The more I can design my home to replicate a 90s childhood, the better. If you want to watch toons, it's before and after school and Saturday morning. You play Sonic by sticking a plastic cartridge into a plastic machine. No ads.
My impression is that Roblox has been one of the better online environments for kids. They actively censor communication of personal details through their system which could be used to identify a child. The ability to create something that someone else may use or pay a token amount of money for is actually rewarding, however they will find out that it is not easy to make a meaningful amount of money in the creator economy.
That being said, I wouldn't be surprised if there is a degradation of the platform over time, as we have seen in other online products.
When it comes to marketing and kids, going back well over a decade to when my kids were young I remember the absolute junk that was marketed to kids in TV commercials. Playmobil and Lego (both European) were decent but the American companies went all in for flashy commercials for absolute junk from China. But it was the era when we were supposed to celebrate how much cheap stuff we were getting from China and ignore the fact that much of it was borderline useless. Marketing junk to kids is not a new thing.
I don't know Roblox well, but appreciate the perspective.
When it comes to a game that opens things up for creativity, the free market, and interaction with the wide world, I imagine individual results are going to vary immensely. There might not be a one size fits all answer.
We're still at least a few years away from when I expect I'll be getting pressure to allow online gaming in my house. We still treat video games as a family activity. And my inclination is to keep it that way. But I'll have to see how we navigate that if all their peers are involved in it.
With 4 kids at the end of their teenage years, my impression is that the big screen stuff ended up being largely harmless. It is everything that happens on small screens that is the problem. They can't really hide what they are doing on a big screen as easily and are often open to show parents what they are doing.
My sons really only play now when bored, I have a daughter who is a bit of a gamer girl so she ends up on servers with guys playing Star Citizen. It's a bunch of people coming together to play a game, much healthier than Instagram and the other social media stuff which I feel is as harmful as they say.
I did find the small screen Nintendo games to be a negative, the time spent focusing intently on a small screen just seemed to affect them negatively even if the game was kid friendly and not online.
The more I can design my home to replicate a 90s childhood, the better. If you want to watch toons, it's before and after school and Saturday morning. You play Sonic by sticking a plastic cartridge into a plastic machine. No ads.
My impression is that Roblox has been one of the better online environments for kids. They actively censor communication of personal details through their system which could be used to identify a child. The ability to create something that someone else may use or pay a token amount of money for is actually rewarding, however they will find out that it is not easy to make a meaningful amount of money in the creator economy.
That being said, I wouldn't be surprised if there is a degradation of the platform over time, as we have seen in other online products.
When it comes to marketing and kids, going back well over a decade to when my kids were young I remember the absolute junk that was marketed to kids in TV commercials. Playmobil and Lego (both European) were decent but the American companies went all in for flashy commercials for absolute junk from China. But it was the era when we were supposed to celebrate how much cheap stuff we were getting from China and ignore the fact that much of it was borderline useless. Marketing junk to kids is not a new thing.
I don't know Roblox well, but appreciate the perspective.
When it comes to a game that opens things up for creativity, the free market, and interaction with the wide world, I imagine individual results are going to vary immensely. There might not be a one size fits all answer.
We're still at least a few years away from when I expect I'll be getting pressure to allow online gaming in my house. We still treat video games as a family activity. And my inclination is to keep it that way. But I'll have to see how we navigate that if all their peers are involved in it.
With 4 kids at the end of their teenage years, my impression is that the big screen stuff ended up being largely harmless. It is everything that happens on small screens that is the problem. They can't really hide what they are doing on a big screen as easily and are often open to show parents what they are doing.
My sons really only play now when bored, I have a daughter who is a bit of a gamer girl so she ends up on servers with guys playing Star Citizen. It's a bunch of people coming together to play a game, much healthier than Instagram and the other social media stuff which I feel is as harmful as they say.
I did find the small screen Nintendo games to be a negative, the time spent focusing intently on a small screen just seemed to affect them negatively even if the game was kid friendly and not online.
I meant to vote good change. Bad stuff won't happen.