Pay. Attention.

No, not to me. As a matter of fact, it’s probably better that you pay me no attention at all. Though I like it when you do. I especially like it when you comment. Because that’s FUN and ENCOURAGING.

No, when I say pay attention, I’m talking to myself. And I’m reminding myself to pay more attention to my kids.

And the irony, of course, is that as I’m writing this I’m paying absolutely no attention to my kids. Granted, it’s 9:53pm, and they should be in bed already. So I shouldn’t HAVE TO pay attention to them right now. The only reason they’re still awake is because daddy is allowing them to play Rock Band with him. And when they’re rocking out, I’m mostly off the hook. Though I do play a mean fake guitar.

What’s even more ironic is that I’ve decided, today, to write about how I’m starting to realize that I should be paying the MOST attention to my kids when they’re playing video games. Because if I don’t, according to some things I’m reading, my kids may one day kill themselves. Yes, I know that sounds a bit extreme. And yesterday when a friend of mine linked to an article, “How Video Games Kill the Mind and Body” on Facebook I had a knee-jerk, “I call bullsh*t” reaction to it after just reading the title, and  after a cursory read of it, I got snarky. My friend called me out on my snarkiness, and so I stepped away from the computer for a little while and spent much of the day thinking about that exchange. After talking with my dear friend M. about some video game concerns, I realized that my friend L. was right. I was playing Devil’s Advocate, I dismissed the concept too soon, and, while it’s extreme, it probably is something parents of young children and teen-agers need to become more aware of.

The article I’m referring to is an interview conducted with Mrs. Elizabeth Wooley, who founded an organization called Online Gamers Anonymous after her son, an avid–and some, including me, would say addicted–online gamer, committed suicide. He started online gaming and became so obsessed with his online life that he stayed up all night playing, quit his job, and became unable to support himself.  A little over a year later he killed himself. She says that after her son died she came in contact with many other families whose children had become so addicted to online video game play that they fell into deep depressions, abandoned their real lives entirely and, after becoming destitute, homeless and unable to get away from the gaming life, killed themselves. She talks about parents who allowed their living child to die of malnutrition because of their utter and complete attentiveness to a game, women who’ve left their husbands to be with men they’ve met gaming online, fathers who neglect their families to play with their online friends, and brilliant teens who lose scholarships because, once on their own in their college dorms, they do nothing but play games all day and night.

I have to say this woman is remarkably fair-minded. She’s not demonizing games. She may be broad-blanketing things a little bit–I, for one, would say that she really needs to clarify that’s she’s talking about ONLINE games rather than all video games; Wii Mario Kart, Kinect Adventures and Rock Band do not share ANY of the characteristics of the games like EverQuest to which she’s referring. But all in all she’s only calling for awareness, moderation, and supervision rather than banning, outlawing, or legislating.

To be fair to me, the visceral reaction I had to this article was borne of a childhood full of scapegoating the media, pushing for regulation and banning, and outright demonizing everything from t.v. shows to video games. I vaguely recall, in my teens, people trying to outlaw Loony Toons, Tom & Jerry and other cartoons for breeding recklessness and violent tendencies in children. Then there were the accusations that Dungeons and Dragons games were making kids violent. Then, video games. And now, the accusation that video games are making kids suicidal. My opinion on these accusations had always been “I never got violent, and I watched Loony Toons ALL THE TIME” (after all, we had a total of 3-5 television stations when I was growing up. What else was on?); “I played Dungeons and Dragons. I don’t think I’m really a sword wielding elf in real life;” and “I play video games. I don’t go outside hitting people with baseball bats after playing Grand Theft Auto.” However, after my friend called me out on my knee-jerk snark, I realized two other things: I have made it a point to NEVER play online video games, and the one time I did play one (Farmville) I found very quickly that I had to get away from it as soon as possible. After all, when my real cat’s food and water bowls were empty and stayed that way for five minutes because my online dog needed to be fed within five minutes of my returning home for the day, I knew there was a problem. I withdrew from the game that very day.

Here are the differences, I think, between online gaming and traditional video games:

1. You can become an entirely other person online. And you can create every single thing about that person, from how they look to how they talk to what their skills are. And these things can be diametrically opposed to who you are in real life. An online gamer can, quite literally, reinvent herself. In the games my family and I play, our characters are pretty well-defined. For instance, I’m a HUGE fan of the Final Fantasy series (I think we’re in the middle of playing XIII now), which is essentially a quest novel in video game form. The main character is always a young Japanimated boy with spiky hair and a bad attitude. Also, he has no parents. And he doesn’t know who he is. Or where he comes from. So we play the entire game as an ill-tempered amnestic orphan. Certainly not an identity we would create for ourselves. And our role is VERY well spelled out. We get stronger, so we can fight proscribed battles that are already programmed into the game and are thus not determined by any choices we make. Just like in a novel. Page 125 is going to come no matter what choices you make. Nothing’s gonna get page 125 there faster or slower except for how much time you put into reading the book. It’s page 125. And nothing is going to change what’s on page 125. The video games I play are predictable and pretty much plotted. Which brings me to my second point.

