The new year entices us to do something different, something better than last year. If your child plays video games, and you want more constructive gaming that is meaningful, read further.
The important video game question as you enter 2026 with your family is “to what end?”
To what end am I allowing video gaming? What is the purpose of the play? Is his gaming constructive?
You know it is not always about fun and friends; sometimes it’s about avoiding homework. It is good to help your child—your CTKid—to play with positive self-awareness and intentionality.
Why Does Your CTKid Play Video Games?
You do not have to blindly continue living through the video game habits your CTKid has erected. Think about whether a fruitful purpose is involved and whether their habits are constructive.
When we allow video gaming at home, the time question must naturally arise: How much is too much? But the value question is also useful: What purpose is being served?
CTKids choose to play video games to have fun, earn reward, relax, join friends, compete, explore, learn, create, and experience life skills virtually. But you can show them how to better understand humanity and God in the process as well.
You do not have to blindly continue living through the video game habits your CTKid has erected.
If they’re only playing to waste time, avoid work, feed an addiction, secure popularity, resist their own creativity, or find the wrong people, you have a challenge.
Why does your CTKid play video games? (Why do you let them? What are you hoping for?)
Beyond Entertainment and Toward Constructive Gaming
Christian Tech Kids is about helping you guide your CTKid’s level of awareness and intentionality about the video gaming environment they’re shaping. This includes the games they choose, the people they play with, the attitudes and emotions they exhibit during play, and the values they reflect.
A good time to guide them is when they debrief you on how their day’s play went. (You are talking with them about their video game experiences, right?) It is then that you have an opportunity to instruct, enlighten, or offer advice. To share a brief, relevant, ethical, moral or biblical story or viewpoint. To guide them after their experiences in preparation for the next one.
Tone Matters
I recommend engaging them lightheartedly, comically or ironically, with feeling, humor and inquisitiveness. After all, these terms typically describe the lighthearted ways they play video games. Done too didactically (like a formal teaching moment) and your instruction will feel forced and boring (i.e., “blah, blah, blah”). But done with humor and interest in their experiences, and they will enjoy sharing. They know instinctively that you will offer something useful they may need one day.
(If your CTKid plays more intensely—or competitively—than light-heartedly, then your ideas and feedback can be more colorful, dramatic, unusual, or intense itself. Use what works to draw them out and to pour into them.)
Which conversational tone is most effective with your CTKid? Match their own, to a degree, for rapport which can make the conversation stick. Striking the right tone to garner their receptivity is key. Then, offer insight or an important angle they may not have considered.
Make It Practical
Jesus’ brother James made complex theological concepts come alive in the book of James. He brought them down to earth. It is said he made them practical through vivid images of life in the early church.
We can make our CTKids’ video game experiences practical as well, especially when we apply moral or biblical messages relevant to their encounters. When we occasionally distill a moral message from their gaming experience, we show them how to do that themselves. (It sounds like your teammate’s anger prevented you all from winning. That reminds me of the Proverb that says a wise man holds back his anger. Maybe next time you can think of a way to help diffuse his anger if he can’t hold it back, to help your team.)
Constructive and Meaningful Gaming
Infuse your CTKids’ video game time with more purpose, self-awareness, and intentionality. Do this through knowing the reasons he plays, asking questions, guiding his overall gaming attitudes through post-game conversations, and using an effective tone. Your efforts will slowly make his gaming more constructive, meaningful, and edifying.