Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey there. You're listening to Rooted at Home with Christian Lloyd, kids pastor at Edmonds First Baptist Church, diving into real life topics that impact kids, parents and families today and discovering what God's word has to say about them.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Well, hello everybody. Welcome back to our podcast on faith and family and everything in between.
I'm excited to get to talk with you today.
We're talking about a topic today that is one that hits home for many, many parents and kids alike, and that is faith and video games. Faith and video games. I feel like every morning I've got Sunday morning, Wednesday night, even during the week, I've got kids that are coming up with me. Mr. Christian, Mr. Christian, Mr. Christian. I got to play Fortnite and I pulled off this super cool trick shot or I got to play Minecraft and you need to check out my world. I built this new house and this really big I, they, they just, they're excited about what they're doing with video games. And so as a parent myself, my daughter has played video games and does play video games. And myself, as an avid gamer myself, I, I do enjoy playing video games. I play, I used to play a lot more than I do now. As you, we're parents, you, those that are listening, parents or grandparents, we know that, that I tell you what, it is easy to, as you get older, to start to not necessarily lose touch with gaming, but to start to, well, it's nine o'. Clock. Do I sacrifice sleep and stay up until midnight playing games or whatever, however you let you stay up, or do I get a full night's sleep?
You know that your kid's gonna wake up in the middle of the night and next thing you know you're gonna be up at 3 and you just went to bed at 12 and now you're awake and you're tired and the next day just grueling.
That is definitely something that I have dealt with myself.
It's the, well, am I, what does that look like? And so I really wanted to talk about faith in video games because again, I'm hearing this so much around the church about video games and there are so many misconceptions when it comes to video gaming and correlations between potentially violence and games and all these different things. And what does that look like for us as parents when we're trying to teach our kids and have a family unit, when we're trying to teach them biblical principles about the Lord, about the gospel, about how we should live righteous, holy lives? We're trying to first and foremost engage our Kids with that. And then they're hearing at school about Call of Duty, which is a military kind of war shooter game where they very, very popular. They're hearing Fortnite and it's just another kind of shooter battle royale kind of a game. And then they're hearing about Minecraft, which is a really fun game where you build different things out of blocks and. But there's scary elements in Minecraft, even potentially when. When they're getting bombarded with those things. We want to find the. Again, the balance, as we talked about in our previous episode about sports and church and what that looks like when you're trying to find the B balance.
It's something that I feel like is there. But if you figure out the balance for parenting, for faith in video games or anything else, if you can figure out balance, just please let me know. Shoot me a text or send me an email or something so we can discuss this balance. If you figured it out, please, I could do some. But let's get into video games in general. So there's many different kinds of video games. And I know if you're not a gamer yourself, you don't really may not know the different kinds and the different systems and things like that. And so just to kind of run through basic video game knowledge, if you will, there's really three main systems and companies nowadays that have video games. One is called Xbox, that's made by Microsoft. They have an Xbox that's out where you can play whatever games on there is PlayStation 5 or PlayStation PS5, that is another one that's made by Sony and they have a bunch of different games and things. And then there is Nintendo. And Nintendo is, I would say, one of the more popular ones because they've been around so long. But Nintendo Switch is really the big console for that. There is also PC gaming or computer gaming, but for kids, at least from my experience that I've seen in the ministry, there's just not as many of those PC gamers that are out there, especially in the kids. So those are the basic consoles that are there and that are available.
Games usually go from rated E for everybody, which means E really e around 10 plus is what the ratings are. But E for everybody, where it's a game that there's no. There's no bad content, there's no violence, really. There's no language, there's no sexual content. There's nothing like that. E games are like that. And then they go all the way up, pardon me, to 18, where those are the ones that are M, I guess, but M was mature. They go from E for everybody, T for teen, and then M for mature. And mature games are where we really get into technically supposed to be 17 plus. And so those are games like Call of Duty because there's violence and killing and there's blood in it and things, there's language in Call of Duty games. There's those sort of things. That's where you get into immature and even mature can have sexual content and sexual themes. And there's a lot of games out there that are just not that people shouldn't play in general, but that kids especially should not touch.
