Video Game Addiction: The Real Reason Kids Can’t Log Off

Welcome to the Where Parents Talk podcast. We help grow better parents through science, evidence, and the lived experience of other parents.

Learn how to better navigate the mental and physical health of your tween teen or young adult through proven expert advice. Here's your host, Lianne Castelino.

Welcome to Where Parents Talk. My name is Lianne Castelino. Our guest today is an AI strategist and an entrepreneur.

Nathan Graham is also a former real estate agent, a speaker, a former gaming addict, and an author. His first book is called why Won't He Just Log? A Parent's Guide to Video Game Addiction and the Needs behind the Screen.

Nathan is also a father of one, and he joins us today from Port Perry, Ontario. Thank you so much for making the time.

Awesome, Lianne. Thank you so much for having me. I've been excited for this all week.

Well, an important conversation because there are many, many parents, families, young people who struggle with this, and we are talking about video gaming addiction. So you talk about this from both sides of the screen. Take us back if you could, Nathan, to when you were a gaming addict.

What did that gaming peace give to you back then?

Yeah, so I go back to my late teens, early twenties, and ironically, at.

And I was living in Ontario, not the time I was originally in British Columbia, but now I'm in Ontario and I'm working, factory work.

And I'm sure some people can relate to this when, you know, you're a relatively smart person, but then life just is not going the way you would plan it to be. Right? And you always think my mindset has changed a lot. But at the time, I always thought I deserve something more. Right.

And then I found this wonderful world of video games. I picked up a game called World of Warcraft. I've always liked gaming kind of as a side thing, and it was wonderful.

It became the sense of community, the sense of belonging. I was really good at it. There was people supporting me and all the things that would naturally come out of life.

I started getting out of this game and it started fulfilling all these needs of me. Now, at the time, I would never have been able to articulate that. That's just looking back at it.

Yet when you kind of hate your job and you don't have a lot of good friends and you really don't know your place in the world. And then you have an instant community of something you're good at. That's what created my addiction anyways.

And then I spent way too much time in that game, right?

Yeah. And it happens pretty quickly. Like you don't even realize it and it gets to be deeper and deeper. So how deep did it go for you?

Like, what are we talking about here? What did it look like?

I would say 16, 17 hours a day at least. A lot of times I'd be calling and sick to work.

I remember matches ending after 12 hours and then getting four hours of sleep, waking up and then just going right back at. Pretty much abandoned all aspects of normal life. So things like my. There's one job I pretty much got let go of for it.

I in a relationship at the time, who is my wife now. And she can overhear my half of this conversation right now. So she's going to be agreeing and nodding her head.

I have no idea why she's even with me because it was like we would spend four hours together, she'd go home and then I'd game for the next eight hours. Right? Yeah. So it was just. It was pretty much all consuming if how a lot of people get consumed about work or school.

That's what it was for video gaming for me.

So how long did that go on at that level?

I would say at that. Oh, that's actually no good question. I've never, ironically, never really pinned when it actually stopped because I.

It's about six, seven years pretty consistently before I kind of woke up through it. Yeah, it's about six or seven years.

And so, so much happened. You talked about losing a job, you know, potentially losing a relationship, all these other things as well.

What was the tipping point for you to get out of it?

So ironically, it was nothing to do with gaming at all.

I was starting fresh in a real estate career and if anybody knows real estate at all, it's one of those jobs that looks really easy and they look like they all make really good money. So I kind of went into it for that reason.

And it's actually a very hard job and it takes a lot of work and I wasn't succeeding in my first year at it. And I sat down with a mentor of mine who unfortunately has passed, but his name was Todd Skinner.

I sat down with a mentor of mine, and at the time, I blamed everybody else for my problems, right?

And so what I'm about to say is not a fair thing for me to think at the time, but it's definitely what I thought at the time is I sat down, I said, todd, I'm starting real estate. I'm not doing well. It's clearly my wife's fault. She hasn't went out and got a job. She's not supporting me this and that.

