An Antidote to Video Game Play

Are you frustrated by seeing your kids or grandkids always facing a screen? Do you feel impotent to change their amount of game play? Do you fear their personality is dying on the vine? Are you looking for simple conversational segues that will generate a warm, interesting conversation with your child or grandchild? Do you seek a deeper understanding of who they are becoming or an opportunity to share a simple virtue, a character-building moment, or the love of God?

That’s what I ruminate on daily. That’s what I’ve spent the last 20 years (at least, but who’s counting?) considering, mulling over, kind of obsessing about.  If this topic is top of mind for you too, Christian Tech Kids is your antidote. I have some ideas for you, whether you’re mildly exasperated or ready to throw the game console out the window.  Ideas to get your own “CTKid”—the googly-eyed, finger pressing, grunting one—talking again. Ways to redeem some of that game time with worthwhile reflection and connection.

If you find yourself slightly antagonized by the enthusiasm kids often only express toward their video games, leaving humans out in the cold, you are not alone.  I would like to help equip you to make a difference in his IRL life.

Examples to Help You Segue

Let me give you some examples of how to get your CTKid thinking more deeply about what they’re playing and what they may be learning, consciously or not.  If you can’t talk to your teen because he’s always on League of Legends, read this for an idea.

If you take your grandkid out for ice cream and they bring their screen, be comforted by this.

If you want to understand how to talk about the concept of nonplayable characters (and have no idea what they are), here’s one way.

Find other posts by searching the broadly defined “virtue” categories to your right.

Or, search this site by keyword.

You can adapt my “how to segue” ideas to any faith journey you, your children, or grandchildren are on, although I’m most comfortable in the Evangelical Protestant tradition and write from that perspective.

The point is to create conversational segues about a valuable slice of real life—despite their daydreaming about their video game life.  It is to instill greater positive character into your CTKid based on biblical principles. To know them better, love them better, and disciple them better in your faith.

You may be more relaxed when you become more intentional about supplementing video game conversations with biblical ones.  There is no better time to start than today.

Let every video game conversation end in your child thinking more abour real life, real love, and the One True God.