The following presentation took on a new form from the others yet again: instead of merely presenting the research, I reached out to a friend who agreed to share their experience with using gaming and other online presences as coping mechanisms for insecurities/anxieties when he was younger.
This first section is that interview, typed up from a recording of the phone call. In bold is me and my questions to him and the rest is his response.
(highlighted words are slideshow cues)
Could you start with recalling a time before gaming or even media and technology wasn't part of your life?
"I don't know where to start really. I guess growing up, we didn’t have technology in our house. Personal devices weren’t a thing yet until around 5 or 6, because it was around age 7 when we got a computer and we started playing games on it. I remember me and my brother always playing outside, always playing and being very social and interactive with all the other children in the colony. We were always playing together, talking at supper about what we were going to do after. When we got a computer, it went from playing games here and there, maybe after school- because like I said at the end of the day, we usually had stuff to do- we found stuff to do we went outside we interacted with people, with other kids. But I think back: and one thing comes to mind- even at that young age where we weren't necessarily addicted to technology and video games yet, I remember we couldn't wait for dad to come home and put in the computer password. We’d be jumping out of our skin with impatience till our parents came home from lunch so we can put in the password, and we can play games until school. So looking back I see how, even though you might not give a lot of time to it yet, I think the addiction is already starting to root itself."
Did your parents have any restrictions on screen time at this point? Were there any enforced content restrictions? Was what you played and how long we were allowed to play monitored in any way?
"We didn't have Internet at this point. All our games were bought or downloaded onto CDs. I don't think we were monitored. Maybe when they came in, we would pause it or they never really got involved in what we were playing -but that’s like when you’re playing Legos even, you can get into the story if mom is listening in on your imaginary world.
It seemed innocent, the content wasn’t violence or war or killing at this point. I guess back then it was portrayed or maybe we perceived it as completely innocent (thinking of old Mario or farm- or city simulator-type games). Technology just wasn’t there yet, so they weren’t as graphic.
As we got older, we got our own games. We really didn't care anymore- once we were teenagers, our parents didn’t have a password anymore- or that simply was something we could get by in like a week. Eventually, we got our own PlayStation, where we just played whatever, we wanted whenever we wanted. At that age- and I can only speak for myself, but I’m sure it's applicable to anyone my age, it was starting to steer me away from interacting with people.
It reminds me of comments I’ve overheard in the last couple of years from parents that say “You know, when we go outside after supper in the summer, our colony is dead. Because there’s no one outside. There are some little kids running around but all the adults and young people are just sitting at home on their phones doing their own thing.”
Once you get your teen years, your parents monitor even less. You just play however long you want. As long as you're up in the morning, you're at work, or your breakfast- no one really cares that you’ve stayed up till two or three in the morning playing video games. Or that right after supper you logged on for 2-3 hours. I guess seeing how that affected me – along with other things – but it impacted my social life. There came a point before I was 15 years old, I was extremely introverted- very anti-social. I couldn't talk to people. I did not know how to communicate with people like my friends that I had in the colony when I went over to their place for the evenings, which was a regular occurrence because we had a plan to be video games and watch movies together. But that was the only thing we could talk about really, I couldn't even ask how their day was. It was always about New Video Games- always about things we were indulging in: entertainment, games, movies, shows, with phones it was the latest post or meme. There was no real relationship there."
Do you think this was a result of personality that you couldn’t socialize the way you wanted to and so relied on conversation about technology OR that you just hadn't developed the skills because of the heavy use of technology?
"I think it's both. It didn’t help me develop any social skills. Well to be honest if that's what you do almost all day: like sat -and I’m not trying to judge people- but I if the videogame is your biggest interest, even if they're not playing video games, like when at work, chances are they're probably either listening to someone or watching someone playing the games they enjoy.
It’s not that my social skills had not developed, it's that it that my addiction to video games at that point left no room for anything else. The Games were all that I knew. If you give yourself to one thing completely, that's all you’ll know. You're not looking to know anything else. How can you even love other people then?