And by the way, for all the listeners, she was absolutely my number one biggest support. That's how much of a but I was back in the day. But he was. She was my number one biggest support. And Todd did something that was a little different.

I was ready for the fight. Usually when you say something like that, you're going to get pushback from the people around you. And that's what I'm used to.

I was ready for the fight. I was ready for him to come at me and he didn't. He actually affirmed me, which was really weird. He was like, nathan, you know what, man?

You have every right to feel the way you feel, and it is absolutely frustrating what you're going through. And I'm. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you're accepting me with this attitude, right? But then he said something that was interesting.

He said, yet you think you're a leader. How is this action leading you and your family? And I don't know what snapped in my head that day, but it had nothing to do with gaming.

It just had to do with my whole point of view in life started to shift and change.

And that started a very long process over the last 16 years that I'm in now of just personal growth, personal accountability, and personal responsibility. So ironically, the gaming addiction portion never actually went away with a conscious thought. It's not like when I quit drinking four years ago.

Not that I was an alcoholic. I just didn't want to drink anymore. Long story, but that was like a decision one day that never actually happened with gaming.

I actually still game to this day and I still have friends who game. It just isn't all consuming in my life anymore and it's done very properly, right?

And now I can see triggers when I start to get into moments of high stress or high.

I'm not going to say depression as in as we would know it, but let's say like, you know, you go through points of life where the high stress and depression takes over for a bit. I can now see the trigger of. I'll get captured back into gaming for that time. I just know how to get out of it now.

It is so interesting to hear the words that your mentor shared with you because they really are quite powerful. So how did you then go about internalizing that to actually affect change?

That's. I struggle with that question a lot because I don't know for sure. I, I don't.

I wish I could tell someone because I feel like if I knew for sure I could help guide someone else through that. And it is hard. What I can say is I started reading a lot and I started reading like that. That was pretty profound.

It kind of hit me square in the face and I realized I. The closest thing I could say is I started realizing what I had control of and what I didn't have control of.

And from every conversation going forward it was about what is my responsibility in this. So it's not saying that the other person didn't harm me, it's not saying they weren't wrong in what they did.

I just, with my mentor I couldn't control what that other person did. I could only control my action and reaction to it. Right.

And so that started down the journey between that, between reading I got very obsessed into the psychology world. Ended up taking a ton of psychology neuroplasticity courses.

I got introduced to Tony Robbins and I, I'm not like one of those weird, I always call them like voodoo or woohoo people. But then all of a sudden I had transformational change and I'm like shoot, how did that happen? Because I was the last person to expect it.

So then I had to understand how neuro linguistic programming worked. But really it just came from self accountability.

I think a phrase that I've been using is I'm nothing but the captain of my leaf flowing down the Amazon river. And I just think of that analogy of I might be a captain, my leaf might be my boat, but I don't really have a lot of control.

And so I just look at the things I can really interesting.

Now your central message is that gaming is rarely about the game. So what would you say to parents who maybe only look at the screen that their child is on? What are they potentially missing?

So this was the disconnect that actually moved me to write the book in the first place.

The not hopefully too long of answer is there's four essential needs that we all strive for in life and all of our decision making comes down to these four needs. The first one is a Need for certainty. And that certainty isn't just, it is included.

But not just food on the table and how to get to work, but it's also understanding the rules of life, like without big debates is one reason why I find kids love boundaries, even though they push them, is because it gives them certainty they know how to operate right. The next one is adventure.

Now you get some weird twisted people like my wife who adventure is an edge walk around the CN Tower and roller coasters, which yes, she makes me do all of them and I'm terrified of heights. Or you get weird people like me who is public speaking and podcasts and starting companies. That's my sense of adventure. It's the spice of life.

The two that really got hooked though is the third one is significance. Now this is the sense of feeling important, of feeling like you matter, like you have legacy and belonging.

And the last one is a sense of love and connection is more than just having a partner. This is having community, having a tribe like human beings are tribal people. It's having a tribe that we belong to. Finding like minded people.

Now you can fulfill these in positive and negative ways, but regardless, you're going to try fulfill in one way or another. This podcast, why we're doing it for the most part, is a very positive way of running people fulfilling these needs.