One of those games is the Grand Theft Auto series. I don't know if your child's ever wanted to or brought up Grand Theft Auto or anything that's a game series that even adults I don't know necessarily need to be enjoying just because it's a full of a bunch of horrible content that it's full of drugs in it and drinking and sexual content and just a bunch of bad stuff in it that kids just don't really need to be exposed to. And frankly a lot of adults don't need to be exposed to.
So anyways, that's kind of just some basics on what video games are. Some games that are out there.
There's tons of great, great family friendly options. And I would encourage, especially if you're looking for family friendly, fun games, the Nintendo Switch is probably the best family console that you can get.
There's a lot of great games that are on there that kids can play.
You've got Mario and Mario Kart and we even have a Switch upstairs that we use for our kids ministry that has Mario Kart on it. So they play Mario Kart and things like that. But I would encourage that one if you're thinking about getting a console, if you haven't had a console or anything like that. So but if you want any more information about that, again, since, since I'm a gamer, I really like even talking about this stuff, feel free to reach out and I will gladly give you any information on what console to get or even games that are available, that sort of thing. But I want to do some.
Give you some basic research that is very, it's very interesting just in general about video games. So according to a group called Pew Research center, they did a study in May of 2024 and their report said that among teens who play video games. So teens would be right around that 12 and up range. But really if you're buying a teen game, I'VE seen teen. I've seen kids play games that are teen rated all the way down to 7, 8 year olds. But they said that among those teens specifically that play games, 56% say at least some of the games they play contain violence.
Which then 16% say that all or most of the games that they play are contain violence. And when you look at a lot of video games, well, that's, that's very broadly speaking. There's a lot of games that contain violence. And so you have to look as a parent, are you going to let your child play violence in a game such as Call of Duty that is technically rated m for mature? 17 plus where they're shooting and you're shooting another person, an individual, where there's blood and it's very, a lot more realistic. Or a game called Battlefield. And they have a series, they just released a new one, Battlefield 6. And that's kind of same thing. You shoot and you kill somebody and that sort of thing.
Are you going to let them play that or. But if you're not okay with that, are you okay with Fortnite, which is. Fortnite is easily, easily one of the most popular video games out there right now. They do collaborations with. They've did K Pop Demon Hunters, which we've talked about before.
They, if there's a collaboration between pop culture and a game, Fortnite has done it. That's. They just, they do it. Movies, TV shows, books, they have characters from it. But in that game it's much more cartoony. Yes, you're still shooting a person, but it's incredibly cartoony to the point where I, me personally, I don't have any problem if my daughter wanted to play that game with me. They also have modes that they have that are for younger kids that don't have violence but that are jumping around. Things like that, platformers, as they call them, that I'd be okay with her playing that. But you have to decide for yourself that line. And I say decide for yourself. Really. You need to pray and let the Holy Spirit guide you and know that if you don't feel any check in your spirit about your child playing this game, well then that's great, let them play the game. But do know that you're going to have to have conversations with them about things that may come up based on what kind of games you let them play.
There's Minecraft is a game that I would. I let Parker, my daughter, she's played before where you can go around and build things and yeah, I mean it's, it's really fun, engaging game, but I let her play that one. And there's some scary elements to that. There's some spiders that show up, but they're all blocky. If you haven't seen the game. But there was a movie that just came out, there's spiders and zombies and things in it, but they're all made out of these big square blocks. And so it's not very. That's. I, I would consider it low on the scare factor, but that's a game that you don't have to worry about, is full of language or sexual content or anything like that. It's. There's just nothing there. It's more about creativity. Something that I think we need to encourage more among our children.
And so you just have to think and pray through really what, what do. How far do I want to go as a parent and at what point do I need to say we need to stay, we need to shy away from that?
I would encourage as a parent that you just pray through that and always be aware of. On the back of video games, on the back of the COVID by law, there has to be a rating on it to tell you not only if it's E, T or M, but it also has what content is in it. So you can see, oh, this is rated M for mature. Why is that? Oh, it's due to violence. Okay, well, I'm okay with violence. Oh, wait a second. There's nudity and sexual content in it. No, this is a game we need to put back.