Because the majority of them are self-driven: it's all about you, all about your achievements, all about you doing stuff. There is not a lot of helping other people. When the action required in the game is to assist another person, it always benefits the player."
So you’re saying Video games weren't invented to help other people: they were invented to make money by engaging an individual.
"I mean even in the video game if you do anything good it's for your benefit. For some games, you can participate in any behavior. There's no good, except the ideal of advancing one’s own character. All the games you play you can literally do anything and get away with it. You can accomplish all your desires, and all your lusts. – there is a game for it. So, whatever you want to do, you can do without consequence. things that are morally unacceptable- on the video game you can live out: you can steal, you can murder, and that's no issue. You can get away with it and if these are the types of games that young people are playing at such a young age, I don’t know what it means for us. It's even kids now like at a younger age than I started playing video games, are growing up with this influence."
You touch upon an interesting point I haven't thought of: Even games that aren't obviously violent (I'm thinking Minecraft or Fortnite being held up against Grand Theft Auto or Call of Duty) : the games that are always held up as exceptions to the violence have a different harmful impact. The actions played out are about helping oneself- advancing one’s own character. This instills in children a really bad worldview, which is “How does this action benefit me” instead of the needs of others.
So returning to your story, I’m guessing you're around the age of 14-15?
"I was 15 already. I’m discussing the type of behavior we as young Buem -the activities I and my friends enjoyed. So yeah, For me personally, I couldn't talk about anything else I didn't know anything else because that was my life.
I got a colony Ample I guess. And at work, every time we had a break, I’d sit down on my phone and play video games. I found that there were times when I had nothing left to do on a particular game, like clash of clans or some other, what we call “harmless game,” so I went and downloaded something else just to pass the time until I can go back to my other video games and keep progressing. It’s just that there was nothing else for me to do. I couldn't think outside of not having games. I was like, “what else is there to do? If I don't have video games, I'm absolutely bored.”
When we got guests I hated – I literally hated those days. Even when my sisters who married away to different colonies came to visit, I did not like that because that meant 2 days of me not playing video games. I interfered with my habit- my ritual. The interesting thing that you said earlier was, that people say, “What about this game? or like Minecraft- or its just safe farming games- or whatever we classify as “good games”- But yet it comes to the point where people that you should be close with -people that you love, your own family- get in the way of you playing your video game, no matter how “good” we want to call it. It reaches a point where to not play is infuriating. It sucks. It’s what I want to be doing instead. Everything else is in the way. You finish work as fast as possible; conversations are a hindrance. You think “Why did that person have to come to visit today? why is this person needing help to take the laundry to the kitchen right now?” You're not available to participate in life when you're addicted to video games. And if you’re addicted to the good ones or the bad ones -whichever one- there's no room for other people.
Going back to how the games promote Self. If you get out into the real world and actually practice some things, you find out pretty quickly that it always costs something. It’s always harder. It’s always less fun because it costs you physical effort, mental effort, a bit of your time, and a bit of your patience. You sweat; you bleed. You have to stink and get dirty maybe too. But at the end of the day, you can actually take pleasure in the work that you did with your hands. The way it makes you feel good is entirely different from the good feeling of a game. It’s like the game gives you a short burst of feeling good- but going to bed after hard work- that stuff leaves you with satisfaction. You feel proud and accomplished.
Building on that, when you do things together with other people, it builds friendships, it builds relationships, it builds character. But I found if I do things together with my friends on video games, it was all about competition. The thought at the back of my mind was always, 'I have to outdo them.” Or “I have to get the better thing, the better armor, the better hero.' I always had to be better than them, and if they got something better than I did then I was so envious. I never said it. But in my heart, I was so jealous. I just wanted to be better than them. I even tried to manipulate them to use their resource - I said with my mouth they were my friends but the way we communicated, the way we interacted on the game -it was friendship only as far as we had the game in common. It wasn’t anything more than skin-deep. It was all about me."
This reminds me of the common rebuttal that always comes up when discussing video games. You’ve touched on it. It’s the comeback to the idea that the long isolation is bad, with claiming that these guys Are in contact with friends through discord or their headset. I guess reflect on that if you could.