2. From what I understand of online games, they are totally open-ended. If your avatar (or electronic self) decides to go left rather than right, the entire game is changed forever. It’s like living in a real world rather than a novel. That’s not an option in the games I play. Again, page 125 is going to come to my snarky, amnestic orphan whether I decide to turn left or right. If I can even turn left. Because in the games I play the game makers have ways to prevent me from going left if I haven’t unlocked the plot point that allows me to do so. The idea of playing a game that would allow ONE decision in gaming to change the ENTIRE COURSE of my character’s future terrifies me from a game perspective. You mean I can NEVER KNOW what would happen if I’d just turned right? NEVER? But I can see how, if I let myself get into it, I could find it addicting. I mean, tomorrow, in my real life, the only thing that will happen if I turn right instead of left is that I’ll have to make a U-turn, or go 20 minutes out of my way, to get my kids to summer camp. Other than that, no major change will occur in my future or my fate. But in an online game if I turn left, I could meet my future online life-partner. Or co-quester. In an online game, I would think that amounts to the same thing. Which brings me to my third point.

3. In an online game, the “other characters” are REAL PEOPLE. To be honest, this is the #1 exact thing that has always kept me away from online games. Because, and I say this even to my friends out there who play games online, I am terrified of you. Part of me is terrified of you in the “stranger danger” way. How do I know you’re really you? More importantly, even if you are really you, how do I know that online you’re not pretending to be a kindly elf when in reality you’re a maniacal clown? So there we’ll be, playing along for weeks, or months, hunting trolls together, and I’ll turn around at some point and instead of looking at Lord of the Ring’s Legolas fighting next to me I’ll be looking at that clown from Stephen King’s “It.” SCARIEST. CLOWN. EVER. And then I will have to flee from my computer and hide in a dark closet, rocking. But then I’ll realize I’m in a dark closest, which is where evil clowns from 80’s horror movies like Poltergeist always hide before they kill people, and I’ll have to run out of the closet. And then I’ll see the computer and your maniacal clown face will be there looking at me, laughing. And I’ll cry. So no, I do not want to play Everquest with you. Ever. Also, another part of me is worried that I’m so incompetent at the game play that I’m going to totally wreck your experience, and you’re going to hate me forever. And who wants to play a game to make enemies? Especially of people I love talking to in the school parking lot. Finally, I’m just not a particularly social person, game-wise. If I want to socialize, let’s meet up at each other’s houses to have a glass of wine or something (I’m having a purse party on Saturday! Local friends are welcome to come over!) Or let’s get the kids together for an afternoon swim and have a cup of coffee and some apple strudel.

I’ve digressed there, haven’t I? Okay, maybe a little. The point is that online games bring gamers into contact with real people. And while that terrifies me for all the reasons stated above, I can imagine that for young people whose human interactions are less than stellar, the idea that you’re “meeting up” with your friends online, living a life as a person who is far more awesome than you think you are in real life and does things with far more skill than you think you have in real life, with perhaps more friends than you really have in real life–well, that could be addictive. Which brings me to the fourth difference:

4. Online video games can literally allow gamers to live a second life. I mean, isn’t one of the games out there actually called “Second Life”? That, alone, should tell us something. Especially if our kids are playing it. Kids, teen-agers, twenty-somethings should not have a second life. Second lives are for spies and people in witness protection, not for young people who have not yet gotten their first, real, only life off the ground. Because while sometimes life can resemble a video game (and during my days when I played a lot of games, I often found myself saying to my husband–then boyfriend–you know, this is JUST like in that video game!), a video game life is NOT a life. There is no programmer at work behind all of this. Nothing is pre-written, or proscribed (I mean, unless you believe in predestination. At the risk of sounding like the band Rush, I always choose Free Will. And this could take me on an ENTIRE tangent about God, religion, and all that. But I’ll save that for another entry).

How I want to conclude this one is in saying this:

1. Hey. L. I’m sorry I was snarky. You were right. And now I’m going to post a link to my blog on your page so you can read this and see how you. inspire. me.

2. I’m probably not going to let my kids play online video games. We’ll stick with Rock Band. It gives them a nice introduction to good music, allows me to discuss “inappropriate vs. appropriate dress choices,” and helps me teach them that “Crocodile Rock” does NOT really start with, “I remember when rock was young, Gnomeo and Juliet had so much fun.” )Elton John, I love you, but WHY did you do that to your song? It was a cute movie, it was great that you could actually make “Romeo and Juliet” work as a fairy tale about Garden Gnomes, but WHY did you mess with that song?) Also, “Just Dance” is good. The song “Pata Pata” is Made of Awesome. But the song Lollipop is not the one from the 50’s. It’s a lot . . . less . . . innocent.

3. My friends who really DO play online games, and who I know read this blog because you commented before. And you’re in SCIFI with me (something else I’ll post about later). And any OTHER readers out there who play online games. What do you think? Are they addictive? And if and when you play, do you have a hard time pulling yourself away? And what advice would you give to parents who are okay with their kids playing video games normally, about allowing kids to play online? And this could be not just games like EverQuest and Second Life, but games like Farmville, Club Penguin and Moshi Monsters? Because the girls REALLY want to play on the Moshi Monster online game, but it’s got some of those same “living online” elements that these other games have. Other than only allowing them to play under supervision, limiting their screen time, only allowing them to play after they’ve completed homework and chores, and all that, do you have any other advice?

4. And hey, husband! I think you’re awesome and I’m coming to bed as soon as I publish this. But what do you think about all this?

And finally:

5. What do you all want me to blog about next? I’m taking requests.

Now I’m going to go hug my kids who are still awake, through no fault of my own. I sent them to bed ten minutes after I started writing this. Because I was paying attention.