I recently read reporting on how much time boys and young men spend gaming, including data suggesting that average gaming time among males ages 15 to 24 has more than doubled over roughly the last decade and a half. The teenagers interviewed didn't describe gaming only in negative terms; many said it helped them connect with friends and escape some of the stress they were carrying. Others acknowledged that gaming had become addictive and displaced activities they knew were valuable. That complexity matters because parents can make mistakes if they assume the game itself explains everything. Gaming may be where a child experiences real competence, where problems make sense, where effort gets rewarded, and where progress is clearly visible. If the rest of life feels confusing or discouraging, the game can feel unusually safe. Before we ask how quickly to remove it, we should probably ask what the child is getting there that feels harder to find elsewhere.
Dr. Kathy said one of the first things parents should do is actually acknowledge the skill they see. A child may have excellent hand-eye coordination, quick problem-solving ability, a strong memory, impressive strategic thinking, or the ability to make decisions quickly under pressure. Those are real abilities, and pretending otherwise will only convince the child that we don't understand what they enjoy. Parents can say, “You are really good at this, and I can see why,” while still making clear that no single ability is large enough to carry the whole weight of identity. That is the balance we need because competence is one of the Five Core Needs, and kids should experience the satisfaction of doing something well. The problem begins when competence starts trying to answer questions it was never designed to answer.
Competence Cannot Carry Security, Identity, and Belonging Too
Dr. Kathy used our own podcast as an example. If our entire sense of security depended on download numbers, if our identity became “people who have a successful podcast,” and if belonging depended on whether listeners continued to affirm us, the podcast would quickly turn from joyful conversation into stressful competition. The same thing can happen with a child and gaming. The game may begin as something enjoyable and gradually become the place where the child feels most successful, most known, most powerful, or least anxious. Then losing does not simply mean losing a round; it threatens competence. Being excluded from a gaming group can begin to feel like a threat to belonging, and stepping away from the device may feel like giving up the only environment where the child knows who they are.
This is why the Five Core Needs must work together rather than collapse into competence. Security asks, Who can I trust? Identity asks, Who am I? Belonging asks, Who wants me? Purpose asks, Why am I alive? Competence asks, What do I do well? A healthy child needs all five, and each one should eventually be rooted most deeply in God and supported through family, church, relationships, responsibilities, and real-world experience. Gaming may legitimately strengthen competence, and it may even provide some community, but it is too fragile to become the foundation underneath everything else. A leaderboard, win streak, or online community cannot safely tell a child whether their life matters.
Sometimes Gaming Is Less About Fun and More About Escape
One thing that stood out to me in the reporting was how often young men described gaming as an escape from stress. That makes sense because people naturally move toward places where they feel more capable when the rest of life feels uncontrollable. A teenager who cannot make his parents stop fighting may be able to control what happens in a game. Or a child whose friendships feel unpredictable may prefer an online environment where roles are clearer and social interactions revolve around a shared task. In those moments, gaming may be regulating something deeper than boredom.
That is why taking the game away immediately can miss the larger issue. The limit may still be necessary, especially if sleep, school, relationships, or health are being damaged, but parents should remain curious about what was underneath the pattern. What stress was the game helping your child avoid? What happens immediately before the gaming session stretches from one hour to five? If the game has become the only place your child believes, “I know what I'm doing here,” then removing access without rebuilding competence elsewhere may leave the original insecurity untouched. Good parenting addresses both the behavior and the need it may be trying to meet.
The Five Core Needs Help Us Ask Better Questions
Dr. Kathy affirmed that competence matters because children need to know they can do things that matter. If they do not experience competence in meaningful areas of life, they will naturally gravitate toward whatever gives them that experience most reliably. That could be gaming, but it could also be social media, reading, athletics, school, music, or any other activity where a child feels particularly capable. Even a good activity can become unhealthy when it is being asked to make the child feel secure, important, wanted, and purposeful all at once. The question is therefore not simply, “How many hours are they gaming?” but, “What role has gaming started to play in the architecture of their life?”
Parents can look at the other needs alongside it. Does your child have people they trust when life becomes hard? Can they describe themselves with qualities unrelated to gaming? Do they belong meaningfully to the family and church, not just to an online group? Do they have people to serve and responsibilities that make their presence necessary? Are there other areas where they can develop competence through practice and perseverance? These questions help us move from screen management to whole child formation, where the deeper work needs to happen.
