What Should I Know about My Kid’s Video Games? Drew Dixon

A lot of parents are ready to throw up their hands about video games.

I think you see one of two things. Parents either, around the video game conversation, they're like, Okay, we're done. I'm fed up. Every video game is going in the trash. I've heard stories of parents running over video game consoles at the lawnmower. But there's another temptation to just be like, Well, fine. You want to play video games?

Play them all you want. It doesn't work. Kids don't know how to self-regulate.

And that just makes the problem worse. So they need you to lovingly step in. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Shelby Abbott. Your hosts are Dave and Anne Wilson. You can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is Family Life Today.

All right. You know, my favorite moment of Thanksgiving last year? I have no idea. No idea.

It's in the kitchen. You watched it. I watched it? Yeah. So our oldest son, CJ, came over with his wife, Robin, and he brought Oculus.

He owns it. And if you're listening and don't know what that is, it's VR. It's virtual reality.

You put it on. And I literally was playing Detroit Lions versus the Kansas City Chiefs at Ford Field. And I'd never done this, you know, with this technology.

Do you remember? I mean, I put it on and you're standing on the sideline in Ford Field, which I did every Sunday for 30 years. And it was actually like it was. I mean, I turn, you know, you turn and look, there's the crowd behind you. You look at the scoreboard.

I played quarterback and threw a couple touchdowns. But anyway. Wait, wait, wait. You know what I did?

I did this at our nephew's house. I played the Star Wars game and it was like I was there. With the VR? Yes.

Swinging a lightsaber and stuff. Yes. It was amazing until I ran into the wall.

They didn't tell me. But it was incredible. Yeah. The reason we're talking about this, we've got Drew Dixon back with us who wrote Know Thy Gamer, a book about helping parents like us navigate this whole video game world.

Often, and we talked about this a little bit yesterday, sometimes parents think this video game world is a horrible thing. And I just told a story and it can be fascinating. And fun. And fun. So Drew, welcome back. Yeah. Thanks for having me.

It's great to be here. I mean, have you done the Oculus thing? Have you done VR? Of course you have. I have. I've played a little bit of VR. Yeah, I don't own one myself, but yeah, I've played it at conventions and things. I mean, I was so into it, I'm like, where do I buy one of these? How much do they cost?

And I'll just borrow my sons because they're too expensive. Yeah. But we talked yesterday a little bit about, tell us again what Know Thy Nerd is. That's an incredible ministry. Yeah, it's called Love Thy Nerd.

My book is Know Thy Gamer. The ministry that I work with is called Love Thy Nerd. But yeah, Love Thy Nerd exists to be the love of Jesus to nerds and nerd culture. So we look for ways to step in to nerd spaces and come alongside nerds, not to judge them for what they're into, not to judge people who are into comics or video games or anime or board games, but to speak their language and point them to Jesus. Yeah. Honestly, I know no other ministry doing this.

Is it pretty unique? Yeah, there's definitely some other nerd ministries out there that are doing great work in that space too, but it is unique. I think Love Thy Nerd is certainly reaching people that so many churches don't reach or won't reach, and certainly reaching people that a lot of ministries aren't even thinking about reaching. Right. But yeah, I think we at Love Thy Nerd have kind of viewed gamers as almost like an unreached people group.

There's billions of them in the world, and we ought to be thinking about how we might reach them and love them. My parents are now scratching their head thinking, wait, do I have a nerd? Is my child a nerd because they're playing video games all the time? Maybe.

Yeah. I mean, it's no longer uncool to be a nerd. Being a geek or a nerd is embraced in a lot of spaces, especially among young people.

And so yeah, I think it's a huge opportunity. So what is it that so many parents think video games are bad, they're wrong, and again, like anything else, they can be good and bad. But I think there's, at least you would know as the expert, there's a perspective in the church that video games aren't good. Right. You should discourage your kid from it. I know a pastor who says any man that plays video games isn't a real man.

Like, go have a real battle rather than a battle on a TV screen. And so there's this sort of loud voices out there that are saying that, and you're saying, no, there's a balance to that, right? Yeah, for sure. They're part of God's good creation. And so we should be careful not to label things as categorically evil if that's not what they are, right?

So just on the one hand, I think it's dishonest to say they're all problematic. There are some. Yeah, there are some.

They do stay away from, right? Yeah, yeah, for sure. Like, I mean, I'm never going to let my kids play Grand Theft Auto.

It's just not happening. Yeah. Because? Because the content in that game to me is dehumanizing.

