In an interesting case, Durbha Sreeram, a software engineer, wants his nine-year-old daughter Shravya and 11-year-old son Shreyas to in fact play more online games suitable to their ages, but in a controlled atmosphere.
Children need appreciation for everything they do and that is practically impossible in many of the houses, and in these games as they win one level, they get some incentives and get the satisfaction of victory leading to self-validation, he explains. Shreyas plays games along with his peers and friends and has developed a passion for developing games with some logical thinking and one of the highest levels of satisfaction he derived was creating a bike racing game from scratch, Mr. Sreeram says.
"We have a very stringent budget for their on-screen time per day. They are given 30 minutes to one hour per day either to watch a TV show or play games on their gaming console X-Box," he says. The choice of children obviously is to play games with both sharing the screen space and splitting it for their own choice of dream game.
However, parental monitoring of their screen time, strict time limits and the quality/type of games they indulge in play a prominent role. Some outdoor family activity once a week allows them connect with the real world, Mr. Sreeram explains.
Non-digital games
A startup owner Yadavilli Ravi Sankar, despite his hectic schedules, never loses track of his daughter Manya’s need to spend time with him. "I guess most attempts at weaning away kids from digital games end up being binary fights, games vs studies. What we did is a ‘transition’ - an active non-digital game time.
That way, we’re not snatching the fun time. "Manya and I have an active time dedicated to puzzles where we race against each other. But it works as long as you make it exciting," Sankar explains.
