Virtual street kids

Parents, if you still sleep, then wake up and at least look out the window. See where your child is. Houses? Are you quite sure of that? Check all windows again, and at the same time all Android and Apple .

Looking into the virtual children's world? Have you seen the horrors of the most terrible and of Gehenna of Fire ? Is there any benefit to this demonic invention? I found it and decided to share it.

Small family scandal

My father just broke for a 9-year-old child because he allowed himself to be virtually robbed for the third time by the same ill-wisher. Well, how can you step on the same rake three times ?! And here the crying glomerulus of life defends itself: “Dad, but this is just a game!”. The stopping effect of unexpected childish wisdom is like a concrete wall suddenly arising in the path of a car. Father's brain dutifully recalls the sound of emergency braking.
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No, dear child, still online is no longer just a game.

The next day, at dinner, the child began to tell in detail. About how he became a victim of petty theft from a person he trusted. How then did the conflict develop (here and my mother joined the discussion). The child continued to tell how he achieved recognition from the thief, how he restored lost property and even made profitable cross-border (!) Transactions with crystals. We briefly reviewed the prospects of sports in virtual parkour . They did not forget geopolitics: how “ours” communicate with “non-ours”. It is easy to distinguish those: they have other people's flags, and they use English words in the chat.

What kind of game is it here?

It is more about the online sandbox genre (online sandbox games). I believe that trade is inherent in this genre, and in the search for resources, many very readily neglect the usual moral and ethical norms. Especially different shkolota.

Risks

What are we afraid of not letting a child play online?

Progressive child gap with reality, increased wear of the young and fragile nervous system, depression, suicidal moods. Asocial and irresponsible behavior in adulthood.

And also: terrorists, sectarians, drag dealers, the mentally ill, maniacs and other pedophiles who use online gaming sites to search for victims. Evil, in a word.

Oh, yes, still spoiled vision and premature development.

pros

These are not social networks, these are online sandbox games . They are visually similar to those in which mothers while away their time on the road in public transport.

A child builds a world of virtual cubes and can “pump” much more complicated and even risky life situations, with almost no threat to himself and his family. The child will be better prepared for adult social life, where digital technologies will play a crucial role.

Have you ever thought about it? And you make it a rule to spend at least an hour a week on discussion with the child of his successes and defeats in gaming matters. Probably, you don’t even imagine what kind of complicated situations the child has already found himself out of. What has become a little less scary to die?

It's a question of time

In an interesting time live friends. Look back at the greener grass and warmer, “tube” things. Now look around, now you see young virtual shoots, which are not yet a very spoiled alternative to the real world. But what lies ahead? In which world will our children reach maturity?

Futurology is not my specialty. But I decided to imagine what it would look like in, say, twenty years from now. Imagine a complex structure of destructible worlds of sandboxes, connected by a web-like system of transitions, with millions of borders. Multidimensional graph from mini-universes. Transitions between them are short and long, sometimes with paid transport. And the crowds of people living in this multidimensional web, with their own authorities, official power, crime, police, services, currency and advertising, of course. The laws of physics (such as gravity) in different worlds vary within fairly wide limits. The same can be said about the level of hostility of worlds. The heroes, respectively, have the most complicated systems of achivok and all sorts of facilitators of virtual existence (wings of different sizes are the beginning of a conversation).

I did not invent it. Recall the literary works of Ray Bradbury, Roger Zelazny, and later Max Fry; then there were surrogates in the matrices and other characters of mixed reality . Already, there are games with destructible conditionally infinite worlds, and online products are struggling with each other for an audience of any age.

Perhaps the key difference of my version is that the online administration of games is identical to the real power in whose physical jurisdiction the player himself is. I will note at the same time the gaming security market, including the organization of "family" universes for children.

So, welcome to my anti [thug] utopia: total government regulation of global computing networks, state security units on online games and trafficking in psychotropic products [and substances]. Depending on the [state] classification of the world, real players go through quite tricky procedures of identification. Any familiar science fiction writers? Go, friends, but let's not read to modern state men, let the economy be pulled out of the crisis better.

UPD
Humanity has characteristic weaknesses that do not change over time. I saw in the future psychotropic technologies delivered in the form of products on the global network. The state always monopolizes these niches: it introduces either a ban or a consumption tax (excise tax). Where there are psychotropic products, government regulation will appear, it is only a matter of time. Online games have not yet grown to psychotropic products, there is no total addiction to online games. But what lies ahead? ..

findings

If the child wants, then he can and should play "safe" online games, but at the same time be sure to play with his peers. Thus, the child does not atrophy a sense of responsibility (after all, he regularly physically meets with other players), the connection with reality is not broken, because it is here that the main cause of many of our fears lies.

Communicate with the child, the theme of the games will greatly strengthen your parental relationship, but do not impose specific steps, they will figure it out faster without you. I think that regular communication is a good prevention of adolescent problems.

If you decide to, be aware of physical security, in a conversation for yourself, notice strange and inadequate subjects [of the online], but do not conduct an interrogation, otherwise the child will close. You don't have to be a Colombo inspector or Miss Marple, you also discussed with your parents, what did you play in the yard with other children? If you do not know which rules to start with, recommend not to talk to strangers, having previously known nicknames from your real friends. I hope you don’t need to explain what the children's memory is capable of if you wish.

Let the child learn a foreign language. Well, or vice versa, prohibit a teenager to engage in profitable trade in crystals with peers from other countries. The effect will exceed your expectations by exactly one hundred and eighty degrees. See that the crystals then did not send mail from anywhere in Latin America. What mail? Ordinary, aviation.

It is easier to negotiate a limited time game than to ban it and spend your leisure time vigil around all mobile terminals. However, you can not give your child a smartphone so that he feels worse than other peers and from his youth he acquired inferiority complexes. I hope not your case.

Remember: any protection costs, and the child will still go out on the virtual street. It is probably better for parents to participate in this process. Take an example from residents geektimes: judging by the results of surveys, they have already solved this problem at the family level.

Happy New Year, friends.

Happiness and good to you and your families.