players could use without much thought. Simple rules made it easier to look smart without much thinking required.

Those three simple rules enabled all the kids to look and act smart. And so it is from this mindset that I created my cheat code for parents.

It is with this in mind that I created my own cheat code video games. I wanted simple rules, checklists if you will, to make it easier to manage my kid's video game play. I had rules for ending game time, managing screen time, and creating connection.

Ending Game Time

The first rules are pared together.

1. Know how the game ends.
2. Negotiate the end before they start.

If you don't know how a game actually ends, you may not know how to stop it without a fight. So rule one is pretty obvious. Know what you're dealing with. Not ever game can be saved, paused or stopped without losing progress, or disrupting friends. The good news is that the players know exactly how their game ends and they will tell you if you ask.

Second, it is much easier to end a game if everyone's expectations are the same before the game begins. Kids will push boundaries. However, in my experience gamers like to game. So offering them a choice of what game they can play makes a huge difference in how easy it is to end play when it is time to stop. I had a lot of success with kids picking a game they knew they could pause at any moment when we had a hard stop coming. When we had more flexibility, we could use countdowns like, "you have ten minutes to wrap that up."

Managing Screen time.

Screen time is a hot topic, and has been kids started to get smartphones. I won't pretend this is easy. There is growing data that having 24x7 access to the internet is detrimental to children's mental health. Staying in my video game however, I will say that my rule for game time is:

Who is more important than how much.

Modern, connected video games have become the bane of parents existence. Since no company seriously enforces the Child Online Privacy and Protection Act, online games and social media have become the preferred method for predators to stalk prey. Therefore it is crucial to me that I know, and my kids know, who they are playing with. Playing with friends you can hang out with? Awesome. Play for hours. Playing with someone you just met online? Two minutes might be too much time.

I advise parents and kids not to play with people they have not met, nor cannot meet in person. Call it the face-to-face rule.

This rule can exclude many popular games, but that is okay. Not everything that is popular is healthy for pre-teens.

When my kids did play those games, they played together in teams with kids they actually knew. In this way, they could look out for each other.

Consequently when playing with knowng friends, I was flexible. When they played with strangers, we enforced hard short limits.

When playing alone or watching YouTube we treated it like TV. Nothing longer than a movie.

Building Connection

Pre-teens need connection. Their brains are wired for social development. And one of the complaints I hear most often from parents is that they feel like they have lost their child in the world of video games. my solution?

Pretend the video game is their job.

Most parents who play video games, especially games on their smartphones, play casual games. Casual games waste your time. That is what they are designed to do. Kids rarely play casual games. Move of they play core games. Core games challenge players to face hard problems, develop skills and persist until they overcome the problem. These are actually very valuable and transferrable skills.

Becauser of this, I have a second rule:

Never call a game a waste of time.

Why? Because the gamers does not hear the video games is a waste of time, they hear facing hard problems, developing skills, and persisting is a waste of time. Because that is what a video game is to them.

Instead, you can use that video game experience to help your child take the lessons from the game, into the real world.

When you pretend like the game is their job, you can ask them any variations of the following questions.

• What is hard about this game for you?
• How did you overcome your latest challenge?
• What challenge are you facing now?
• What skills do you have to master in the game to get to the next level / defeat the boss / level up your character?

If you try these questions, I promise you will have radically different conversations with your gamer. Many parents have told me this completely opened their eyes into the world of their child's gaming, and more importantly, helped them reconnect with their child and their interest.

In Summary

Simple rules can help inform our actions when life is coming at us fast. Simple rules choose better when there is little time to think. My cheat code has simple rules for several key situations parents face every day with their video gamer. They are:

1. know how the game stops, so you can negotiate the end before play begins.
2. Who is more important than how long.
3. Pretend the game is a job.

Hopefully, you find those rules simple enough to remember, and therefore put into practice. I know in my own family these made a difference, but I have heard from many other parents just like you who have had success applying them.

"You want me to do the mud pit?" I asked. I was stoked.

You see, Freddie was the genius behind our neighborhood annual adventure race. He conducted this community event for at least a decade. Groups of kids from the families in our neighborhood, Buena Vista Ranchos, would form teams with their friends, then spend a sunny Saturday afternoon in early May competing in an adventurous race facing obstacles that challenged them physically and mentally. It was the highlight of the year for many families.

