A Parent's Guide To Keeping Children Safe In The World Of Online Games

My 14-year-old daughter recently said she wanted to learn to drive. But her first lessons would be through an online game. As a mother and a person from the legal fraternity, I am vehemently against underage driving. I am also cautious about exposing my teenager to online games which may impact her negatively. But I was more than happy to let her play this game because it would teach her three basic things–patience, alertness, and the pitfalls of dangerous driving–without putting her in any danger.

But not all online games are safe for children. I have seen babies, toddlers, and preschoolers playing dangerous games online, probably introduced to them by their parents. These games include action-oriented games and shooting, and car racing games. Parents usually use the games to keep their children from troubling them, little realizing that they can be addictive and dangerous.

Dangerous consequences of online games

• Psychological effects: Some action games could affect the child psychologically. We all know about the Blue Whale challenge, which induced children to take up dangerous tasks that culminated in suicide. But there are other games considered ‘kiddish’, such as the Ninja games, which also affect the child psychologically. In these games, the child learns to beat up other children or even pets who may pose a ‘disturbance’ to him. These games do not sensitize the child to the impact of physically hurting others, including animals. So, they run the risk of becoming indifferent to the physical pain of others. They may start taking sadistic pleasure in seeing others in pain because that is what the protagonists in online action games ‘enjoy’ after winning battles. I have seen several children hurting their pet dogs or even other domestic animals like cows because they thought of these animals as playmates, donning the role of the ‘enemy’.
• Dangers of aping characters: These action-oriented games don’t just cause children to behave cruelly to others; they put the gamers themselves at risk. Watch carefully to see whether your child is trying to jump from tables or climb on the balcony walls or grilles. This can be a signal that they are trying to imitate their ‘hero’ who may run across jungles, climb high-rise buildings, and race through busy roads to ‘destroy evil’. These ‘heroes’ never get hurt. Even if they do, their automated body mechanisms heal those wounds within seconds. Often, children believe they, too, have such inbuilt mechanisms which will protect them from injury.
• Exposure to adult content: It is not only the online action games that parents should worry about. There are other online games like The Sims, the dangers of which are not well-known. The Sims is a life simulation video game series in which a player can create avatars and make them act as they want. The characters so created can do good things, like serving as doctors. They can also do ‘adult stuff’ like having sexual relationships with other characters or giving birth to babies. To children, these videos, shown through ‘games’, could come as a shock. And these Sims videos are easily available on YouTube, with most of them not offering the ‘blocked for children’ option. In such cases, a parent needs to monitor not only what the child is playing but also what they are watching.
• Emotional dependence: What is more worrying is that, when given as a pacifier, a child may see the games as their sole ‘friends’. If their parents normally tell them to play these to keep them quiet and ensure they do not disturb others, they slowly get hooked on them. The child also grows emotionally dependent on the devices they use to play the games and may become extremely possessive about them. They may even damage them by operating them as they like. There is also the risk of them buying games secretly.

A horrific example

Not very long ago, one of my friends told me that her teenage son’s friend had died in a tragic road accident. And no, the accident was not caused by a speeding vehicle driven by someone else. The boy had tried to imitate a stunt he had seen in an online bike game. Unlike the online biker who could get up and out of the accident spot, the boy never did get up from the pool of blood in which he lay.

Tips to keep children safe

• Never give your phone as a pacifier to your toddler. If you are on a journey, point out the trees, roads, and people you pass. They will soon learn to enjoy themselves more.
• Check the app stores on your phone. Do not install violent action-oriented games.
• Don’t allow your child to download games without permission. Strictly tell them they cannot use others’ devices without their permission and that includes yours and your spouse’s.
• Don’t rush to buy an electronic device for your child. This includes buying a phone for them when they are too young to understand how to handle it properly. Rely on the computer science classes in school to teach your child the good and bad implications of the computer and how to use it properly. Your child will share innovative and positive ideas on computer science with you at a later stage. They will then be partly ready to have a phone. But again, don’t stop monitoring them online.
• Remember, not everything online is bad. Encourage your child to learn positive things like scientific experiments, cooking simple dishes, tricks to recycle old clothes, or even how to organize rooms and cupboards. You will see them quickly grow into responsible netizens.
• Before leaving your child alone with a game, try it out yourself. Remember how you used to taste the food before giving it to your child when you were introducing them to solid food? Play that role again. In the process, you will develop a wonderful bond with your child!

Here’s to your keeping your little one safe in the world of online games!