You know, if there's a mugger outside of a store trying to mug somebody for their wallet, they feel pretty significant at that moment because they have the full control and power over that person at that moment. Right? Very unhealthy way though. It's fleeting. This is what gaming is providing young kids today and providing young adults today.

Now, just as a side note, I typically come from the male bias because I'm male and that's how I view the world. But women just so, you know, get caught up in it just as much to young women. But in a world where as a man we don't get challenged the same way.

A lot of our behavior is told that we're wrong from a very young age. We start to have these gaps missing. We start like the sporting world. I agree with equal participation, just not on the higher levels of play.

And that's something that seems to be happening more like all the things that we would use to test ourselves in the world seems to be going by the wayside.

And then this magical thing called video game shows up and all of a sudden we enter this world that we're able to compete along our peers, we're able to stand out, we're able to make these connections with our guildies, we're able to have in depth relationships, be around people that are like us, challenge us in ways that we haven't been challenged. And developers don't just make it easy so you can beat it, you have to get better. Right.

And so it creates this hierarchy, the sense of belonging that we've always been looking for.

And that in many ways is what I got out of the game in my 20s and what a lot of young people are getting out of the game today and why it just fits into them so much.

So with that knowledge that you just shared, how then can a parent tell the difference between a child who simply loves gaming and a child who's using gaming as a mechanism and a tool to cope?

So there's, I think, number one, when you look at, look at, I think about the behavior I went through and you think about the behavior of the vast majority of addictions. It's one thing I still have an obsessive personality. If a new video game comes out, I like take a week off of work.

I make sure things are set up, but I just play it over and over and over because it's just exciting. But then I let it go. Right. I'm not. I might change my behavior for a short term, but I'm not abandoning relationships that matter.

I won't say no to movie time with my family and things like that. Yet that will happen.

When somebody's using it as an escape, you'll start to see that their natural tendencies for regular human connection starts to fall away. Right. If they were the kind of person that would always go with their friends and now they're not even seeing their friends at all.

That's usually an indicator if they were always engaging with the family, that's also an indicator if they just automatically stop. Right. If they were, again, it's not about a small downturn in grades at school because we all get distracted.

But if you see that they just stop engaging in school, which they love, that's usually a sign that there's something bigger going on. Yeah. So that'd be the biggest way to tell the difference between enjoyment or learning or it going down a major problem.

Well, and in, you know, building on that point, in many households, you've got timers, you've got taking away the devices, you've got lecturing. A lot of this stuff doesn't work in many families. So why do you believe that? Often these approaches fail.

So I think there's, there's two reasons that go behind it. Number One, teenagers, I don't think are given the credit that is due. Like when you look at these needs. Let's just buy the argument.

Let's say someone's sitting there like, oh, let's buy the argument that says all about need fulfillment. Well, prior to the age of 12, they're fulfilling those needs through their family, through day to day things.

I see with my 7 year old, we've run in and fixed problems by looking at those needs. But once they turn about 12, 13, now all of a sudden they're trying to learn a whole new set of rules.

No longer in the house, but how does the world operate? Right.

And one of the traps I, I speak with a lot of parents that they get into is they find that they still think they should be the source of fulfilling these needs for their kids. And that is definitely not the case. In the vast majority of circumstances, everybody's different.

Yet I find in the vast majority of circumstances, parents become the need for certainty, the need for reliability, the safety net as I go on, but it almost takes on more of a mentorship role, right, Number one.

Number two, if they are not fulfilling these needs, and let's just say it's now two in the morning and you go unplug the machine, what you as a parent may not realize is they might be doing this with five other friends and they might be trying to accomplish a goal that they've been working on for a long time.

Like in some cases, we once worked on something for three months and I couldn't imagine what it would take if you unplugged it right before we were about to beat it. So number one, what happens in that teenager's mind is I'm now a failure. I'm now failing because I cannot accomplish this goal.