My wife, Stacy, loved to work the food challenge. This was no ordinary hot dog and hamburger stand. The food stop was one of the most daunting stops on the adventure race. Why? Because the kids would have to eat something outside their comfort zone to pass the gate and get the next clue. Every year there were tears. Every. Single. Year.

Before the race, Freddie would pull the parents together and show them what the kids would have to eat. The parents could try each of the weird and odd things he and his wife, Holly, had uncovered over the last year. One year it was chocolate-covered insects (crickets and grasshoppers). Another year it was spicy candies like chili-covered suckers from Mexico. They never had anything dangerous. But kids can be fussy eaters, and Freddie knew that this was one place he could get them out of their comfort zone. Humans are shockingly resilient. Just because you do not want to eat something, does not mean you cannot eat something. The kids never had to eat anything unsafe, and surprisingly every year the foods were allergy safe. Holy and Freddie really thought it through.

But they also gave the kids a safety valve. If a kid absolutely did not want to eat a food (some of the Asian sweet treats had a strange texture that even I found hard to swallow), they could take a five-minute penalty and pass.

The funny part is that it was the adults who encouraged the kids to skip. The kids almost never wanted to miss this challenge. They would sit there and cry and cry, often for a lot longer than five minutes, but something in the back of their head made them want to face this specific challenge and overcome it.

They wanted to be challenged. They wanted to try. Leaving your comfort zone always is, but I think instinctually, we all know that when we do, we are better for it.

For my part, being asked to oversee the mud pit was a special honor. And my goal was to make a mud pit that would be as daunting as the food table. It would be thick and gooey, and the racers would have to get completely messy. There would be no way to dodge the mud and get the next clue. Every racer, on every team, would have to dive in and get covered in thick, brown, sticky mud. I couldn't wait.

I also knew how much fun Stacy had at the food table, so I was determined to make a mud pit no less daunting. It wasn't that I wanted to make kids cry. I just wanted them to feel challenged. The feeling of overcoming something difficult is really rewarding. So, my mud pit needed to be special.

Our neighborhood is built in an old orange grove. Freddie offered up a section of his front yard between his lemon and tangerine trees. Grabbing my shovel and hose, I got to work. I worked the dirt loose with the spade until it was a good six to nine inches deep in loose dirt. Then I started to mix in the water. Being an engineer by training (and disposition), I was shooting for a hydration level that would give the mud the right viscosity (that means fluidity). Strangely, because of my work at Rainbow Studios making motocross and ATV games, I knew a lot about mud. It's weird stuff, not exactly a solid or a fluid; it is like a thick foam when done right. I went through the pit, made sure all the rocks and sticks were removed so it was safe to travel barefoot, and then I staked out the course - twenty feet of low string "hurdles" the racers would have to get under.

I made sure there was no way to complete the race without getting completely submerged. In fact, in one spot the kids would have to hold their breath and go under. Or lay on their back and with just the tip of their nose up get under the string. It was devious. I paraphrased the line from the Fellowship of the Ring movie in my mind, "All shall see my mud pit and despair!"

When I was done, I had the right blend of creaminess and stickiness. From the top, the pit looked muddy, but the moment you stepped in you would sink up to your ankles in thick, gooey, brown mud.

Awesome.

I finished just before the start of the race, then sat back in my lawn chair and waited. A half hour later, when the sun was good and high in the sky, the first racers arrived. My mud pit was just one of multiple physical challenges the kids had to face, but I was sure it was the most daunting, and yet when the four eleven-year-olds pulled up, it was not fear I saw on their faces but excitement.

One of them even said, "alright." And with absolutely zero hesitation, they dropped their bikes, peeled off their shoes and socks, and tromped into the mud. The moment they stepped in and sunk upto their calves in mud, they got even more energetic. Then one boy dropped to his knees and dove into the track. The rest followed suit. They crawled, and swam, and squirmed through the mud like human-sized worms. The biggest challenge for them was to stop grinning so they didn't get mud in their mouths.

That was when it hit me. Getting dirty is fun. Kids are always getting dirty, and usually getting yelled at for it. But the mud pit was an obstacle that begged them to get not just a little dirty but covered from head to toe in gooey dirt. I mean, how often do you get a chance to get really covered in mud?

My hoped-for "feared mud pit" instead became a favorite attraction as more racers pulled up and jumped in. They tried to outdo each other with how covered in mud they could get. Another parent showed up with a camera and started taking pictures of each team as they exited the track.