"The interesting part is you're still not going anywhere. Like even if you get in the same room with your “friends” and you're playing video games together - which we often did. The thing is there's nothing actually moving forward. You're not learning anything about the other person you're not growing in relationship with those people. The only thing you learn is their view on topics of conversation you can hold while you’re really focused on playing, or reactions shared about the game. In retrospect, it doesn’t count as being social, I don’t think. Knowing and understanding people is about more than being in the same room or in the same conversation with them, its ways more about the depth of that interaction. There's a difference between simply connecting and actual communication.
Being social or just talking -if you're not building up and moving somewhere, or leaving at the end of an exchange provoked to change, I just keep asking myself “what was the point of that interaction.” And I'm not perfect in that area, but it's something I definitely want to consider- I want to take seriously every interaction with another person. Be more intentional with my time now, because there were so many years that I never did. Sometimes we do have time for more than a small hello to someone, but at least mean it with all your heart. I think of being social now- after my experience of years of having to re-learn how to interact- as giving something to someone. What is the greatest form of love you can have for someone? it is to lose yourself for someone else’s sake. Which connects to what even good games never can demonstrate- and that is the meaning of why we are here: to give up ourselves for others. We can’t afford to live selfishly. In video games is all about progressing to the next level. It's all about doing better than someone else, even if you're playing with friends. Games cannot teach us to put ourselves aside- to speak and do things where we get nothing in return. In the “real world,” I’ve had to train people to take over jobs for me- I have to want them to succeed and do better than me at some point. But you have to let go of a lot of yourself first, and that takes practice. I wish I had that practice younger.
When I play with my friends, sometimes we got pretty nasty with each other- pretty angry. It was a joke, but deep down it wasn’t. We might have done it because we thought we were cool, but I think that I think back to those emotions and it was real jealousy from somewhere when they killed me five times in a row, and I couldn't even get a single shot. I think the “fake” violence brings out the bad side of a person -provokes you into that negative, aggressive, slanderous, selfish, person. You cuss out your friends over something that's so stupid.
I think it was 5 years ago when I had my encounter with Jesus in my room, that's one of the things that he showed me with my games and movies -all the things of that nature- that I was completely addicted to, was that one click of a button: it's off.
Slide At the end of the day, you click a button, the screen turns off, and the computer shuts down. And you’re faced with real life. No matter what, at the end of it all, you have to go face reality – you have to face yourself, and you know you’ve wasted time. You don’t feel proud of yourself after 3 or 4 or 5 hours of gaming. And that’s what you see: Not the person who just beat the game. When the game’s off, you have to deal with true reality, which is not a virtual world. Instead, it’s a world we don’t have control over. There are things in our lives we are insecure about, and we run back to what gives us comfort: VR where we can actually do the things we want to do without anyone judging us. Video games bring that comfort because you have this sense of control, and there’s no fear of failure because even when you fail you can just do it again. In real life, it's interesting- how we run away from that. We’re scared to fail and so we don't want to do it again. In video games, we don't care because we can just do it again over and over until we get it."
Do you think what makes that difference in our brains you think it's because there's no risk?
"Yeah. It could also be that there's no consequence. You don't want to risk looking foolish or less than. But to grow you have to be foolish before you can be the master at something. And it’s showing vulnerability. I think that’s harder for guys. "
I guess I'm thinking of other guys that play video games or haven’t had an experience that shocked them into reality. Will they simply have to make the active choice and do the work of quitting a gaming lifestyle or habit?
"I just don't know. For me, it was a realization that if I'm going to call myself a Christian, video games cannot be a part of my life. And for me it wasn’t just games I gave up: It was also movies and secular music. Pornography was another thing that I can’t remove from the conversation, when plays alongside anti-socialness, being withdrawn, and selfishness. It starts when I was really young, and I don’t think I really understood it before it was too late. I guess 11 or 13. The verse that comes to mind in those years was when Jesus said when a spirit leaves a man and then he comes back and he sees that his house is been swept, he comes with seven other spirits more wicked than themselves and the last state of that man is worse than the first. I often wanted to quit gaming, quit this other addiction, but I couldn’t, It just got worse. I had to completely break and in giving him complete control over my life, he broke the temptations. The temptations came back worse, but this time it wasn’t me trying to “win” something, it was me submitting to Christ.