The Thing That Relieves Stress Can Also Create More of It
Another complication parents should notice: the activity a child uses to escape stress may also create more stress. Dr. Kathy pointed out that technology can involve constant stimulation, competition, adrenaline, and the pressure to play another round, improve, beat a friend, or maintain status. The child may honestly believe gaming helps them calm down, while the broader pattern leaves them more activated, sleep deprived, isolated, or anxious. That does not mean the teenager is lying about how they feel. It means immediate relief and long term health aren't always the same.
Adults know this pattern in plenty of other areas. Scrolling can feel restful while leaving us restless. Avoiding a hard conversation can lower anxiety tonight while making the relationship worse next week. Skipping an assignment can produce immediate relief while increasing stress tomorrow. Kids need help learning to distinguish between something that numbs stress and something that actually strengthens them to handle stress. Gaming can sometimes provide healthy recreation, but recreation should restore us for life rather than increasingly replace it.
Kids Need Real Places to Become Competent
If gaming is the only place where a teenager experiences mastery, parents should not merely reduce the game; we should enlarge the child's world. Dr. Kathy encouraged parents to have expectations around chores, homework, exercise, time outside, sibling relationships, and family participation. These aren't distractions from the child's “real” interests because they're also places where real world competence develops. Learning to cook dinner, mow the lawn, repair something, manage money, hold a job, keep a commitment, serve at church, help a sibling, or finish a difficult assignment gives children evidence that their abilities work outside a virtual environment. Those experiences can be slower and less rewarding at first, which is exactly why they matter.
Parents should also transfer the strengths they observe in gaming into other settings. If your child is an excellent strategist, where else can they use that skill? If they communicate well with a team online, can they lead a project or serve with younger students? If they have strong visual spatial ability, would design, mechanics, art, engineering, or construction awaken something? If they persist through the same difficult game level thirty times, they already understand perseverance even if they insist they hate practicing piano or doing algebra. We can help kids see that the brain they use successfully in the game comes with them when the screen turns off.
Overprotection Can Make the Screen Feel Safer Than Real Life
Our conversation also turned to a college student who had stopped attending classes and was spending his days gaming instead. The game had originally been a coping tool for college stress, but over time it seems to have become a way to avoid the very challenges he needed to learn to face. Dr. Kathy connected this to a larger developmental issue: if parents have made too many decisions for children or repeatedly rescued them, the transition to independent life can feel overwhelming. College then demands choices, initiative, self management, relationships with unfamiliar people, and the ability to recover from mistakes without Mom or Dad standing nearby. If those muscles haven't developed gradually, retreat starts to make sense.
That is why resilience cannot suddenly begin at eighteen. Kids need appropriately difficult experiences while they are still home, where failure has consequences but is recoverable. Let them manage an assignment, make a decision, deal with a coach, solve a problem, work a job, navigate a disagreement, or experience the discomfort of being new somewhere. Parents can support without taking over. Courage develops because a child repeatedly discovers, “That was hard, and I made it through.” Without those memories, the controlled environment of a game may feel much more attractive than the uncertainty of adult life.
Sometimes Love Requires a Major Reset
Dr. Kathy was firm about the college situation because sometimes the consequences become too significant for gentle adjustments alone. If a young adult is no longer attending classes and gaming has taken over daily life, continuing to pay for college while pretending the current structure is working may not be loving. She suggested that a student in that condition may need to come home, take a semester away, receive counseling or other appropriate support, and rebuild the maturity and habits necessary for independence. That is not punishment for struggling. It is recognizing reality before the child experiences even greater damage through failing classes, debt, isolation, or worsening mental health.
Parents may also need to acknowledge their own part without drowning in guilt. “We didn't know what we didn't know” can be an honest beginning. Maybe set inconsistent limits, or mistakenly believed the device was helping more than it was hurting. Apologizing does not surrender authority. It models humility and gives the family permission to make a new decision based on what they now understand.
Purpose Gives Kids a Reason to Leave the Game
Dr. Kathy eventually moved the conversation toward purpose, and I think that is where it becomes hopeful. She said young people need to believe God designed them for this time and that they are alive in a world with real problems that need solving. That is a much stronger motivation than simply telling a boy he has exceeded his allotted screen time. A teenager may know a game is fun, but he also needs to know his actual life includes assignments, people, needs, gifts, and opportunities an avatar can't complete.