I would encourage, especially parents, if you are going to let your child play any sort of M rated game that you absolutely make sure and check with why. But most of the time M rated games are just not meant for young children. And I'm talking those first through fifth grade. There's a reason why it says 17 plus because of what it deals with.
So anyways, I'll kind of move on on that one. But another study, and I thought this was interesting, boys are far, far more likely than girls to say that they play games that contain violence. 69% of boys say that they play games with violence versus 37 for girls.
And it's. I think that's, it's interesting, but it's not. I think that's kind of expected. Boys tend to, I mean, I have two girls myself and so we rough house and play and all that sort of thing. But boys are really more about that physicality and so they want that, that drive and that violence, if you will. I mean I know that.
I don't know if this would be a good way to describe it, but football can be a violent sport, right? You run and you tackle people. It's very physical. And guys like that. And I think boys enjoy that part of video games as well.
But for violence, you also have to look at the game. What is violence? What does it mean by violence? Because sometimes when it says violence, it's not. It's not really what I would consider violence. There's a game called Fall Guys, which is a lot of fun. Part kind of a party game where you are a little guy and you have to try and run and get over obstacles and jump and you get knocked off and smacked with a little, I don't know, thing. If you've never, if you've ever seen the TV show Wipeout on Wipeout, that's essentially what the game is. And it technically has violence, but it's not really, in my opinion, it's not really violence. I have no problem letting my 7 year old play that game because she enjoys it. But even if you play Mario, I mean even Mario Kart technically has a hint of violence when it comes to throwing shells at each other or trying to drop a banana for someone to trip over.
So you just have to find that line of where, where do you as a parent feel it's okay for my kid to play? What, what are you going to let them see? What kind of content are you willing to let them be exposed to? And then not only that, but then talk about what, talk about that content.
When your child plays a game and they see something and you're, and they don't ask you or you, maybe you see it, you need to make sure you have an understanding of what that game is and to be able to speak on the questions that may come up from it. Even Mario, you've got Mario who goes and tries to save the princess because Bowser constantly steals Princess Peach. And why is that? When there's questions that will come up and you just need to be ready? I would say it is very good for you as a parent to be informed. Not necessarily. Even if you're not a video game person. There are a lot of parents out there and adults in general that they just don't like video games. And that's okay. If you're going to be one of those, then that's okay to not like video games. I personally am not really a sports guy. Um, I don't know, it's interesting to say, but I'll get on ESPN sometimes. And I'll go through and I'll check the scores of football games and things like that before church starts because I want to be in the know to be informed of what, what games happened, who lost, that sort of thing. But me personally, I mean I, I don't spend my Saturdays, or even my Sundays, whatever it may be, watching all the football that I can or watching all the basketball that I can, that's just not enjoyable for me. However, I do want to stay informed so I can have conversations with those that are in the church and parents and families and things like that.
So moving on, there is another big aspect that parents have asked about before. And so there's some research here I want to talk about, but that would be the correlation between games, screen time and what the outcomes that may be when it comes to screen time.
If I let my kids game, what will happen if A, then B, that sort of thing.
And so I've got some research that we did that and then also have some research on video games and violence. There's, every time there's. Unfortunately, we live in a sinful, fallen world. And so we see school shootings, we see just horrible things. And oftentimes when violence comes up in that capacity, especially if it's a young person, it gets brought up well, oh, they played video games, yeah, that, that's why they're violent. That is why they did what they did. To which I say, no, they did what they did because it's a, we live in a sinful, fallen world and that's the cause of all evil in our world. But nonetheless, that's what gets brought up. Video games, they're bad. They're bad and violence and games are bad and that's what we have. So I did a little bit of research for you on that. So the first thing to start with is screen time.
So research shows that excessive screen time, excessive screen time. So including gaming, so we're talking watching tv, letting your kids stare at an iPad the whole day, watching movies, constantly playing games, constantly. Like coming home and the kid jumping right on the games and playing games.