So if someone is addicted to gaming- and I think people are addicted when that is the first thing that comes to mind as a comfort when they need to be distracted -I guess for people that are so addicted to video games, their question would still be, “what else do I do? But there's nothing else you know? It's about filling all that time. What do you do? For me- I had my entire life outside of work to fill up going back to that verse- I had a house I needed to fill really fast or habits, temptations, and desires would come back.
As a young believer, the fellowship was so important. Even to this day, I would not be where I am without the body of Christ- without my fellow believers in my colony. We have a Bible study here once a week and just it's amazing getting different people's perspectives."
There are still hours and hours of our life that we still spend on our own that are important how did you maybe fill those hours? We default to phones at any moment of boredom. How do you combat that all?
"I guess what I started doing- building on what I said about re-emphasizing fellowship- instead of grabbing my phone at coffee break, I usually went home to a brother in the colony and we’d talk. Or I make a point to talk with the people around me during a coffee break. They are opportunities designed and put into our schedules, but when going for devices, we're losing key opportunities to build relationships.
Did you ever reincorporate gaming into your lift- or other media?
I'll be honest there were days when I was bored, or struggling with something, when I redownloaded a game, or pulled out the console, and stayed up till three in the morning."
Returning to a habit- essentially in addiction is called Relapse: Your brain is wired to receive a stimulus from the game. After years of building that pathway of boredom can be solved with a game, it doesn’t just go away when addiction ends, physical dependency stays. Sometimes these moments where for some reason, that old habit comes back- Old Conditioning that we haven’t used for a long time comes back in Spontaneous memory. we can begin again -try again every day. Going back to the game was also me returning to what I thought was an “easier comfort” that's more expedient that building a relationship with God
"So the last thing I want to say- as a guy who started gaming really young. I’ve played it all, seen it all, felt it all. When it comes to devices, you can't just give your kid technology, right? But there is something greater you have to give them first:
Leaders in the community, parents in a g’ma. Give them Jesus Don't just offer the religion because no one can see through lies faster than kids and being told one thing and observing another is a lie. I feel like a large reason why I struggled alone for so long was that I wasn’t seeing it in anyone. Humans inherently want- desire- need: meaning. But if they aren’t getting it from parents and community- they are getting it from the world- from those powers and principalities. The spirituality the world offers sucks the life out of us.
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Anonymous Contribution for Chapter 4: “My Response to Gaming and Motivation”
Like everything in life, there is a fine line between enough and too much, there is a balance in a sense. But taking video games into the perspective, the amount of time spent gaming often crosses that dividing line. Be it a new game, a hard stage or level, but it’s still crossing a line. We often fail to see that; it can be continued another day. Video games have been an extreme popular media, some call it addictive, near endless hours spent on gaming, while other important tasks tend to be left in the dark. Like chores, homework, even exercise. Which I tend to often neglect. Not due to video games particularly, manly do to the typical high school procrastination. And also lack of motivation. I have started noticing an increase in my late assignments, why? Because I play video games instead? No, not really.
Mainly because I just don’t have the motivation to do them. Which could be due to the amount of time I spend playing these video games. I normally try to be caught up in the flow of schoolwork, but that want, has been slipping. Am motivation to do work is only the start. It could potentially get worse. But the question is. Are video games the cause of this predicament which I am caught in? No video games are not the problem, maybe the amount of time I spend playing them is. Maybe there needs to be a cut off. Or a line I follow. Or I’ve been trying to follow. “No games unless, I have no late schoolwork”. That blew away in the winds of time. Where did the motivation I had go? Good question. If only I knew. The amount of time I spend in games might be considered extensive to some, but to others it might be small. Every person uses their own judgement and common sense to determine what they think is enough. 1 hour, 2 hours, maybe 4 hours. It depends on the person. My decision for decent time is 2 hours. You though might think differently, but that’s just life.