Purpose gives competence somewhere to go. A child becomes good at something not simply to feel impressive, but to contribute. They learn to communicate so they can love people well. They develop strength so they can serve. They learn technology so they can create, not merely consume. They solve problems because families, churches, communities, and the world have real problems where their gifts may matter. The stronger that sense of purpose becomes, the easier it is to recognize when entertainment supports life and when it swallows it.
Mark 10 Shows Us That Good Things Can Become Too Important
As Dr. Kathy and I talked, I thought about the rich young man in Mark 10. He comes to Jesus asking what he must do to inherit eternal life, and Jesus looks at him, then asks him to surrender what has become central to his identity and security. In that world, wealth represented more than money; it also carried status, competence, success, and a significant degree of control. Jesus was not suggesting that money itself was automatically evil. He was showing that something good had become heavy enough to interfere with a man's willingness to follow.
Gaming can work the same way when something enjoyable starts weighing more than it should. Skill is good, competition can be good, technology can be useful, and games can genuinely be fun. But when a child needs success in the game to feel valuable, the activity begins to answer an identity question. When they need it to feel secure, it begins to carry something even heavier. Jesus offers something sturdier: identity received through relationship with Him rather than endlessly earned through performance.
Confidence Grows From Surrender, Not Constant Winning
One of the messages our kids hear constantly is that confidence comes from success. Win enough, achieve enough, become skilled enough, receive enough affirmation, and eventually you will feel secure. The problem is that a confidence built only on performance requires performance to continue. One bad season, failed class, lost friendship, injury, job change, or humiliating defeat can suddenly threaten the entire structure. Christ offers a different foundation: worth is received before achievement, and purpose is discovered by following Him rather than by constructing an impressive identity.
That allows kids to enjoy what they are good at without needing it to prove who they are. They can compete hard and lose. They can enjoy gaming and turn it off. They can become excellent at something without worshiping excellence. They can fail in one arena without believing their life has failed. True security gives competence freedom to become a gift rather than a master.
Help Them Find Something Bigger Than the Screen
Parents don't need to panic just because their child loves gaming. We should observe, ask questions, understand the games, notice the abilities being used, and affirm genuine strengths. At the same time, we need enough courage to notice when gaming is beginning to displace school, sleep, relationships, family participation, faith, responsibility, or other forms of competence. The question is not whether the game is fun. The question is whether it is making the child's world larger or slowly smaller.
Our children were created for more than entertainment, and they were also created for more than success. They were created to know God, love people, develop gifts, serve, solve problems, create, contribute, and grow in wisdom. Gaming can fit inside that life, but it cannot become the life itself. When our kids understand that God created them on purpose, with purpose, for purpose, turning off the screen becomes more than losing access to something enjoyable. It becomes making room for a life that needs them.
Building Real Competence Through the 8 Great Smarts
Word Smart: Help kids transfer communication, storytelling, reading, or game-related interests into writing, debate, teaching, journalism, or meaningful conversation.
Logic Smart: Connect strategy, problem solving, systems thinking, and pattern recognition from games to coding, engineering, finance, chess, robotics, or real-world troubleshooting.
Picture Smart: Encourage design, animation, photography, art, architecture, filmmaking, or other visual skills that turn imagination into something created rather than merely consumed.
Music Smart: Explore performance, composition, production, sound design, worship, or instruments where practice creates real competence over time.
Body Smart: Build physical confidence through exercise, sports, construction, cooking, mechanics, hiking, or hands-on work where progress can be felt in the body.
Nature Smart: Give kids responsibility for animals, gardening, outdoor work, environmental projects, or creation-based interests that connect competence with stewardship.
People Smart: Create opportunities to lead, serve, collaborate, mentor younger kids, volunteer, or participate in groups where relational skill matters.
Self Smart: Help them identify what they are escaping, what stress sends them toward gaming, what genuinely restores them, and what other areas they want to become more capable in.
Remember: However your child is smart, remember that the goal is not to remove every place where they feel successful. We want to expand the number of places where they experience competence while helping them understand that competence itself cannot answer the deepest questions of security, identity, belonging, and purpose. When those needs are rooted more securely in Christ and supported by healthy relationships, gaming can remain what it was always better suited to be: something enjoyable rather than something required to make life feel manageable.