It's actually been associated with issues with poor vocabulary, poor attention spans and even executive function in young children, which is under the age of five. And so this again, it can count for video games as well. But this really goes for those toddlers young ages. And I don't see any three year olds getting on Fortnite anytime soon. But the screen time is an important factor. I know we, my wife and I have really tried to control screen time Although it's hard, isn't it parents? It is hard to control your screen. Your kid's been sitting at school all day. They've either had to sit in a chair or haven't been able to move or all these things. And now nowadays you got the iPads are being checked out at schools and you're doing work on computers. It's hard to get away from screens, just very hard. And sometimes you're out. I know at least with my family, I don't know about yours, but we go out to eat for dinner. We've got a seven year old and a two year old and that two year old wants to, you know, swim in the cheese dip and wants to get a straw and drink it out of the straight, the little salsa container or the cheese dip container. And sometimes you're like, okay, I just want to be able to eat.
So here is Paw Patrol, here's Blippi. I get it and I'm not even knocking that we do that ourselves. But we do need to be careful and understand that there is some correlation between especially the biggest one that I've seen is attention spans.
There is, there is research out there that just baffles my mind when it comes to attention spans and screens. Even as me, as an adult, I know them, I have to manage my screen time. And I can tell you this, I do not do it well.
However, there is something to be said about making sure our kids don't get addicted to screens and having screen times being sucked into screens all the time because their attention spans are plummeting. On average you get about one minute of attention per year of age that the child is. For instance, if you have a seven year old, well, that's seven minutes of attention span. Well now because of video games, screen time, things like that, mainly screen time and excessive screen time at that, that those attention spans are going even lower. We're talking into the five to four minutes for that seven year old and you got a two year old, well shoot, you put them in front of a screen for a while. That attention span is in the seconds, not minutes. And so screens have really technology is such a good resource for us. However, it is also something that we have to be so careful with. So, so careful.
And so screen time is important. So yes, there correlation between excessive, excessive screen time which we're talking, I believe the American Pediatric association recommends that they get about depending on what age they are, they have different screen time recommendations.
In fact, I can tell you what that is in just a second. Apologize. I Didn't get that pulled up. But right here.
So right now, this for the American Academy of Pediatrics. So this is what they claim is too much screen time for each age. So 18 months or younger. So a year and a half, no screen times. No screen time is still the best.
No screen time at all.
So I know I can say I've been guilty of that. I've done that. I'm my 2 year old. And even Parker, my 7 year old, was born right around Covid or sorry, was growing up around the COVID time. So she was a toddler and we're all stuck at home. Well, of course we're going to be on screens. And so she grew up doing that. And I will say as a plus side to having my daughter Parker on that screen time during COVID Man, her vocabulary is just absolutely nuts. She has a huge, huge vocabulary. And it's because she was watching and seeing things on TV and picking that up quickly. And I credit her vocabulary hugely because of her screen time. So again, there is not all just negative to being on screens. But anyway, so screen time just in general, I could do a whole podcast on this. As you can tell, 18 months or younger, no screens at all.
18 months to two years to limit screen time and really avoid solo use. And so don't just, here's an iPad, watch it and do it. Do your own thing. It's more about watching them with them and interactive, that sort of thing. Two to five years.
They say that an hour a day is what you should give screen time for, for an hour a day. And again it's. That's including video games, iPad time, YouTube TV in the morning before school, that's an hour of screen time total through the day. And when you go to six years and older, what they say is that you should place consistent limits on the type, the time spent and the types of media that they do.
And don't let screen time affect sleep, exercise and other behaviors.
And so this includes video games.
And so in our house, of course my daughter goes to school and so she, she is at school most of the day. So during the week she doesn't get as much screen time. Some screen time in the morning beforehand, especially when we're trying to get everybody ready.
Um, because as you, as most parents know, it can be hard to get all the kids ready, even if it's just one. And when you have multiples it's even harder. Um, so we try to limit as best we can, but her iPad has a one hour limit on it and so it can shut down, which we can have a whole nother conversation on what that looks like. I don't want this podcast to be over an hour, but I can give you recommendation after recommendation for parent, parental controls on your video game consoles, for iPad controls, apps that you can use to monitor what your kid is watching.