It objectifies human beings and it encourages, it sort of makes it look like it's fun or funny to see sinful things being done, right? So as I'm hearing that as a mom, I'm thinking, oh, I need to make sure I'm checking what video games my kids are playing. Yeah, absolutely. And they're rated. Yeah, there's some great resources out there to help you determine what's appropriate for your kids. The rating system is a great place to start. ESRB.org is a good website to know. That's where you can go and see what the ratings are for various video games. ESRB also will teach you as they have video guides on how to set parental controls on your video game systems. Another great website that I like a lot, it's not a Christian website, but it's really helpful, commonsensemedia.org is a great place to go to read parental reviews of video games so you can read what a parent thinks about Call of Duty or Fortnite or whatever. And you get very detailed reviews about the content of those games. Another great resource is Twitch or YouTube. More people will have heard of YouTube, but Twitch is where you can watch people playing video games. And that's a thing, isn't it?

It's a big deal these days, yeah. Millions of people watch other people play video games online, like live. But the reason I say that's a great resource for parents is because you can get on Twitch and just search for whatever game it is your kids are wanting to play, then you can watch someone play it. And so if you watch five minutes of the newest Call of Duty, you're going to get a good sense of if that game has violence or language or whatever it is that you're concerned about as a parent. So it's a great way. YouTube is a great place too because you can go watch videos, clips on YouTube of people playing a video game and you don't have to spend very much time. And you can kind of see what the vibe of a particular game is. I remember walking into the basement and all three of our sons were playing Call of Duty.

It was new. They're pulling out these guns and rifles and semi-automatics. I'm like, wait, wait, what is happening right now? And so our parents, I mean, there's so much violence going on. There's school shootings. Should we be concerned about that? Right. Yeah. So we used to have all these fears about every time there's a school shooting, was that guy a gamer?

Was he a gamer? And so then we had these fears that maybe video games were causing violence. The research doesn't indicate that there is causation. There is some research that demonstrates correlation. So what I mean by that is we can't prove that video games are making kids more aggressive or violent, but there is correlation that this person who was violent happened to play video games. That doesn't prove anything, though.

You know what I mean? So the research is really unclear. Like, did someone do something violent because they played video games? Did they do something violent because they had a difficult childhood or because they experienced domestic abuse?

Those are difficult, really difficult questions to answer. So I don't think it's true that video games are like anywhere close to the number one culprit for why kids are aggressive. You can map the brain when someone plays a violent video game and it triggers the parts of our brain that are triggered when we do violent things or do aggressive things. But again, that doesn't prove that they're making us go out into the real world and do violence. I think human beings in general are pretty good at differentiating the real world from the virtual one. That said, I am not at all here to go like, oh, it doesn't matter. Violent video games doesn't matter.

I think everything that we consume has some kind of impact on us. And so I want to say to parents, be careful, be cautious, develop an understanding through your relationship with your kid about what's appropriate for them. I remember asking the boys, tell me what you love about this game.

Because they loved it and they're all three down there playing together and, you know, I'm like, I don't even get this whole thing. But it was good to have a conversation with them. And that builds a relationship. I think curiosity is maybe the most important tool when it comes to video games and your kids.

Well, really anything that they're into that you don't understand, just try to be curious. Because the goal of parenting is not just to, like, get them to do everything you want them to do. We like to think of it that way. It'd be so much simpler if that's all I had to do. But it wouldn't work.

We would all fail. If that was the goal, we would all be failures as parents. But the goal is to build their lifelong relationship of love and trust with your kids that points them to Jesus. And so ask them, why do you like this?

Why are you into this? Because those are questions that curiosity leads to a relationship and deepens your relationship with them. And so if they can tell that you care, that you're invested, that you love them, then when you go like, hey, I'm concerned about how much you're playing, they're more likely to listen, and that'd actually be a productive conversation than if you're just trying to get them to jump through whatever hoop that you're trying to get them to jump through. Yeah, it's interesting to think about that as a bonding moment between a father and son, mother, son, daughter with your child. Because, you know, as a dad, when my boys were little, I can remember thinking, I can't wait to go out in the backyard and throw a football or a baseball with my son. I was an athlete, so that was sort of like going to be a cool moment.

It's the same thing in this world. Yeah, I didn't think, I can't wait to play Mario Kart, you know, with my sons, but if that's something they're into, maybe they're not into sports. Yeah, if they're not into sports and they're into that, that's just the same kind of bonding moment, isn't it? Right, for sure. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and it's so easy to like have this sort of mentality about our kids where it's like, well, I'll spend time with them if they do what I like to do.

Exactly. Yeah, let's do what they want to do. Yeah, we'll play fantasy football.

