Random thoughts

[ponycollector101]

I’m late but I feel it is important to teach kids the importance to play and use imagination. As someone growing up with Nintendo DS dsi etc it was sure not like how iPads or tablets affect kids today... it seems endless as some games could be beaten or if you’re stuck you just move on to another or get bored.

Instagram is a culprit of forever scrolling I catch myself in.

 

[Winged Mirage]

If nothing else, micro transactions in games need to die. Especially in kids games. It’s very exploitative.

I’d rather pay for the whole game up front than be charged for it endlessly. And then the game could just get pulled and you lose everything, in the case of online-only games. I want to play it whenever I want years down the line.

 

[ElpuntThing]

Agreed on microtransactions, and also lootboxes! Legalised gambling is NOT OK for children!

I grew up with toys only up to about age 9, then DSlite as my only video game until my first smartphone at age 13. By that time I'd lost the appeal of imagination games, so today's kids are a bit of a mystery to me. Why don't they all have toy collections the size of mine! XD

 

[Skybreeze]

If nothing else, micro transactions in games need to die. Especially in kids games. It’s very exploitative.

I’d rather pay for the whole game up front than be charged for it endlessly. And then the game could just get pulled and you lose everything, in the case of online-only games. I want to play it whenever I want years down the line.

This is why I stopped playing Neopets (hahaha I’m old) years ago. I hated that they introduced clothing and paying for things. It used to be an amazing game and place to be creative then it became just about money and corporate. So sad.

But I agree. Kids need to be kids again. I grew up mid 80-90’s and my fondest memories are of playing outside, swimming, fishing riding bikes, going to friends houses to play. I will always remember playing “babysitters club” with my best friend and her older sister (who was always the Mom) and we still to this day all still laugh about this. Or the time we decided it was amazing fun to take our sleeping bags and ride down the stairs in them and we ended up putting a hole in the basement wall.

Kids need to be able to do things and learn by doing and not by being placed into bubble wrap and protected from everything. I look at some of my friends who constantly clean and disinfect their kids and don’t let them play at the park because it’s dirty and I think “how the heck did I live this long?” I literally grew up playing in mud, dirty, lakes, rivers/streams, fishing catching frogs... I don’t get it but I guess that officially makes me old.

 

[ElpuntThing]

This is why I stopped playing Neopets (hahaha I’m old) years ago. I hated that they introduced clothing and paying for things. It used to be an amazing game and place to be creative then it became just about money and corporate. So sad.

But I agree. Kids need to be kids again. I grew up mid 80-90’s and my fondest memories are of playing outside, swimming, fishing riding bikes, going to friends houses to play. I will always remember playing “babysitters club” with my best friend and her older sister (who was always the Mom) and we still to this day all still laugh about this. Or the time we decided it was amazing fun to take our sleeping bags and ride down the stairs in them and we ended up putting a hole in the basement wall.

Kids need to be able to do things and learn by doing and not by being placed into bubble wrap and protected from everything. I look at some of my friends who constantly clean and disinfect their kids and don’t let them play at the park because it’s dirty and I think “how the heck did I live this long?” I literally grew up playing in mud, dirty, lakes, rivers/streams, fishing catching frogs... I don’t get it but I guess that officially makes me old.

I didn't have that experience because my parents were super overprotective, so maybe I can offer some insight? ^_^
I wasn't allowed to friends' houses unless my parents vetted them first, so I frequently had friends at my house. I was never a particularly social kid though, so my closest friend was my little sibling. We're still super close despite a 3-year age difference. At that age we had all the same interests: care bears, horses (not mlp though), plushies, pokemon, etc. We were only allowed to play unsupervised inside the house or out in the back yard, but our parents also took us on frequent walks with our dogs. We played a lot of pretend. In good weather we would be out back doing live-roleplay, pretending to be pokemon or wolves or horses. In bad weather (england, so frequent) we would be in one of the big bedrooms playing out scenes with our toys. There was advanced political drama, war, and more tame things like school or house. We had a bunch of secondhand 80s carebears VHSes and we particularly liked to play the kinds of story you see there (and in g1mlp). We would have villains who were trying to destroy peoples or places and we had to fight them with Good Magic. We often got in trouble for being dirty, even just from playing out back.

I agree that my childhood wasn't the healthiest; I've grown into a pretty messed-up adult. But this parenting style has spread so that it now covers nearly every kid, and that needs to stop before the adult population is made up of dozens of me's, or worse.

 

[ponycollector101]

Yeah I think that is ridiculous too. Kind of reminds me of how club penguin shut down. I had paid for a membership most of my life, but as it shut down it was a reminder that internet games we spend money for will not always be forever. Another example is Neopets or webkinz. Also webkinz did the same thing became all about a deluxe membership.

I feel the same. Just let the kids be kids. Studies show how these tablets and stuff affect brains today too and they developed differently than kids without using that kind of technology which is kind of scary, that we don’t know for sure yet how they make us develope. I know that one thing phones do is cause people to be scared to talk in person with things, which I understand being nervous for things, but we shouldn’t only want to talk to people on phones. At social events everybody hides on their phone. One quote that shows this I remember is a phone can bring you close to someone far away but can take you farther away from someone in front of you.

But I do think some kids have a good imagination but it is truly upsetting to see kids addicted to phones and not wanting to play with toys