Bad games: When parents are always to blame

Fifth-grader Paul was passionate about playing online games, especially Minecraft. When he disappeared, investigators quickly came across the 12-year-old's suspected kidnapper. This man from Germany contacted the boy via the game's chat function, as the police announced at the press conference. Even two weeks after the case came to light, little is known about how Paul met the man for whom he left his parents' house with the intention of visiting his supposed gaming buddy.

Should online games be banned?

A boy who meets a suspected paedophile through Games: this is the fear scenario par excellence. Because it contains two imponderables that all parents tremble at: a person who wants to harm their children. And the Internet, this uncontrollable monster that poses unprecedented challenges for parenting.

This double disaster is being covered extensively by the media. «Should online games be banned by parents?» discussed 20 Minuten, for example. In the Tagesanzeiger, an expert even called for a cyber police force. And Blick asked: «At what point is Minecraft dangerous?» Shortly afterwards, a well-known species took a stand in the readers' opinions: the comment trolls. «Parents should also be taken to task, many young mums want children but don't want responsibility,» they say. Or: «At 12, every mother should still have power over her child, otherwise something has gone wrong.» And further: «It is irresponsible to let children surf the internet unsupervised for hours on end.»
The culprits in Paul's case are quickly found: his parents. They are too weak to set limits for their children - and confiscate the computer, ban gaming and, anyway, four hours of surfing - is that still possible? Paul's parents quickly become «parents» in general. The voices accusing parents of failing across the board are not only increasing in readers' opinions or thematic debates. Even seasoned experts are criticising the upbringing of the Internet generation. The most recent example: Viennese youth psychologist Martina Leibovici-Mühlberger. She sees a generation of narcissists growing up beyond discipline and order, she writes in her latest book.

We can no longer allow our children to grow up as sheltered as we did ourselves. The world has changed too much for that.

Because it's always the parents' fault

Culturally pessimistic statements such as these in connection with educational issues also allow the reproduction of frowned upon semantics. Discipline and order, for example, originally come from a Christian context, but have been considered too totalitarian and subservient since the Second World War. Nevertheless, they are used again and again in the 16,535 or so parenting guides available (source: Amazon). All of them are based on more or less the same subtext: that parents need to know exactly what their child is doing at every second and what danger could threaten them directly or indirectly. The child should also be protected from this at all costs. According to the credo, we parents must not only warn our children about the unknown man who could be waiting for them in the car outside school, but also about the man who could be lurking online and pretending to be a child. Letting children play online unsupervised is reprehensible and irresponsible.

All the parent policemen in the world have forgotten four things in Paul's case: Firstly, that all the catechism of rules for dealing with new media can simply be forgotten in practice. Because the 30 or 60 minutes of media consumption per day that children Paul's age are allowed only work in theory. After all, an hour a day is often taken up with WhatsApp class chats, internet research for homework, listening to or watching the news, watching videos or - currently - football matches. And they underestimate children's media skills. According to the 2014 JAMES study, 77.4 per cent to 85 per cent of 12 to 17-year-olds use the options for privacy settings and check them regularly.
Secondly , enforcing rule-compliant media consumption not only requires a steely nerve, but also a strong parental fund of Stalinist drill methods. Because in no other domain are there more discussions with pre-adolescent and adolescent children than about smartphones, iPads and the like. There are parents who argue with their children about this every day. In the morning, at lunchtime, in the evening, for hours and for months! Who check every day whether the iPad is hidden under the duvet or whether the mobile phone has been secretly taken along in the gym bag. The rule-followers don't care that this is not necessarily conducive to the parent-child relationship during the precious time that parents and children spend together. But perhaps not all parents - at least those who believe that a relationship is based on trust.

Puberty means breaking the rules

Thirdly, knowing the games that inspire our youngsters requires a lot of time and effort. Even Minecraft, which is not one of the most complex online games but is immensely popular and, according to Zischtig, the association «for safety and media literacy», is played by around a third of all Swiss primary school pupils. Getting to know it and playing it is far more time-consuming than watching a film, playing a full round of Monopoly or testing a new CD. For more complex games, even game-savvy parents need at least half a day just to familiarise themselves with the characters. So how realistic is it for parents of school-age children to spend a whole day in front of the box with their offspring? And even then, you don't know how your daughter or son will behave in in-game info chats, even if they know the rules.
Fourthly, most advisors in this matter fail to consider that the core task of adolescents is precisely to break the rules - including those of media consumption and the online code of conduct - with full intent, precisely because they are not supposed to. Control in puberty is an impossibility, unless you have contacts with the CIA and NSA. You can no longer let your offspring grow up as sheltered as we 35 to 45-year-old parents were used to. The world has changed too much. Wanting to do it anyway is too draining.

And because of all the uncertainty about public interference in our family lives, we easily forget what the point of raising children actually is. Jesper Juul, the great man of family psychology, knows: «What our children need in puberty, from the age of 12, 13, 14, is actually just this: to know that there are one or two people in this world who really believe that I am okay. They need that. Many of us don't have such a person in our lives. You can survive well with one, you can live wonderfully with two.»

We can pass on these tips from Pro Juventute to our kids:

• Gib persönliche Daten (Name, Alter, Wohnort etc.) niemals ohne Absprache mit deinen Eltern bekannt
• Benutze im Chat nur Fantasienamen und auch keine Kombinationen mit Vornamen und Geburtsmonat oder Wohnort
• Webcam, Facetime etc. nur für Personen freigeben, die du auch wirklich persönlich kennst
• Wenn du ein komisches Gefühl in einem Chat hast, brich den Chat sofort ab
• Glaube nicht alles, was du im Netz liest oder hörst und spreche mit deinen Eltern oder einer Person deines Vertrauens darüber

(Excerpts from the Pro Juventute information sheet for children and parents)

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Our games expert Marc Bodmer believes that you can only have a say if you play the game.