Let's set up a fantasy football league. Doesn't matter that your kid hates football. Right. But I think part of what it means to parent well is to do kind of what Jesus did and took on human flesh and dwelt among us. So, like, get on their level. Get into the things that they're into. It might not be video games, it might be ballet, but, you know, if you have no context for ballet, learn. Right. Be a student of your kids.

Like, study them and what they're into. And that's a really simple way to demonstrate love and care and build the kind of like relational capital to then be able to speak up and say like, hey, I'm concerned about this video game that you're playing or who you're dating or whatever. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so what do we need as adults to fight overindulgence or addiction? We need accountability and conversation, don't we? That's good.

We need people who will help us follow after Jesus. Yeah. And then we need to talk about the things that we're worried—like, if you're worried about maybe a media addiction of your own as an adult, you talk to a friend about it. You talk to your spouse. You say, do you think I'm spending too much time on Netflix?

Just tell me honestly. I'll listen. Yeah. That's how you grow. Right. And that's what our kids need. They need accountability in the form of boundaries. And then they need conversation.

Parents who are curious, engaged, respectful, kind to your kids, not just expecting respect and return. It's a two-way street. Then back to your throwing up the hands thing question. Yeah, a lot of parents are ready to throw up their hands about video games.

I think you see one of two things. Parents either around the video game conversation, they're like, okay, we're done. I'm fed up. Every video game is going in the trash. I've heard stories of parents running over video game consoles with a lawnmower. I have a good friend—it's in this book—who smashed his son's handheld Nintendo system, just crushed it. And so, yeah, destroying your child's property is never a good solution. Don't get so frustrated that you're having these angry outbursts. Your kids will remember that. But yeah, so either cut it out altogether or—which is not—I don't think it's a good approach because video games aren't inherently evil.

There's some good to be found there, so we shouldn't just categorically ban them. But there's another temptation to just be like, well, fine, you want to play video games? Play them all you want. My same friend who broke his son's video game handheld finally came back and apologized about that. But then he was like, all right, just play. How much you want to play? Just play.

I'm tired of this battle, so just go do it. And I think parents can get so overwhelmed with everything they don't understand in our digital age that they just say, fine, go for it. And maybe they'll make themselves sick. It's like if you eat too much candy, maybe your kids will learn not to eat so much candy. It doesn't work.

It doesn't work that way. Again, kids don't know how to self-regulate, and that just makes the problem worse. So they need you to lovingly step in, communicate. Again, it's that issue of accountability and conversation.

Set some boundaries and just keep talking. Yes, they're going to be annoyed by the fact that you keep talking to them, but that's your job. That's what God gave you kids so that you can talk to them.

How are you going to point your kids to Jesus without talking to them, right? I think when we throw up our hands, we're like, I can't even. I'm done. I think that what can be communicated is you're hopeless. You're hopeless. The situation's hopeless. And I think my parents sometimes, if I was disappointing to them, like, we're done.

And I remember feeling like I must be such a failure that they've given up hope on me. That's an excellent point. I don't think our kids, we don't want them to feel that. And man, if they're under our roof, we're in the battle with them. As you said, they can't self-regulate.

We can barely self-regulate at times. So I think to stay in the game, and I like what you said, too, even as adult parents, to have friends that are helping us. Like, how are you guys dealing with your gamer?

What's that look like? Or social media or whatever your child is struggling with or just is what they're participating in. To have other friends as godly Christians that are trying to follow Jesus, what are you guys doing that works? I think that's helpful. So we have a staff member, Ryan Ganay, and he's a gamer and a dad and would love to ask you a question. So here it goes. Hey, Drew.

Thanks for coming on to Family Life today. My name is Ryan. I'm 32. I grew up in the gaming culture. It was a huge part of my life. Me and my friends, we would get together on the weekends and see how far we could get through a game that we rented from Blockbuster. And obviously games have changed a lot now. I can play online with people. The need to gather and have a LAN party or something, playing Age of Empires. Those days are long gone.

I'm sitting in a room alone playing online. So we're connected, but we're distanced. And it's just a microcosm of what we're seeing in social media. What would you have to say about the place that games have in our lives with our friends?

Can it still serve us well or do you think it's keeping us more disconnected? That is a really good question. I love this question. So what I love most about video games is that they're playgrounds. And I make this argument in the book that I think playgrounds are beautiful spaces. They're gifts from God because on the playgrounds we learn how to interact socially with other kids. When you're a kid and you're out there playing tag or cops and robbers or whatever it is you're playing on the playground, you're learning social cues.