Technology is fantastic, but you have to be safe. Our kids have to have boundaries to grow up in where they are safe, but also they need to make sure and not be sheltered. There's a difference between being safe and being sheltered.
And so anyways, back to the kind of link of video games. I kind of went off a little tangent on screen time. So violent video games. So right now there is no clear cut evidence, zero evidence that playing a.
And actually a study out of Oxford says this, that there is no correlation between playing violent video games and aggressive behavior.
There's always an outside variable. So as a parent, I know, I know it can be easy sometimes to correlate that, but there is. If your child plays Fortnite or some other violent video game, or even as a grandparent, I know if they do it as well, there's no correlation between, well, they played Fortnite, that means they're going to be violent. They play Call of Duty, that means they're going to be violent. There's no correlation. And so it's important to know the outside factors. As a believer, we are called to disciple our children. It is our job. It's not the church's job, it's not the grandparents job, it's not your friend Susie's job. It's not your uncle's job. It is your job as a parent to disciple your child. And so we need to make sure again, we are setting up boundaries around what video games they get to play. But also know that video games themselves are not evil. They're not inherently evil. They're not bad for you inherently.
My grandfather always used to tell me, my papa always used to say everything in moderation.
As long as you're careful and you're moderate with it, it's okay. It's okay to play video games. If you're going to sit and play video games for half an hour, an hour, that's okay. Well, they also need to be making sure they're going outside, they're reading, they're playing games outside of video and screens, they're doing crafts. There's, there's a limit to everything.
And so just to say there is reason for caution when it comes to screen time and playing video games, but we have to understand that there's, we have to be careful that we don't let our caution stop our kids from enjoying video games and playing games and spending time on screens.
So now let's kind of go back and we've kind of talked some science behind things, but just to touch on some, some faith, talk about faith. And again, this is about faith and family and everything in between.
So we're going to talk through what does it look like for video games and a believer and as a parent, how can we do this faithfully from God's word.
So of course God tells us that we need to be good stewards of all that we've been given. That in fact, a few weeks ago I got to preach a sermon on this very, on this thing about are we ready for the Master's return?
Are you stewarding what you've been given? Are you taking the resources you've been given and doing well? And that's no different with video games. From a Christian perspective. Our time, our attention, our talents and everything like that is they're all gifts from God. God has given us these things. And gaming isn't. There's no inherent bad in it. If you play video games, you're not sinning because you're playing a game.
But again, like with anything else, if it starts to dominate your child's life, to dominate their, dominate their thoughts, dominate what they talk about, if that's all they want to do, then we know that there's something there that you need to kind of pull the reins back on.
Maybe restructure your time limits, restructure what games they're playing and really help them to focus that this is they, they really need to make sure that you're balancing their video game playing and walk with the Lord.
And so you can of course say, hey, instead of an hour of video games, you're going to get 30 minutes of video games and the other 30 minutes, lets read the Bible together, let's do a Bible study together, let's play an activity or a game, let's play a board game. I mean my wife loves board games and card games. I'm again, I'm a gamer, so I'm not as much of a fan. And you can ask her, she'll tell you the same thing. I'm not as much of a fan of games, but board games are great too. Get those board games out and play an activity. Play Uno. My daughter loves Uno. Well, guess what, now there's an Uno game on the Xbox. And again it's clearly not the same, but do something different. Remember that we are given as parents we have the greatest, one of the greatest responsibilities, which is to raise our children, to raise our children to be.
To fear the Lord, a godly fear, to fear the Lord and to trust in him. And that that's what we've been given stewards of. And so we need to make sure and do that appropriately.
Also, we want to make sure that we're not letting our children miss church because they're playing video games or they're isolating themselves.
It's easy to, oh, I am so tired. But Mom, Mom, I stayed up and way too late playing video games and I'm so tired I don't want to go to church. Can we just skip. Obviously we know there's some sort of a problem there.
That's again, goes back to setting up boundaries around our children but making sure that they are discerning the importance of. Well, video games are not life.