Most of the time, the kids came out of the pit one uniform color of clay. The mud had successfully covered everything about them. And it was the same for every group, boys, and girls. Elementary schoolers and middle schoolers. They all pulled off their shoes and socks, and jumped into the mud and swam, crawled, wriggled, and slid through like salamanders in heaven.

Everyone loved the mud pit. There were a few kids who were intimidated at first, but getting dirty is a lot easier to wrap your head around than choking down a dragon fruit for the first time. It reminded me that not everything we are afraid of is bad for us.

Consequently, my plans for the mud pit did not turn out the way I expected. They turned out better. People loved the pit, and even some adults came by and crawled through it just to pretend to be a kid again, I suppose. (And yes, I crawled it myself in case you're wondering - it was icky and cool all at the same time.)

The magic of the adventure race was that Freddie, and the other volunteers created a safe environment for kids to act independently, in small groups, to solve problems and challenge themselves to do hard things they had never done before. Every participant discovered they were more than they knew. The race challenged kids to be resourceful, resilient, and relational. Each team had to work together; many of the puzzles forced cooperation to complete.

Some of the challenges were hard, but others were simply unusual, uncomfortable, or both. And I am willing to bet every single one of those kids cherishes those memories to this day. I know my kids still do, even as they have graduated college and have launched into their lives.

Isn't childhood meant to be full of playful experiences we can experience in small groups of close friends? I will admit that creating an entire neighborhood-wide adventure race is not easy to do, but what about one mud pit? All it takes is a hose and a spot in your backyard with some exposed dirt. I know GameTruck appears it is all about video game parties, but what we are really all about is playing together. And sometimes, you don't need technology to have an amazing group experience. If you gather a group of friends, could you create an international weird food tasting challenge? Or how about an obstacle course with fabulous prizes from the dollar store? The important thing is that the kids get to see themselves as capable.

The point is, once you realize these kinds of experiences are possible, it becomes easier to find them or create them for the kids in your life. Play is never farther away than your imagination and willingness to be creative. And if you can recruit some other families to join you, it makes it all the more fun.

It seems obvious that kids are more vulnerable than adults. However, it can be hard to understand just how vulnerable children are online. All humans are biased to process what they say. See a small kid and you think someone weak and vulnerable to physical attack. This need to keep kids physically safe has led to a rise of Safetyism where children are kept from taking any kind of physical risk anywhere. When I was a kid, I was kicked out of the house until dinner time or the street lights came on. I remember one time coming back into the house and my dad asked me if I was "in for the night." I shouted back, "No, I'm just grabbing a flashlight." His response? "Okay, son." Pictures of missing children on milk cartons, the distorted reporting of violence against children on the news (violent crime is less than 2% of all crime. Violent crime against children is less than 2% of all violent crime - making it less than 0.04% of crime, but reporting of violent crime against children makes up 40% of all crime reporting. This distorts violent crime against kids by a thousand times). Now some crimes, such as school shootings, necessarily create a threshold no one wants to cross. There should never be any. Zero. None. So it makes sense to do everything in our power to prevent those. However, that is not the kind of vulnerability I am talking about. I am talking about removing merry-go-rounds and removing every possible hazard from playgrounds until there is practically nothing left but cement and chalk. We can see dangers so we remove them.

But there is one place we can't see. Into the mind of a child. And it is in the way our children's brains develop that a very special kind of vulnerability exists.

Home Sapiens are unique in a variety of ways, not the least of which is because of how the brain develops. Fun fact. We are the only animal with a single species in its genus. All the other species of the hominid Homo died off (or were absorbed). Homo erectus, homo neanderthalensis, and homo heidelbergensis all shared the planet with our direct ancestors, but for reasons we can only speculate, Homo Sapiens emerged as the sole surviving species. Perhaps because we are the only species, our brain development is also unique. Human brains quadruple in size after birth. The next closest animal for that kind of post-birth growth is the chimpanzee, which sees its brain double. While it has been argued by evolutionary biologists that humans are essentially born with the largest head that can fit through a birthing canal (any wider, and women would barely be able to run because their pelvis would be too wide), they also claim we are born premature. Human babies are nearly helpless. Almost all other mammals progress at a rapid pace, much faster than Sapiens. But having a big brain that increases in size four times is not the only feature that makes us unique.