And what's happening in their friend's mind is like, oh, we love to gain with Liam, but her mom doesn't really let her go. So maybe we can't take her on these adventures anymore because we can't rely on her.

And you're actually tearing away senses of certainty and senses of connection, love and relationships and all the rest by just randomly unplugging it. But I do want to be clear, I'm definitely not advocating for letting them go hog wild and play till two in the morning.

There's definitely other options on that.

So. So let's talk about those options, right?

Because a natural follow up to what you just talked about is how does a parent go about setting effective boundaries that actually will last, not alienate the child, not do all the things that you just described, Is that possible?

It absolutely is. I think the first step is. And this is the hardest part. I, I say this because I'm chatting with you.

And if I was in a real life scenario, I do not always succeed at doing this. I want to be clear to parents out there, yet coming from curiosity versus judgment goes a long way.

We forget for some reason, I don't know what age it happens and what it's like to be a teenager. And because we've learned like they're.

They're experiencing these complex emotions like rejection and acceptance and love in different ways than they ever have before for the very first time. And we've been through it, I. I remember what it to be broken up with girls. I remember what it was like when people made fun of me.

And now I'm to the point. I just don't care. I'm 42. It just people's opinions don't matter. But that was different when I was 16 or 15. Right.

So sometimes as a parent, we forget what it was like the first time we felt that. So I think first of all, coming from curiosity versus judgment of you should already be through this goes a long way.

The second part is I heard this one guy speak, and I'm definitely not advocating for this, but he said at the age of 12 or 13, he stopped giving his kids a curfew. But then he started making decisions with them. Like, for example, you have to go to school.

You don't have to go to school, but if you don't go to school, this is what will happen. So is school a good idea? And they're like, oh yeah, no, school is a great idea. Great.

Well, how good is it if you go to school after going to bed at 2:00am well, that sucks. So what's a proper bedtime for you and what's a proper thing? And so he worked with the kids on how to do that.

And again, I'm not necessarily advocating for free reign of bedtimes and all the rest. Yet I do love that approach.

When, when somebody engages in something when, whether it's a job or whether it's a kid, when they're engaging in the rul rulemaking and they break that rule, if it's just your rule, they're just breaking your rule. It's nothing to do with them. But if it is their own rule that they help put in place, they're now out of integrity with themselves.

And that is a whole much harder thing to deal with. So have a conversation from Curiosity. Set the rules together, set the times together, the limits together, understand the why together.

And then when it comes to that time, let's just use 10 o' clock as a fictitious time. At 10 o', clock, don't have the modem just automatically shut down.

It's not a surprise, it's not why now. It is the pre agreement that they went into.

And then the second part is, if it's 10 o' clock and they have like two minutes left, let them play with the two minutes. Like, it'd just be like, imagine if my wife was like, hey, you can go watch the game, but I want you home by 9:30. And now it's like 9:28.

And I still have a. I don't drink anymore, but back in the day, have a half a pint of beer, like, what am I gonna do? Chug it down and rush home? Like, no, you hope for a little bit of forgiveness for that time. It's, it's letting them have some responsibility.

So the, the quick answer, I guess, to answering what you're talking about or what you're asking about is one, make rules with them, not apart from them, and come from curiosity and understanding versus just judgment. And I think you'll see the relationship begin to change. Don't abandon principles that were fences. I'm not again advocating for that.

And all of what you've just described is definitely a delicate dance. Right?

Because depending on the age of the child, how deeply invested they are in gaming, what their social interaction and their social life looks like, all of those things factor in.

So, Nathan, can you kind of take us a little bit into, if you could, what it really looks like to step into a child's gaming world as a parent without losing authority as a parent.

Yeah. So we actually still do this. Like it's a little bit different right now with my daughter being seven, but we still definitely lose.

And actually, sorry, before I answer that, I want to back up to what you just said because I also want to say it is a very delicate dance, by the way. And again, we are in a conversation where I get to talk about the perfect world. I know this, and I fail at this all the time.

And as if you're a parent out there struggling with it, you are absolutely going to fail with it a whole lot too. And that's completely okay. We are not broken. We are not striving for perfection here. Parenting is hard. It's different for everybody.

