7 Life Lessons Video Games Will Teach Your Teen
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Important life lessons can be learnt from the strangest of places. While parents, books and even movies teach us many things, there’s another source you may not have considered: video games. They have the ability to teach valuable lessons to teenagers who tend to spend a considerable time playing them.
Vital Life Lessons Kids Can Learn from Video Games
1. Equality for all
Everyone is equal in a video game. All the players are just the characters they represent. They have no caste, creed, sex, colour or religion. They’re known for the skills they have, which is ideally how it should be in the real world.
2. Beware of strangers
Teens learn to be wary of strangers, even in the virtual world. From a young age, parents teach their children to keep their distance from people they don’t know. When gaming, gamers learn to be wary of strangers offering help. The threat of scammers is real and it pays to be safer rather than sorry.
3. Think out of the box
When players face a difficult situation in any game, they need to try and think out of the box for a solution. The real world is the same. If a problem is not getting solved using tried and tested solutions, one needs to think differently and creatively.
4. Never give up
When faced with a problem, kids can learn to look at it as a teaching tool. They discover what they’re doing wrong from previous mistakes. They also learn not to give up when they come across obstacles.
5. The journey matters
The journey to one’s goal doesn’t have to only be fraught with trials and tribulations. One can learn to feel content and happy too. Even in a video game where one doesn’t emerge the winner, if the player enjoyed playing, the time spent on it was worth it.
6. Every step is a learning experience
When playing a video game, children can learn that even if they haven’t reached their goal yet, they’ve still made some headway towards achieving it. They’re constantly learning and moving towards that end. Life is the same too. One is always progressing towards goals and learning something new with each step.
7. Some problems are meant to be solved later:
If players are faced with a problem they can’t find the answer to, they leave it for the time being and move on to tasks they can complete. They learn new skills and come back to that same task later. This applies to life as well.
It’s easy for parents to tell their teens to stop playing games and concentrate on studies. But these same games have the ability to impart valuable lessons about life that they may not learn in a classroom. Some video games that can teach life lessons are Tetris, ‘League of Legends’, ‘Fallout’, and ‘ World of Warcraft’. Maybe you could join your teen for a session!