Every other mammal goes from birth to reproductive age as fast as possible. When our neighbor's dog had puppies, their dog, a fully mature yellow lab, was three years old. Three! Three! Three-year-old humans have just finished mastering walking and running! They are still ten years away from entering puberty, which is practically the life of a Labrador. But why? Why does it take humans so long to mature fully? One reason may be that around age five, humans pause. They stop developing for almost seven years. From about age five to twelve, the elementary and early middle school years, human brains go through a very interesting transformation. At five years old, a human child will have a brain that is 90% of the size of their adult brain, but it will have more neural connections. Five-year-olds are literally little bundles of potential. Potential, but not skill.

But why do humans slow their development for seven years?

I will answer that question with the legend of Mughal Emperor Akbar from the 16th century CE in India. Once upon a time, Emperor Akbar and his advisors had a debate. They wanted to know what was the natural language of God. To answer this question, Akbar (allegedly) ordered that several infants be raised without speech of any kind. They would test the children once they reached 12 years old to see what language they spoke. They would be fed, bathed, cared for, but never spoken to. When the children finally reached the desired age, they were brought to the palace by their caretakers. Shockingly, none of the children could speak. More tragically, none of them learned to speak. They had lost the capacity to even learn language, and they never adjusted to living in society.

This popular story appears in multiple cultures and is known among linguists as The Forbidden Experiment. Linguists like this story because it demonstrates that language is taught, not innate. However, the myth implies something else. Obviously, kids learn to speak by five years old. However, there is a window in a child's life between 9 and about 14 when children have a highly specialized capacity to absorb not language but culture.

In the 1990s, a Japanese anthropologist named Yasuko Minoura studied the children of Japanese businessmen who had been transferred by their companies to live for a few years in California during the 1970s. Minoura wanted to know at what age America shaped the children's sense of self. She studied their feelings and their ways of interacting with friends, even after they returned to Japan. She found that children who spent the years between the ages 9 and 14 in California came to “feel American.”

This sensitive period affected whether a child could learn to speak like a native, and in fact, how they saw themselves. This experience lines up with what we see in human neural development. Children pause so they can absorb the culture they are growing up in. All of those many neural pathways they have built as five-year-olds start to narrow. This is called neural pruning. In other words, they go from clumsy, unskilled children to more skilled adolescents. The rapid changes in neural structure give some credibility to the outcome of the Forbidden Experiment. After a certain point, the brain's window to learn certain kinds of information is lost. It is in this window that children are exceptionally vulnerable. During this period of massive pruning and rewiring. They are primed to mimic the culture they spend the most time engaging in.

In an era where pre-teens are constantly on their phones, development psychologists are starting to see that children are being harmed by the unregulated, toxic culture created by many online communities, even ones that seem innocuous to adults. Ultimately, this is why our children are so much more vulnerable online than anyone thought. The largely ignored, never enforced thirteen-year-old age limit to create online accounts is laughably inadequate. We are letting trillion-dollar tech companies enter into contracts with our children? To do what? Give away their data, allow them to post images of themselves, and allow unmonitored contact from complete strangers? This is the world most preteens are absorbing. This is the culture that is shaping their sense of self.

Basically, in the middle of our children needing to develop the social, emotional, and cultural intelligence to become productive contributors to society, their attention is being sucked away into doomscrolls. Like the Forbidden Experiment, our children's brains are being shaped by content that is not in their best interest. Former Google Ethicist Tristan Harris, who has testified before Congress on how social media platforms manipulate user behavior to maximize engagement, often at the expense of users’ well-being. What we are only now just beginning to understand is not simply the users' well-being that is being undermined. When it comes to children, their long-term mental health is also being affected.

Where most adults have had their personality imprinted in a play-based childhood, the phone-based childhood that began with the arrival of the smartphone in the 2010s pushed aside community education. The impact has been widespread growth of anxiety, boredom, isolation, and fear among kids. What's more, these feelings persist into young adulthood. It takes 12 years for the brain to form its emotional core. Then it takes another 12 to complete the prefrontal cortex. Right in the middle of laying that emotional foundation, the same sensitive period that kids form a sense of who they are and what culture they are a part of, social media is disrupting our natural development pattern. Not all of these disruptions appear to be reversible.