There's no one size fits all. So please operate. Operate with a lot more grace in your life, even around what you do. Forgive yourself and try to learn from it.

Don't, don't let it hang over you. If you strive for perfection as a parent, you're just going to strive for stress anyways, going back. Yeah.

So like with my daughter, for example, first of all, because I am such a technological person, it's just natural we're going to have games in the house and it's natural we're going to do it. So A, we have already, at the age of seven, set the rules with her and we've given her the responsibility to get off at a certain time.

And if she doesn't get off at a certain time, she's also gonna have punishment that goes along with it. But we're connecting it back to her decision making process. But I also like to learn about the games that she's going to play. Right.

So I'll often sit down and see the game that she's playing, get her to explain it to me, ask her what she loves about it. And especially for Tina, have you ever heard the three question or. I've seen the three question strategy.

No, I haven't.

Okay. So this is a great way to figure out what they're fulfilling. And this isn't anybody, by the way.

So if you want to have some fun, we'll role play it for a quick second. So I'm going to ask you three questions around podcasting, and the first answer you're going to give me is what you think the answer is.

Now, it's not a lie. It's just the first answer off the top of your head that you give to most people.

The second answer you give me to the second question is usually what you think I want to hear. And then the third answer is typically the truth. Right.

Now, what's ironic is, even though I've told you this, it's still going to follow the same pattern. I've done this so many times. It still follows the same pattern. So, Leanne, if I were to ask you in short form, why did you get into podcasting?

Because I think it's a great medium to reach people and do fantastic interviews on different topics.

Amazing. So it's a great medium to reach a lot of People and do different interviews on different topics.

Now, while you're reaching those people and doing those interviews, what is that doing for you in your life?

Well, as a continuous learner, it expands my knowledge. It introduces me to new ideas and perspectives.

Awesome. Okay, so having the new knowledge and new perspectives, that's kind of a pretty impactful thing.

So as you gain this new knowledge and perspective, how does that positively influence you and your relationships from day to day?

I guess I just am more in tune with different perspectives, different walks of life, you know, how different people see different things, as opposed to sort of living in a siloed world of just me and my. My own thoughts. So awesome.

So we could obviously keep diving into that, but we won't.

What I found really cool is at the beginning of this three questions, it was just really about wanting to learn something different, and who knows what that really means? Like, that could mean a lot of things, and I can take that as a lot of things.

I could be like, oh, well, she just does this podcast because she wants to learn something different, and maybe so. And so pays her to do it. I know it's not the case. Or maybe she's really wanting to help people.

By the end of it, we have a whole new framework of what you gain out of these podcasts. Right.

By the end of it, if we're to rip these podcasts away, we're ripping away a lot more than just a time of entertainment or a time of slightly learning. We're. We're literally ripping away to change your perspective on all of life.

Those three questions will go a long way with anybody trying to figure out what their true motivation is and what they're trying to fulfill. And if you do these with your kids, you'll be amazed. The game, the first answer is almost never the problem.

Usually by the third answer, we're getting to, oh, it brings me fulfillment. It brings me a sense of purpose. Like, if. If your son or daughter comes to you and says, I game for this sense of purpose, and you're.

Are you going to be like, well, I'm still going to rip it out of your hands right now? Probably not. You'll probably have a bit more empathy and then wonder, okay, well, it's the sense of purpose you're getting.

How can we fulfill that positively? So my father, by complete fluke, this was not him. And I have talked about this.

This was not a premeditated thought in my younger days, got me into football because I was fulfilling those needs. It wasn't with video games at the time, it was actually with Legos and Star Wars. I literally trapped my, got bullied a lot at school.

The counselors and the people wouldn't protect me who were designed to protect me. So I locked myself in a room and I played Star wars or played Star wars movies over and over and with Legos, right.

My dad thought it wasn't healthy, which he's right. And he said, you're playing a sports son, you just pick which one. So I picked football.

And all of a sudden I got my sense of certainty, my sense of significance. I was quite good at it. I got my community and all that stuff started being fulfilled through football.

