I was very much anti-gaming when I was raising my millenials. Since then, I have become interested in the free software movement and free culture in general and the internet has also become, in my not so humble opinion, a far more toxic and less pleasant place than it was in 2002 on Windows 98 with a dial-up connection and a 1 GB hard drive on a Pentium II with only 32MB of memory.

When my "digital native" came along in 2008, I had quite a different attitude towards gaming, especially after having received so much "tech support", respectful answers to my questions about how computers and the internet work, and exciting education and new projects to pursue from an online friend in Brazil who had learned English soley through playing video games.

I'm still not much of a gamer, but I do see value in gaming and do not think it would be healthy for a parent to prohibit an adolescent from all gaming. When i was growing up and also when I was raising my millenials, kids could always "go out to play" with the neighbourhood kids, either in the street, each other's yards, or at a public park.

Now there aren't any other kids to go out and play with and any parent who sent their kids to "go out and play" unsupervised would be lockied up for child abuse/neglect within 24 hours. The kids are all in their living rooms playing video games.

Maybe I was wrong, right, too idealistic, or not idealistic enough to let my kid play Minetest instead of Minecraft and not to be overly worried about the fact that he was the youngest person on his gaming IRC channel.

But that's my take on it, anyway, and I kind of want to play some of his favourite games even though I totally suck, but that's another story for another post--maybe one about putting a quarter in the first Pong machine within driving distance of my sickeningly stepfordesque suburb in the 1970s if I wind up living long enough for that to be cool.