Humans evolved as a species which raises its children socially. Children thrive when they have experiences which are face-to-face, with a few people, active (think embodied), synchronous (people play together, or take turns), non-judgmental (so kids can experiment), and have a high level of personal commitment (people stick around so they have reasons to work out problems). In contrast, this childhood environment is being shoved aside by digital domains that are remote (disembodied), asynchronous, extremely judgmental, inhabited by countless numbers of anonymous people, engaged in low-commitment activities (they come and go without rhyme or reason). What our children most need to grow is being replaced by what they least need. Only, it affects kids more than adults. Adults have already had their sense of identity and culture shaped. Not so with the kids. They are still open to being shaped in ways that adults are not.

To Summarize

Kids are more vulnerable than adults online for two reasons. First, their brains have not fully finished forming, so they do not have the executive functions to protect themselves from distraction. Second, their brains are in a state of constant cultural learning. Addictive online applications (social media and many free-to-play games) deliver exactly the opposite experience children need to develop social-emotional intelligence. Instead of a few high-quality, face-to-face connections where kids can learn and grow, they are being fed a steady diet of high-quantity, low-quality judgmental connections.

With new understanding, we need to rethink everything we know about screen time. Simply limiting access to screens is not only just about impossible, it is not enough. We need to do two things. First, start being intentional about making sure our children have access to the right kinds of experiences to spur their growth. Second, we need to start demanding our government and regulators for the same kinds of protections online that we get in the real world. Parents do not need to police bars, strip clubs, or dispensaries. The government does it, with stiff consequences for businesses that break that law. It is possible to achieve similar levels of protection online. We just have to try.

When I coached baseball, I put significant effort into making practice fun and interesting. Given my background in video games, I knew that how a player is introduced to a game is way more important affects how well they play the game. Does the player understand what is required of them? Do they understand the goal? Do they know how they will be measured? And most important of all, does the layer understand the skills the must master to win the game? Game developers put a lot of time and energy in making the skill requirements clear, obvious, and easy to learn. We want easy to pick up games that are challenging to master. Developers introduce players to the controls using a gentle progression. Psychologists call this a regiment of competency. Schools are set up this way. Students learn the fundamentals, and once mastered, they build upon those skills moving at the next level. Single-player video games do the same.

Baseball, in contrast, is an insanely complex game. Most kids are thrown into the sport with a random selection of skills to master all at once. Take the simple act of throwing a baseball. Most of the rest of the world starts with the feet. You kick something. Not Americans. We throw things: Footballs, basketballs, baseballs. The crazy complexity of tracking an object moving through space is hard. A soccer ball, in contrast, stays mostly on the ground. Young players can think two-dimensionally. Not so in baseball. Instead of a big round ball covered with black and white patterns to make it easier to track along the ground, kids are asked to stand in front of a small white rock traveling toward their face. What could go wrong?

Even I did not learn how to throw a baseball correctly until I was 32 years old. The only reason I learned how to do it was because I needed to teach it. You see, baseballs are not perfectly round. They have these weird, famously red threads called seams. Seams create ridges which interfere with the aerodynamics of the ball. In plain English, a baseball thrown carelessly or without skill will not fly straight. But in the hands of a master, a ball can dip, slide, curve, and sometimes fly straight.

It was here, throwing that oddly shaped ball that that most of us first learned how to "play" baseball, which is nearly always teamed up with the inverse but equally difficult skill of catching the baseball! Let's not forget that most kids start out with overly stiff leather gloves three sizes to big for them. Nothing about the way we present baseball to kids is easy for them to learn or master. Nevertheless, kids do learn, and they can learn quickly, if they get the right support. This is why I worked so hard to make practices fun and engaging. In contrast to the coaches I saw who kept kids standing around while they talked, our practices were like continuous motion machines. Kids ran from drill to drill getting as many repetitions as possible. For example, when my back yard was a "hitting camp" complete with 70 foot batting cage and not one but two pitching machines, we could have 7 kids safely swinging bats at the same time while five took a break or moved to the next drill. It was heaven.

Players enjoyed the stimulation of lots of activity and it gave the assistant coaches something to do. However, I noticed after a few practices that I could sort the players into two groups. It did not matter how old they were, or how talented. To look at the kids you would not be able to tell them apart, or assign one group to another. There were big kids, and little kids in each group. There were older kids, and younger kids on each side. Some had a lot of skill, others were still learning the basics. It took me a while to pin it down.

The thing that separated them appeared to be attitude. One group was absolutely fearless. They were enthusiastic, eager, and willing to try anything new. The other group, however, preferred to practice drills they had already mastered. I had adventurers and grinders, and I wasn't entirely sure what the difference was until we started to play real games. Competition revealed the defining trait.

