Picture the scene if you will – Easter Saturday, a family holiday down to the Lake District. The sun shining outside the car, its occupants lazily meandering down the A7, through the Scottish Borders, having deliberately shunned the M8/M74 route in favour of a more tranquil journey. The River Tweed follows a complementary path, with newborn lambs nestling with their mothers along its course.
Mum sits serene in the passenger seat enjoying the views. Dad sits in the driving seat, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel with quiet contentment, gazing alternately between the road and the scenery.
All is calm in the back seats, the three kids having seen enough of the nature outside the window, all now plugged into their electronic devices inside the car. The Nintendo DS is the gadget of choice – with 2 units shared between 3 children to encourage sharing and filial respect. Nintendogs and Littlest Pets are the games of choice – both very gentle and designed to foster responsibility within a playful environment of care and nurture (or so says Nintendo). For those of you not familiar, these games allow you to play with, train, walk and wash your virtual pets.
Virtual Pets
But the calm doesn’t last for long. Middle child soon pipes up: “Hey, who’s been taking my dogs for a walk!??”
Not to be outdone, eldest child soon pitches in, the anger growing as the realisation begins to break on him: “That’s nothing, some of my dogs have been deleted!!”
Youngest child is initially conspicuous by her silence. But it doesn’t last for long, the peace disturbed by volleys of accusation and counter-accusation flying backwards and forwards between the occupants of the rear seats of the car.
Everyone knows what’s coming next: some serious parental intervention.
“Enough!!” growls Dad, with a stern glance in his rear-view mirror, panning across the visages of all three of the backseat passengers. “Can’t you all save your squabbling for real things which really matter?! I can’t believe you’re all arguing over something as silly as a bunch of imaginary pets made out of nothing more than pixels!”
Peace is restored giving Dad some space to consider his comments.
Fingers drumming on the steering wheel, and eyes gazing alternately from road to scenery, it was only when I reflected on what I had said that I realised how wrong I had been.
These may not be real pets in any physical sense, but my children have invested hours of their time, and bundles of their energy in nurturing, developing and caring for these onscreen animals. The animals may only be made from pixels, but they have captivated the imaginations of my children and countless thousands of others. And these affections, feelings and emotions are very, very real.
As my attention turned back to the road, chastising myself for my hasty judgement, it occurred to me that games such as these (and the likes of the Tamagotchi before it) are increasingly representative of the electronic and virtual environments into which our children are growing up. We adults now think nothing of sitting in front of screens, investing time, energy and emotions in social networking or writing blogs. These are very real things for us. Why should it be any different for our children?
Posted by Howie 