While my motivation to do assignments might be low, it doesn’t take much to get me to play a game. Which I think is sad. I believe that video games do affect one’s motivation in many ways. Like your friend completed a hard achievement. And now you want to match them to show them that you’re the same skilled or even more so. So, hours are spent trying to prove that you’re better. Which is something I would not advice, let them brag all they want. It just means that they believe that they are weaker than you. Because if they would be stronger, then they wouldn’t. Why is it, that motivation to do work, takes more motivation then to try to complete a difficult level? I don’t really have much too say other then what I just said, only that there’s a time a place for everything, but the priorities need to be straight. Maybe stop gaming and catch up on work. Or even other many other things.
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Anonymous Contribution for Chapter 4: “A Thing About Video GamesTM” I was always interested in computers. This made involvement with video games an inevitability. I started playing when I was a young person. I would play old computer games on our old computer, and while they weren’t much by today’s standards, I loved it. As a result, I grew up ignorant from actual video games. I didn’t even know that a whole video game industry even existed until I was around 12 to 13. For most of my childhood, my parents were in full control of what it was that, and how much I played. I would get to play one hour, twice a week. My two days were Tuesday and Saturday, and I would spend the whole rest of the week looking forward to the next one. Both of my parents believed that video games could be harmful if overdone, so I was closely monitored. Moreover, we didn’t own any games that could be considered violent, since, to my parents, if video games could be harmful, violent video games were the far worse thing. Because of this, I grew up playing a whole lot of racing and adventure games. This worked because I liked cars and exploring. My journey with video games is not without trouble. When I was around age 13, we bought a used Xbox. With it was a nice stack of games, over half of which were rated “Mature”, or 17+. Because my parents had very little experience with modern video games, they didn’t know which ones were bad, other than from looking at the titles. As a result, I was able to play quite a few of them. I was always careful, playing when with the sound low so they wouldn’t hear gunfire, or quickly scrolling through menus if they happened to check on me, anything to avert the fact that I was playing things that I wasn’t supposed to be playing. I was always taught that killing people was wrong, so I stayed away from games that involved that, like Call of Duty. I would also avoid games that I knew had ‘inappropriate’ things in them, because would never have been able to justify playing those types of games to myself. So I played the ones that were more about the super powered good guy saving the world from hideous aliens, because I told myself that I was being a hero and killing monsters. My parents were not stupid, and easily saw through my attempts to hide the true nature of the games I was playing. My dad did eventually go through them and threw out nearly all of the bad ones, including the ones I saw as ‘less’ bad. Nowadays, I regret going behind my parents
back the way I did, but I also realize that I was a child. I have a few younger siblings, and nowadays, I try my best to make sure they don’t do what I did back then. When I turned 15, my parents’ role in controlling my video game time all but disappeared and I got the responsibility of consuming content responsibly. Surprising quite a few people, but most of all, myself, I soon found that I didn’t care as much as I once had. I could go play on our Xbox whenever I wanted, but I found that I almost never did. I would still play quite a few games, but they didn’t dominate my life the way that they had before. However, one thing that didn’t change was my parents controlling the type of games I played, and they still objected to me playing violent or un-Christliche video games. Nowadays, I’m 17, and video games are still an important part of my life, for better or for worse. I still spend quite a bit of time playing video games, and when I’m not doing that, I often find myself reading up on or watching videos on video games. Yes, I agree that I sometimes overdo it, but what I’ve also come to believe is that a lot of the problems caused by video games can be mitigated with a simple balance. I believe that young people playing video games is fine, as long as they play games that are appropriate, and that they can keep up with their responsibilities, like colony jobs and schoolwork. If this is not happening, it may be time to cut back. This is something that I try to practice in my everyday life, and it may be worth doing for others with the same problems. All in all, I would say that if someone wants to let their kid play video games, it’s fine, as long as limits are in place. Rules for what they are and are not allowed to play, rules for how long they are allowed to play, and ways to enforce these rules. These limits were in mostly in place for me growing up, and I would say that they worked out and I am a better person for it, but of course, it would be different from person to person.
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