My little adventure seekers were eager to compete. They charged into the breach. They hit the ball or struck out swinging. My grinders, in contrast, acted like deer in headlights. They stared at strikes down the middle of the plate, and when they struck it, it was always looking. I knew both groups of players wanted to win, but in the games, the grinders froze up.

I felt tempted to drop the grindy kids down in the lineup or move them to the outfield. Give "the better players" more opportunity. But I knew that would lead to a vicious cycle. Players who hit higher in the order get more plate appearances. More plate appearances means more chances to hit. More chances equals more practice. More practice leads to more improvement. More improvement results in batting higher in the order, and so it goes.

These kids were too young to be pigeonholed like that. I wanted to do something about it before I just gave up on them. Because the thing holding them back seemed to exist between their ears, I started to research the psychology of competition. I found a book by Carol Dweck, called Mindset. I will save you twelve hours of listening to it on Audible and give you the punch line. It turns out we humans can have two mindsets. One is called a fixed mindset, and the other is called a growth mindset. People with a fixed mindset fear challenges. People with a growth mindset embrace challenges. This, in a nutshell, was what I seemed to be observing with my players. But what was causing it and what could I do about it? Could I get all my players to have a growth mindset?

The answer was a definite maybe.

According to Professor Dweck, when a person (young or old) perceives their worth in a community comes from some attribute they have no control over, they enter a "Fixed Mindset". What do I mean by an attribute you don't control? Think of your intelligence, or your talent. Do you know how to spontaneously increase or decrease your talent? How about how smart you are? With no way to increase or improve the source their success, people (especially kids) become protective and cautious. They self-protect and stop taking chances. What puts a kid in a fixed mindset? Typically a compliment. It is usually given by a well-meaning adult who says something like, "you are a winner because you're so talented." The compliment feels good, but the player not associates their success with talent. And how do they control that? They want the praise, but they're not sure what to do to get it again. The same thing can happen in math class. A student gets a good score and an adult says, "You sure must be smart to get a good grade like that." As if their intelligence is the source of their positive outcome. But how do you control that? Adults mean well. They are trying to encourage the kids, but the method can be counter productive. The very thing earning the student, player, or child praise, also feels out of their control and that brings them stress.

Players with a fixed mindset play not to lose, instead of striving to win.

The counterpart to a fixed mindset is a growth mindset. Here too, adults prime kids into a growth mindset by use of praise. However, the praise is focused on a trait the child controls such as effort and hustle. Kids in a growth mindset enjoy a challenge. How is that possible? Because the players do not see their self-worth coming from the outcome of their effort, their self-worth is created by the effort. If you said to a kid, "You must have worked really hard to get such a good grade." You are now recognizing a success behavior (not an attribute). And kids can control their effort.

Once I learned about Mindsets, I could see how the adults (parents and coaches) were adversely affecting the players. I called a parent-player meeting. We sat in the stands behind the backstop, on a cool Arizona night before practice. I addressed the small crowd of twenty-odd people, getting down on one knee to look the players in the eye. I told them "make a fist" and the kids all made a fist. I looked at the parents. "You too." (You can play along too, go ahead. Make a fist!) Then I said, "Now, grip your fist as tight as you can. Squeeze really hard." Everyone made fists. Kids scrunched up their faces. I continued, "Now, let up about twenty-five percent." People relaxed a little. "Now let up halfway." More relaxed looks, arms appeared loose and comfortable. "Finally, let up until your fist is barely closed." I scanned around. Everyone was looking at me. "Now, open your hand." I stood up and dusted off my knee. "That people, is control. And from now on, we are only going to focus on behaviors we can control." I went on to explain that we did not want to praise talent, or intelligence, or any attribute that players did not know how to control. We could praise hustle. We could praise planning, thinking even, paying attention, taking a swing at a pitch. There were lots of things we could praise, but we would not praise attributes we had no control over.

I explained how all the adults, coaches, and parents had inadvertently mixed growth mindset encouragement and fixed mindset priming and how I believed it was hurting the boys' ability to compete. From now on, we would only praise behaviors the players could control, like effort, attention, and courage. I told them all, "Positive results came from deliberate effort applied at the edge of our ability. We get stronger from challenging ourselves."

Of course one meeting was not enough to change such entrenched behavior. Everyone struggled policing our praise, but we did it, eventually. We looked out for each other and supported each other. It took weeks, but the difference was remarkable. Now everyone on the team was doing their best, and my job as coach got even harder because at every position in the lineup players genuinely competed. We became one team, not two. We were a team of strivers. And all because we made it safe for our players to try their best.

