Gaming Tots: How young is too young?

Submitted by Kat on January 3, 2007 – 6:24 pm7 Comments

Kids are gaming younger and younger these days. Here’s a question on Ask Metafilter about getting a Nintendo DS for a 3-year-old.

My neighbor’s boy turned 3 less than a month ago. He loves to “play” my DS Lite and his 12-year-old sister’s DS Phat. He knows where the stylus is on each system, and can get it out and tap on the screen himself, but I don’t really think he understands how to move characters. If we give him Nintendogs, he laughs at the puppies running around the screen… but he doesn’t really know how to pet them, even though we’ve shown him. He also knows what my PSP is (though sometimes he calls it a DSP – combo handheld, anyone?) and likes to watch over my shoulder if I’m playing a game. If his older brother hands him the PS2 controller, he will push buttons, but doesn’t really understand that you have to press X to make the car go and steer with your other hand, for example. I certainly wouldn’t buy a $100-or-more handheld console for him, though – sometimes he taps on the DS screen too hard, for one thing, and for another… he really isn’t coordinated enough to play the games yet.

For Christmas, he got one of those V-Tech Vsmiles. One of the games he got is Thomas the Tank Engine, and in one of the games on that cartridge, you have to fly Thomas’ helicopter friend around. He certainly knows how to fly by moving the joystick, and knows how to change directions, but not much more. The object in the game is to fly Sir Toppum Hat’s sick friend to the hospital, but he doesn’t understand that there’s a goal besides just flying around. And in this game, hitting a cloud with your helicopter lowers your health… well, even though we try to explain that clouds are bad, he purposely hits them, saying “I have to push them out of my way!” He certainly does enjoy the game, and that’s what’s most important, but I don’t know that having a video game is any better for him than PBS TV shows. I suppose it improves his coordination.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s very cute to see him playing games, and I’m all for kids gaming – I just think he’s a little too young to really get the full effect. Sure, I’d love to see him play a Wii, but I don’t think I’d trust him with the Wiimote… he still likes to run and jump around, and the Wiimote could slip out of his hand and break, or break something else! I suspect he’d do great with one of those Dora the Explorer games – he participates with the show – if only we could get him to understand exactly how the mouse moves the cursor on screen. What do you think? How young is too young?

Subnet6

I say, sit him in front of an episode of modern marvels, (building pyramids or something), and let him loose with a set of wooden building blocks.

Motor skills, A B C’s , and history, all while you’re sitting with them folding some laundry!
http://www.farbot.com/ Paul

The child is obviously too young. Dig into some kid-oriented sites like GamerDad.com for some good ideas on what kinds of things are good for starter gamers.
Stephen

I equipped my daughter, who is 20 months old, with a Wii Remote and Nunchuk today. She loves the analog stick but I’m sure she has no idea what it’s for. I even put the wrist strap on her, and when she lost interest in it and let go, she was shocked to see it not fall to the floor.

The first game I ever had her play was Super Mario Bros. That was about three months ago. She loved pressing the button and laughed when Mario jumped, but when I tried to explain the D-pad she didn’t seem interested.

I have an old picture of her holding a Gamecube controller (correctly) in my locker at work.
Subnet6

“I have an old picture of her holding a Gamecube controller (correctly) in my locker at work.”

Does it make me a geek if I think that is just pure awesome?
Kristy

I still find it amusing that I can usually tell which posts are by Kat simply from the titles that show up in my RSS reader

But really–I would think some of this would have to rely on the specific capabilities of the child/children in question at that age.
robby1051

I have to agree with kristy, it depends on what the child is capable of. My 2 yr old (she will be 3 in 2 weeks) plays The New Super Mario Bros. on the ds and she is getting better everythime, she also knows the different buttons to use to play gamecube or 360 games and when she doesnt she will ask.
But I think there is definitly now such thing as too young..
(she also uses my laptop to go to Nickjr.com using autocomplete in the url field she knows just type nickjr)
http://notawesome.wordpress.com NotAwesome

Three is too young.

“Screen time” needs to be limited for kids. Think of it: TV, portable DVD players, computers, cell phones, iPods, all those cheap LCD games/gizmos, portable game systems, monitors in SUVs and more. Children should have a broader range of non-screen media to engage their minds.

I read this great letter from a gaming father on a blog a year or so ago, about how he limits his young daughter’s media consumption to an hour a day. She gets to decide on which one it will be: TV (PBS only), computer, DVD or whatever. He also observed that her classmates in school, their imaginations seemed to be hijacked by someone else’s media. All they drew were Spidermen or SpongeBobs, nothing of their own creation, just regurgitation of products and marketing.

I saw the same kind of thing with my three- and five- year old nephews: all they wanted to play with were Power Rangers and Ben Ten action figures. My bf and I tried to create narratives for them out of plain old arctic animals. It was interesting.

I made the mistake of letting my five-year old nephew play Mario Kart on my DS. I thought, what could be the harm? He just wants to be like his older brother (who had one of his own). But he became frickin’ obsessed and literally would not stop asking me to play it: negotiating, bribing, pestering. I had forgotten what it’s like to be that age, how easily something like this could take hold of you. His older brother barely looked at us for our entire visit, his head was buried in his DS the entire time.

I’ve seen kids straggling behind their parents in stores, sitting in restaurants, totally disengaged from their parents and relatives, the world around them. Faces held close to GameBoys. This is not cool to me. Children this age need to be taught that people, real ones, are more important than games. And limits need to be set on screen/play time.

A Leapster might be a relatively less evil thing. It has a touchscreen (so it’s DS-like) and my three-year old nieces love them. Still, all of the cartridges seem to utilize SpongeBob and other TV/movie characters, but at least there’s some educational value. Great post, btw.