Boys, Online Gaming, and Belonging
Last month, Common Sense Media released a report entitled “Boys in the Digital Wild: Online Culture, Identity, and Well-Being.” The study does well in replacing often reductive and alarmist anecdotes about online life with actual data from the boys who are experiencing it. The findings are broad and interesting: Almost seven in ten boys are exposed to content promoting damaging gender stereotypes online; more than 90% of male teenagers are served messages about body transformation; over half the boys surveyed reported that online influencers have given them practical, real-life help. The report is rich and nuanced, and I recommend it to all boy parents, regardless of their sons’ age.
The report’s look at online gaming caught my attention in particular. Parents often speak to me about their boys’ gaming habits, often in tones of concern (e.g., “He and his friends are playing FIFA/Call of Duty/Fortnite all the time”). This is an understandable reaction, of course, particularly for those of us who grew up without video games. We should not surrender the notion that healthy engagement with friends can and should involve in-person encounters and non-electronic activity—especially with studies suggesting that half of teenagers spend more than four hours a day on screens for reasons unrelated to school. This is one of the reasons that Browning has launched Reclaiming Focus: A Study on Screen Time, Connection, and Well-Being, where we will examine how screens can bring boys closer to their learning, to one another, and to purpose. Aaron Grill, Director of Innovation and Technology, is leading this initiative and wrote about it in the last edition.
“Being online will remain a fact of life for many of our boys, but with our attention and our love, we can do a great deal to help ensure that it does not harm their well-being—and may even work in its favor.”
The Common Sense survey is not simply demanding vigilance about our kids’ screentime. It also encourages us to consider the experience of gaming and to understand what gaming means to the boys themselves. Parents who have intuited that there are actually prosocial outcomes from video games with friends (e.g., “This is how kids connect these days”) will find support in the data; indeed, for more than half of boys surveyed, online game play gives them a real sense of belonging, of being liked, and of room to be authentic. At a time where there is real worry about the phenomenon of male loneliness, we should not minimize the potential benefits that may be available from collective gaming. Moderate online game play is neither categorically damaging nor exclusively a waste of a boy’s time.
On the other hand, the Common Sense study notes that 70% of boys in gaming spaces regularly encounter harassment or bullying in the games’ chat features, with more than half of players exposed to racist, homophobic, or sexist commentary. Bearing witness to insidious antisocial talk does not mean that boys will endorse or participate in it, of course—but we cannot be blithe about what it takes to be a resister or an upstander in such moments. As difficult as it can be to go against the crowd to protect one’s integrity and values in real life, it may be exponentially more difficult when dealing with the anonymous, abstracted spaces of online gaming. This is all the more reason that both school and home should regularly foreground the importance of aligning one’s life with values that promote empathy, resilience, and autonomy. In the popular imagination, the chief online threats to boys’ well-being emerge from radicalized and conspiratorial chatrooms, or influencers who assert that masculine success is entirely a matter of heterosexual conquest, swollen biceps, and the number of speedboats a guy owns. But Common Sense reminds us that the most immediate challenges to a boy’s ethical ecology—and to Browning’s values of compassion, courage, and dignity—may come from the normalization of disrespectful, dehumanizing commentary that attends some gaming activity.
Virtually all influential technologies change our relationship to the world in ways both positive and negative. The automobile brought freer and more efficient movement, but also environmental degradation and dislocation of community. Telephones enabled long-distance connection, yet destroyed letter-writing as a practice. So it is with boys’ gaming. There are aspects that, in moderation, may actually be beneficial, and there are parts that clearly present challenges to healthy relational and ethical norms. We cannot wish away the complications of the online world, and it doesn't help to give in to hysteria or moral panic. As with so much else in parenting, our best bet is to be relentless in extending to boys our curiosity (“What do you like best about this game? Could I play it with you sometime?”), our clarity (“Our family’s values don’t stop being important because you’re online, right?”), and our care (“I see this is important to you, and you’re important to me, so we can always talk about it.”). Being online will remain a fact of life for many of our boys, but with our attention and our love, we can do a great deal to help ensure that it does not harm their well-being—and may even work in its favor.