You're learning how to interact. You're building a world together and all abiding by these rules of this game. It's just a great space for connection and growth. The beautiful thing about video games is it takes that idea of the playground and makes it a lot more accessible. Not everybody lives in a community where it's safe to play outside with other kids. And so that's the cool thing about video games is that it takes that idea of the playground and makes it more accessible. We can all get on at any time and we don't even have to go anywhere.

We can all do it from the safety of our own homes. And so there's a potential there for connection. And the connections we forge with people online through video games are not inherently less meaningful than the connections we make face to face.

They are impoverished though. There's not the same level. If I'm playing with you online, I can't see your face. I can't see how you're reacting.

I don't know what's going on in your life. Whereas if we sit down for lunch, there's a deeper connection there. I think God created us for that kind of face to face connection. And we need, I think as followers of Jesus, we need to protect that and elevate that. I'm kind of old school in the sense of there are people out there doing online churches and stuff. I'm like, that's not the church. That's kind of what I want to say.

We need to go to the same space, be in the same room, hear each other sing, take real bread together in communion. It feels different when you're there in person rather than online. I agree. For sure. So I wouldn't say we need to be so concerned that we think that those connections aren't meaningful.

I think they are when people connect online. It's still meaningful. It's still important. There's opportunity there for mission, for the glory of God, for the good of the world. But at the same time, I think we just need to sort of also at the same time, on the other hand, hold on to this idea of face to face personal communication and relationship and say, I'm not letting go of this.

We have to make time. It's a sacrifice to physically go to church or to meet for coffee even, just to go to lunch with a friend. It's a sacrifice.

We have to hold on to that because I think that God created us for that kind of connection. And sometimes it's easier to sit on your couch. I'm not talking just about playing a game and watch online church because going to church is messy. It's messy.

You know, people are going to bug you in the parking lot, getting in and out, you name it. And so I can sit here and I can watch and same thing with a video game. But there's that connection. Here's how you end the book. And I want to end today with your thoughts on Games Are Mission. That's the chapter title, Games Are Mission.

What do you mean? Yeah, well, I think we see a picture of Jesus in the Gospels looking for ways to spend time with sinners, with broken people. And the example I use of, you know, Jesus was accused of being a glutton and a drunk because he hung out with gluttons and drunks, because he hung out with people who ate to excess or drank to excess. Jesus was neither.

He wasn't a glutton or a drunk, but he deliberately spent time with those types of people because he came not for the righteous, but to bring sinners to repentance, right? And so we have to have some means. I think if we're going to live out the Great Commission, we have to think of ways to build relationships with people who are not like us. And it's really difficult today because we're so, I shouldn't say it's the most politically divided time or whatever. There were more divided times in history, in human history, but it feels very divided. It feels like it's getting worse. And social media is making it worse. And it's like so hard to be in the same room with people that you don't see eye to eye with.

That's what's beautiful. That's one of the beautiful things about video games is that everybody kind of comes to the table on equal terms. We're all signing up to abide by the rules of Madden, NFL, football, right? You can't change the rules of it.

We all have to abide by it. And it's an opportunity to connect around something. When you're playing a game with other people, they're usually not asking, like, we're not going to have to get into politics. We're just going to play a game and have fun. And what happens when you play games with other people, it doesn't have to be video games. Take board games. Board games are a great way to connect with other people.

Here's an example, maybe. Invite your neighbor to church, who you've hardly talked to before. You hardly have a relationship with his neighbor. You're like, hey, come to my church. They're like, oh, I don't think so. Your church sounds weird. Or they're just like, they have baggage, right? A lot of people have baggage with the church. They're just thinking, oh, I've done that.

I didn't like it. You say, hey, come over for dinner and we'll play a board game. That's a whole different invite and has the potential to lead to the kind of relational capital with that person to then eventually say, like, you know, when their spouse is in the hospital or something, to say, hey, I'm praying for you.

Can I bring you a meal? And then that leads to talking about Jesus. That leads to real connection. Video games provide us that opportunity. They put us on common ground.

They give us common vernacular. If you know someone's really into something, what do you do? You talk to them about it because that's a ticket to relationship, which I think is key to the mission God's given us. We're good at this with certain things in the church. Like, we're good at it when it comes to sports. Like, there's no church out there that's like, no, we shouldn't have a Super Bowl party.

Well, there are. But a lot of churches are like, yeah, let's have a Super Bowl party. It's a way to minister to our community. It's a way to build connection. But why aren't we thinking about that with video games? You know, why aren't we thinking about how this could be an opportunity for mission?

Like you said, it's a vehicle to bring a neighbor together. I mean, you say in this, the last section of your book, if Jesus was here now, he'd probably play video games with his neighbor. And you're like, what? But you're right. It's like, why wouldn't he?