And back to another point, by the way, my dad did not have to be the person to fulfill those needs. He was the guide to get me to the place to fulfill those needs. Does that make sense?

Yep, absolutely.

That's a really long way of answering that.

But yeah, no, it's a great answer.

So.

So let's talk about what a parent currently in this situation in their home, if they want to start to shift things today, what's a small step that they could take that you'd recommend as it relates to addressing video gaming and potential addiction.

The first small step I would take has to do with building trust. This has probably been an argument, this has probably been a fight, there's probably been hurt feelings through this.

And as a parent, unfortunately it falls on us to take the first step. Your teenager is never going to do it. They're not going to enter your world, you have to enter theirs. Take a night.

And not for the purpose of change, not for the purpose of correcting. Sit down with them and ask them about the game. Just learn it. And I mean, don't ask them these in depth questions that we're talking about today.

Just be like, hey, what are you playing? What do you like about it? What's the storyline? Just ask them questions. And intrigued. I remember the day and I hope this motivates parents.

I once hired a coach for my game.

Like I literally played my game to a point where I actually hired my own coach and my coach taught me how to be better at the game, which is a whole other part of a conversation. My dad had no love for the game, but he was intrigued by coaching.

And so he started asking me questions about the coaching and why I did it and what I was trying to accomplish. And then the next day he asked me follow up questions. Oh, you were supposed to do that last night. Did it work? I never felt more connected to him.

It sounds Silly, But I just felt like he is finally understanding me. And he still did not like video games at all. He just liked the aspect of coaching.

So sit down with them, build that trust, enter into their world, begin to understand it, and do it without judgment. And it's just that the whole point of doing that is to get invited back into the world. Not to change it, not to change them, just get invited back.

And you will just see how things slowly begin to shift from there.

So on that point, when you look back at your own experience, Nathan, were there warning signs that were easy to miss at the time? That looking now back on it, you're like, missed that I should have known.

Not at the time. It sounds weird, but I think it's like most addictions, right?

If you have a friend who drinks or a friend who gambles, like think about gambling, for example, right? What a weird addiction to have. But it makes sense when you look at the framework of fulfilling these needs, like that one win you got.

When you tell the story, everybody cheers. You're in awe, you feel great, you feel significant. So you keep going back for that one win. It's rarely about actually winning the money.

It's more about what it does collectively around you, right? And if you were to ask somebody like, what's the warning sign there? The warning sign isn't someone at the casino.

The warning sign is why is this person always trying to impress? And that is something that goes so overlooked, right? So were there warning signs? Probably.

But I don't think the warning signs were necessarily about gaming, per se. I would say they would center more around my mental health.

Growing up, the warning signs were not why is he sneaking out of the house or why, or is he hanging out with the friends who steal and all the rest. It's kind of like, what is he getting fulfilled through it? Because if it wasn't, it's like Legos and Star Wars.

If it wasn't video gaming, it was Legos and Star Wars. Legos and Star wars was video gaming. As I got older, in some points in my life, it became alcohol. At other points, it did become gambling.

I had a very. I used to use the excuse. I had a very addictive personality.

And the reality was I was just trying to fulfill my needs in the wrong way for the longest time time.

And when my wife got sick of my video gaming and it got to the point she might leave me, I was like, okay, fine, I'll turn to drinking, because that's a better option. And then after so many things, I got to use the excuse of, well, no matter what I do to change, you're not going to be happy anyways.

I'm sure you've heard that excuse before. Well, no, the reality is you wouldn't have been happy anyways, because what you're trying to change is all surface bs. It's not going deep. You're.

You're still trying to fulfill needs and what I call junk food for the soul. Right.

So having gone through all of that, having had that lived experience, the mentor who inspired you, you know, affecting change, taking a different path, what made you decide? I mean, going through all those things is one thing, but then deciding to write a book is quite another. Was there something specific?

And you alluded to a little bit of it earlier, but was there something specific that you said to yourself, I want to take that entire story and I want to advance it by putting it into a written form?