When I coached, safetyism had not reached its full impact, but I could sense it coming. Safetyism is making safety the highest priority over all else, and in its extreme form, it may be more harmful than a fixed mindset. Young people are not given a chance to fail because it might hurt too much, and consequently they also learn not to try. It's better to stay in your basement playing video games. But kids need challenges to grow. That is one reason why I now love baseball. No matter how much I wanted to help my players, I could never step into the batter's box for them or take the field with them. It took me years to stop talking to them during at-bats. I wish I had done that much sooner. My job was to get them ready to play, then let them play.

But a collapse in the access to sports for most kids has deprived many children, and especially boys, from getting the chance to learn these lessons. According to the Aspen Institute, by 11 years old, 80% of kids fall out of team sports. And where do they end up? In video games. I love video games. I still play them. However, video games are only one part of a childhood. No video game can take the place of real-world physical challenges. Obviously, I am a fan of baseball, but there are also individual sports like golf, tennis, or martial arts. Even non-traditional challenges like ninja gyms can help our children learn how to develop a growth mindset. The children of our neighborhood team thrived when they challenged themselves.

Like batters at the top of the order who get more chances to improve, the more intentional we are as parents, coaches, educators, and stewards of youth can find to give kids growth challenges, the better prepared our children will be for life. They can become people who embrace challenge.

Teaching kids to face challenges with a growth mindset was one of the best lessons coaching baseball ever taught me.

[!tip] Pro tip:
Throw some hot dogs in a gallon igloo cooler full of boiling water, and you can serve up a tasty dog after a game.

However, it is a common source of intense heartburn for players to be yanked out of the middle of a "match" by an angry parent. First, we have to give some grace to the parents. The social cues that we use for the end of sports are not readily available online. First, a parent may not know that their child is playing with a friend or friends. Second, they may be unaware that their child is part of a team competing with another "team." Finally, most parents are unaware that an increasing number of games are streamed, allowing an audience to spectate.

When we ran video game tournaments for university students during COVID, spectators outnumbered players from 4 to 9 to one. This meant there could be 80-100 people watching two five-player teams go head-to-head in Overwatch or Call of Duty.

However, most parents see only their child, headphones on, controller in hand, staring at their screen. It is an easy mistake to make.

The key to making this mistake is to learn how video games end. I know that sounds daunting, but we can make it remarkably simple fast. The only games you need to understand are the ones your child plays. With that in mind, you get the next bit of obvious advice. Your player is an expert in how games end. This leads to a twin-value action you can take:

Ask your player to explain to you how their games stop.

Not every game can be paused. Many cannot be saved. And some games, the most insidious of all, exist in an environment that is the video game equivalent of a social media bottomless scroll, always on, never really pausable. They want you to spend your life in the game. (I'll try to give some tips on how to identify which games are healthiest and which are the most dangerous for kids.) However, there are many games that can be paused instantly - virtually every game on the Nintendo Switch can be "frozen" then "unfrozen" with the touch of a button. Everything about the game's state is preserved and restored. Then there are games where you just need to save your status, and some where you cannot save until you reach a checkpoint.

I realize this sounds horribly complex; however, when you narrow it down to needing to know only what is of interest to your child, it gets a lot simpler. Also, in having this conversation, you are taking the first steps into understanding the experience your child is having with video games. And this is a huge step. Many gamers feel lonely and misunderstood. They are investing enormous energy (and often time) trying to get good at the game. Games involve participation. Unlike the broadcast "Boob tube" I grew up with in the 70s and 80s, where the audience's only option was to sit there like a zombie, modern video games require participation, focus, and decisions. When you begin to understand what your child is playing and how they reach a conclusion, you are taking an important, but significant step into building a bridge from the real world to them, and for them, back to the real world.

This does not solve all your problems with ending video game time, but it is a very actionable start. And if your child has more than one gaming system, more than one game they like to play, you can make it a multi-part conversation, learning each game in turn and building up a better appreciation for the complex interactive world they are managing. What's more, you are also priming your child to develop their social skills of talking about what they are interested in. Give it a try, and let me know how it works out for you.