It's not your walk in the Lord. They're not. It's not more important than eating. And when it becomes that far, that's an addiction and it becomes even more harder to break.
And again, great thing is we have a awesome resource in the Christian Counseling center here at Edmonds First Baptist Church, which is available for anybody, children as well. If you have a child that needs counseling. And let me tell you, I struggle with anxiety myself and there's a very big stigma surrounding, well, counseling and therapy. Oh, I've got to go talk to a therapist. I'm going to keep that silent and because nobody knows. No, it's. There's not a bad connotation. If your child is struggling with something, then I encourage you to seek out help if you can and let them talk with someone. There is. We have very good professional counselors that are licensed and can help and again, from a biblical perspective of to help them with struggles that they may have.
And so of course, again, gaming is a great way to connect people together, but it's not a replacement for the church.
And this goes a lot for the adults. There are, there are computer games and VR and headsets and things that virtual VR is virtual reality where you put a headset on and it kind of makes you feel like you're in the game.
There's church services that happen in VR and let me tell you, that is. That's not church.
Yeah, you can maybe watch a service and that's cool and all, but you're not actually attending a local body. So when it comes to video games, we Just need to be careful to steward the resources we've been giving and understand that we have to disciple them and help grow them and push them towards the Lord and not towards, not away from the Lord.
And so if you, for parents and families, if you want any sort of help or ideas or things that I can help you with when it comes to limiting things, please let me know. Please reach out. That's what I'm here for. I'm here to help serve you. It's not my job to raise your children, obviously, but it is my job to come alongside you and to help serve you. And so please let me know if there's any way that I can help you. I want to help. Maybe you set up limits on your trials devices that shows they can only play this, this amount of games for this amount of time. Maybe it's limits where you have, where you can turn off on the games, where they can't download new games without your permission. Maybe it's where you set up family rules or activities where, hey, if you complete, if you clean your room, that's five minutes of game time. If you do the dishes, that's another five minutes. If you take the trash, that's another five minutes. And they earn time towards playing games. When they have enough time, they can redeem it. Maybe that's something they could do.
Maybe you only game on weekends and during the week they don't have access to video games. There's different ways, definitely a lot of good ways to balance and help to create these guardrails that they need without completely derailing the train and causing issues and resentment between parents and kids. Because that does happen sometimes.
But if you want any sort of help when it comes to video games or anything, again, please feel free to reach out. I am passionate about kids ministry and serving and helping you as a family and as a parent and your children.
Also, I'm passionate about video games. I'm right now playing through Pokemon Za, which is the new Pokemon game. And I'm trying to catch them all and catch all the Pokemon and play and I am having an awesome time. It's on the Nintendo Switch, very fun. I've really enjoyed it. But I've got my team set up. I went back and got all my old school Pokemon with I've got my Charizard and my Blastoise and don't have Venusaur unfortunately, but I've got Pikachu, I've got my old team and if you're a millennial like played Pokemon before and again, it's definitely not inherently sinful, as some people will believe, but that's what I've been playing through right now. So if you have any questions, anything like that, please don't hesitate to reach out to me.
And any other questions about video games or anything, I'll gladly talk with you about it. If you want to stick around for some upcoming episodes. Like I said, we've got some really good content in kind of waiting. And so we're going to talk about holidays and what that looks like for kids and families and talk about other struggles. We're going to talk about sex and what that looks like is where our society has just been sexualized to a tremendous degree, where our kids are struggling not with necessarily the act of sex, but with body image. And am I good enough comparison?
Lots of things that we're going to touch base on. But again, I'm glad to be able to serve you. And so I just want to leave you with this. Again, I got a nice little joke for you. So to leave you. I'll leave you with this. What kind of dough does a gamer use?
What kind of dough does a gamer use?
Well, that answer to that is Nintendo.
I thought that one was really good. I'm just saying Nintendo because Nintendo is a game system and brand and dough.
You get it.
[00:32:39] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to Rootedome, where faith and family take root together. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to like, share and subscribe so you never miss a conversation that helps kids, parents and families grow in God's word.