Yeah. So I think before I quickly answer, that my life now is very different. I. I have a true belief in mastery.

I don't like to do anything unless I can't master it. And it's a very much sense of adventure thing. Like, I live by a lot more adventure than I used to.

And I'm sitting in church one day, having a conversation. Afterwards, we're having coffee hour. And this. This mother and father, who I know were like.

Like at Wit Sands, man, they were balling because their son was up till 2 in the morning. They were dropping F bombs at each other, swearing at each other. And I've met their son before. This kid was a bright kid. He was a smart kid.

And I'm looking at this scenario as an outsider, knowing what I know. And I'm like, man, I feel for these parents because they just don't see it like their son was a smart kid.

I wasn't worried at all about his future development because I was worse than he was. And look where I had come. What they were trying to do was impose the law. Like, we use these terms. They oppose the law on them.

The law shows us we need to change. But grace is only truly what changes our hearts. Right? That's what Todd gave me that day, was grace.

And I thought to myself, as parents, if you just reached out to understand him, you have a hurting son here, and you're not even addressing his pain. All you're doing is addressing his action. Right?

And I tried to explain that to him, but I. I am younger than they are, and their son is 20 or is at the time 17 ish. And nobody. It's weird. I realized that day nobody likes to listen to advice, but they love to read it.

And, and I thought that moment stuck with me and I just felt I want to get the story out.

Obviously, in a direct conversation like this, it's hard for me to convince you as a parent to be like, and I'm not saying they were wrong, but basically I'm saying they were wrong. Like, go change your. Change the way you look at things and things you look at change. Right.

But in a book format I can get my whole argument out and then you can choose to follow it or not. Like I'm just trying to propose an option to parents like that that maybe works. Maybe I don't have a clue. Every parent is different.

Everybody struggles differently. Yet I know it worked for me and I know it works in my family and I have seen it work for some other parents.

Yeah.

So yeah, that's what motivated me to do it.

Well, and you know, I commend you for taking that on because that's a huge project unto itself, writing a book. And you alluded something that's important that we don't have time to get into.

But the generational divide in a lot of households, right, With a parent's understanding of technology and gaming and all those things and their young child. And as technology and, and all the platforms continue to evolve, not everybody is as on top of it.

You happen to be in the field, that might be an advantage for you, but not every parent is. So that's something else we should point out.

Nathan, we're almost out of time, but I do want to ask you, what do you want listeners and viewers of this podcast and certainly readers of your book, to take away from it, two really quick things.

The first one is gaming can be turned into a form of mastery. It has taught me amazing resilience in this eyes of failure. It has taught me amazing leadership skills.

It has taught me amazing ways to unite diverse groups of people. When gaming is actually treated in a good sense of light, it can teach your kids amazing lifelong skills. So one, I would love to encourage that.

Look at goal setting, look at how it can be done properly. Number two, you are not broken man. Parents. I feel for all parents.

It's like they always used to say there's never a manual for parenting and now we have too many.

And as a mother and father, you can make one choice and talk to 15 people to tell you you're wrong and then you make a different choice and you talk to other more people that will tell you are wrong and then you need help and support and you're told your parents are did everything wrong, but somehow they still raised a capable person, but they did everything wrong. So you don't have them to trust anymore. But apparently we're supposed to trust just news sources and other things. And it's like, no, it's, it's hard.

It's fun, but it's hard. Forgive yourself. You're not broken. Your kid's not broken.

If you make your goal tomorrow just to be a little bit of a better parent tomorrow than you were today, cool. That's, that's a big strive and know you're going to fail and forgive yourself. Treat yourself with grace. Forgive yourself. Yeah.

And there's hope between all of this. There is a whole lot of hope at the end of the tunnel. It's just seeing it and guiding it. That's it.

So lots of important food for thought. Nathan Graham, AI strategist, author of the book why Won't He Just Log Off? Thank you so much for your time and your insight today.

Awesome. Thank you so much. To learn more about today's podcast, guest and topic, as well as other parenting themes, visit whereparentstalk. Com.