We used that information to teach our kids to see themselves as hard workers who enjoyed a challenge. I loved coaching baseball because it was all about learning how to deal with failure. Baseball is an uncontrollable game where even the best fail seven out of ten times at the plate. During that time, however, smartphones, and "freemium" internet video games did not play a significant part of our children's lives.

By 2010, however, the world was beginning to change, and just as I left coaching in 2016 it was already drastically different for most elementary, middle school, and the first wave of high school students.

It turns out, having the right mindset is predicated on another foundation. Is the child living in Discovery Mode? Or are they living in Defend Mode? It turns out, this can make an enormous difference in how a child sees and responds to, the world. A child in Discover Mode can have either a fixed, or a growth mindset. However, it is extremely challenging for a child in defend mode to do anything other than self-protect - a hallmark of a fixed mindset.

In his book, the Anxious Generation, Social Psychologist Jonathan Haidt explains that starting in 2010, many American Children shifted away from Discovery Mode into what he calls chronic Defend Mode. Ideally, humans should be able to switch mode depending upon the needs of the situation, but lately, more and more kids have been living in a kind of perpetual defend mode.

What is Discover and Defend Mode?

At its simplest, Discover Mode and Defend Modes are paradigms - ways of viewing the world. Discover Mode is the behavior that activates when you sense opportunity. Think Puppies. Puppies (and human toddlers) spend a lot of time in Discover Mode. They are curious, open, and ready to explore.

Defend Mode in contrast is characterized by creatures who are constantly afraid and looking for threats. Think Mice, or deer. They are skittish, timid, and ready to run away. Humans can and do enter this mode, but usually only when there is a direct-perceived threat.

For most of human history, a healthy childhood was characterized by lots of discovery mode, and a little defend mode. Starting in 2010, for many American children, which started to flip.

I know that my business, GameTruck started to service the need to provide a safe environment for kids to play video games with their friends. Starting with the pictures of missing children on milk cartons, American's stopped seeing their neighborhoods as safe places to raise their kids. That mindset of distrust - in part fueled by a 24/7 news cycles that prioritized reporting violence against kids, drove parents to prioritize safety. This trend blossomed into an almost obsessive level of physical safety called "safetyism."

Safetyism

What is Safetyism? Safetyism is the unhealthy blossoming of the rational desire to keep kids safe into the belief system in which safety has become a sacred value, and people become unwilling to make trade-offs demanded by practical and moral concerns. In short, 'Safety' trumps everything else, no matter how unlikely or trivial the potential danger."

Despite the rise of Safetyism in the real world, at the same time, across the Anglo sphere, adults accepted unquestionably the reality that we could not provide the same kinds of legal and moral protections online that safetyism demands in the real world. In fact, kids do not have ANY meaningful or effective government protections of any kind online.

For example, A nine-year-old cannot walk into a bar, or casino in the real world, but they can do this online. Adult bookstores cannot give kids porn magazines to take with them to school - not even under the guise of "freedom of speech" but hardcore porn websites ride along in kids pockets all day long on their smartphones. Parents do not have to police bars and strip clubs. The police do that! But parents are left to their own devices to keep their kids safe online. And they are hopelessly outgunned by multi-billion-dollar companies.

This is of course insane.

It is this combination of safetysim combined with a complete abdication of online responsibility Haidt believes is producing an unprecedented rise in mental distress among children. In other words, a generation of kids living in chronic defend mode. Forget mindset. We have turned a generation of kids into defenders.

People who go through life in discover mode (discoverers) are happier, more social, and eager for new experiences. However, people who are continuously in defend mode (defenders) are anxious, tense, and they only rarely have moments of perceived safety.

In short, defenders are primed to see new situations, people, and ideas as potential threats, rather than as opportunities. Discoverers can learn about growth.

When I coached, we moved kids into a growth mindset. They could take on challenges and believe through hard work they would overcome them. Just a decade later, coaches, educators, and parents face can't get to growth mode because they are working with a generation stuck in defend mode.

There is no room for growth in defend mode.

We need to do everything possible to help move our kids to discover mode. This starts by understanding the pressures, influences, and technologies that is hindering their development. It also means being intentional about the kinds of experiences we curate for our children both in the real world and online. Online gaming is not the same as in-person gaming. Playing games on a couch shoulder to shoulder with friends is radically different from playing games with strangers online. Instead of focusing only on-screen time, we need to start asking about "experience quality." And instead of letting billion-dollar businesses that harm kids hide in plain sight, it is time for parents to start asking our government, "Why can't we protect our kids online?"