Again, he's going to be careful about what games he plays. I don't know about speaking for Jesus, but based on the example from the Gospels, I think he would look for ways to... I mean, whatever vehicle God gives you with your neighbor, or even a stranger. I remember I played in a celebrity golf outing, and so I get paired up with four people I don't even know. And as soon as they found out I was a pastor, because they asked me, who are you and why are you our celebrity?

And it was only because I knew the celebrity. So the long story short is when they found out I was a pastor, the first thing they said, you know what they said? Oh, great. The guy said, we can't drink and we can't curse.

That's what he said. Because there was going to be alcohol on the course and whatever. And I joked and I go, well, it's even worse.

I'm not a very good golfer either. So let's go. Drew, as we played this round of golf for a couple hours, I had one goal. I want them to love today. Whatever happens at the end of this day, I want them to go, I want to play with that guy again, because I wanted to be Jesus. Jesus would make this a joyous day. And guess what? At the end of the day, they said, dude, if you're here next year, you're our celebrity. And I'm like, that's the goal, is that I would love them in such a way that they're like, Christians are cool.

Because I represented Jesus at that moment. And if you're playing a video game with somebody, it's the same thing. It's like, I'm in your world, you're in my world. Man, I want to love you in a way that you want me to come to your house to play a video game.

And I want you to come to my house to play a video game. That's sort of the mission, right? Yeah. You know, and Jesus said hard things in the Gospels, but it was almost always in the context of the people who are already following him. But when he goes to the houses of sinners and tax collectors and stuff, he's making things more fun and more joyful. I mean, he's turning water into wine to prolong a dying party. And he's eating with sinners and tax collectors and prostitutes and all kinds of people that would make us very uncomfortable to eat with. But he's doing it to point them to Jesus. I want to be really careful and say, like, I'm not saying to just go play whatever video game. You should have personal boundaries for yourself of what's appropriate for you. And you should think about your witness and all that you do. But what I am saying is I think there's an opportunity in the world of video games to play video games responsibly in a way that's going to lead to mission. It's going to lead to you connecting people to Jesus who otherwise wouldn't want anything to do with it.

I'm Shelby Abbott. You've been listening to Dave and Ann Wilson with Drew Dixon on Family Life Today. You know, we're going to hear more from Ann in just a second with some encouragement for the parent who's maybe worried about their kids playing too many video games. But first, I just want to say I love that perspective of thinking about engaging with people through the avenue of something like video games.

Not something we typically think about, but doing something like that intentionally to help others see the beauty of Jesus in us. That's really, really cool. You know, Drew has written a book called Know Thy Gamer, a parent's guide to video games. You know, in today's digital age, monitoring kids online and their activities when they're playing social media is just increasingly complex.

And it's also very important. Well, Drew's here to help you with that in his book. You can go to familylifetoday.com and click on today's resources to get your copy of Drew Dixon's Know Thy Gamer. Or you can give us a call at 800-358-6329.

That's 800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. This has been a really good and helpful conversation. And let me just speak to just as one mom who used to lay in bed at night worrying that my boys were playing too many video games and wondering, do I have enough boundaries going on and are we doing a good job with this talking through it? Let me remind you to not stop praying for your kids. Like, ask Jesus for wisdom and be praying for them specifically and be really honest with the Lord. Like, Lord, I'm struggling.

I'm not sure how to do this. So I'd say don't stop praying for your kids and be involved in their lives. I know that you hear this all the time and people say it flies by, but it really does. So engage as they're under your roof. It's worth it. And I'll tell you this. Come back tomorrow because we're not going to let Drew go away. We're going to talk about five things parents shouldn't do with their gamer kid.

And you don't want to miss this one. You know, if you enjoyed today's conversation or found it particularly helpful for what you're wrestling with as a parent or a husband or wife, I just wanted to let you know that Family Life Today is a donor-supported ministry. We have people who partner with us in order to make this program happen.

And I want to invite you to participate in that partnership. You can go online to familylifetoday.com to give there by clicking on the donate now button at the top of the page. Or you can give us a call with your donation at 800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. Or you can feel free to also drop us something in the mail. We'd love to hear from you that way.

Our address is Family Life 100 Lakehart Drive, Orlando, Florida 32832. Now tomorrow, Drew Dixon is going to be back again with David Ann Wilson to talk about the five don'ts when parenting a gamer. Now there's going to be five of them. I'm going to give you just one. And one is don't just use the on off switch.

What are the other four? You're going to have to tune in tomorrow to figure that out. On behalf of David Ann Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a donor supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.