Dr. Justin Coulson speaks with former Disney executive and GameTruck founder Scott Novis about the hidden dangers of video games—and how parents can help their kids develop a healthy relationship with gaming. From understanding addictive design to replacing screen time with real-world connection, this conversation delivers practical, real-world solutions for every family navigating the digital age.
KEY POINTS
- Addiction by Design: Some game developers deliberately design games using the "hook algorithm" to exploit children’s brain development and keep them playing compulsively.
- Self-Determination vs. Hooked Gaming: Games built on autonomy, mastery, and relatedness (like Minecraft) build skills and confidence. Hooked games create craving, not satisfaction.
- 3 Hacks for Safer Gaming:
- Buy the game (don’t use free-to-play).
- Play offline (limits tracking and manipulation).
- Listen to how your child talks about the game (progress = good, frustration = red flag).
- Ending Game Time Without Conflict: Pre-agree on ending conditions, give non-verbal cues (like flicking the lights), and offer choices that preserve agency.
- Offline Substitutes Matter: Create "hard to enter, hard to leave" real-life communities (e.g., sports, jiu-jitsu, Dungeons & Dragons) that offer connection, skill-building, and purpose.
- Social Disconnection: Excessive gaming and screen time can cause “virtual autism” and impair emotional and social development.
- The Goal: Return to a play-based childhood that prioritises real-world connection, effort, and fun.
QUOTE OF THE EPISODE
“If your child sounds like a victim when they talk about the game—they’re in trouble. If they sound empowered, they’re probably playing a good game.”
— Scott Novis
RESOURCES MENTIONED
- Books:
- The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
- Glued to Games by Scott Rigby & Richard Ryan
- Scattered Minds by Dr. Gabor Maté
- Miss Connection by Dr. Justin Coulson
- Websites:
- https://www.scottnovis.com/ – Scott's personal site
- gametruck.com – Scott's company for social gaming experiences
- Article:
- William Siu's essay in The New York Times on game addiction and design
ACTION STEPS FOR PARENTS
- Buy Games, Not Addictions
Choose paid games that don’t rely on manipulating your child’s attention or money. - Play Offline Whenever Possible
Remove always-on connectivity that allows companies to track and shape behaviour. - Ask the Right Questions
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
It's not every day that we have a former vice
president at the Walt Disney Company on the Happy Families Podcast. Today, though,
is the day where that's happening. Scott Novus is a
video game industry veteran, the founder of Game Truck, the
largest mobile video game party company in the United States,
and a dad of three. He's worked with Disney, He's
created best selling games, He's authored books, and I could
(00:27):
go on and on about Scott Novos's pedigree. Today's a
podcast you do not want to miss if you have
children who game, which is pretty much everyone. Welcome to
the Happy Families Podcast, Real parenting solutions every day on
Australia's most downloaded paring podcast. My name is doctor Justin
Coulson and I am so excited about my conversation Scott Novis.
(00:51):
Welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Oh my gosh, thank you for having me here, Justin.
I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Right now, I reckon there's about fourteen and a half
fifteen million parents who really hate you because they can't
get their kids off the games that you've invented. I'm
obviously stirring a little bit here, but this is an area.
Ninety two percent of Australian parents are worried about the
extent which their children are on screens, whether it's social
media or gaming. And while I'm on this provocative bent,
(01:18):
there's a guy called William Sue. He's a former game developer,
founder of Storm eight. He knows about this as well.
He's launched more than fifty mobile games collectively. They've been
downloaded more than a billion times. They've generated billions of
dollars in sales. And I have a quote here from
a New York Times essay where he says this, I'm
very familiar with game addiction, as that's what I thought
(01:38):
about every day for more than a decade. In brackets,
he says, we sold the company in twenty twenty hed
I hired product managers and engineers to track everything players
did and analyze their behavior. Using the data we collected,
we experimented with every feature of our games to see
which versions allowed us to extract the most time and
money from our players. For us, game addiction was by design.
(02:02):
It meant success for our business. That's the ultimate goal,
he says. This is the compelling statement that really grabs me.
That's the ultimate goal. To build habit forming games that
have players coming back every day. In other words, it
takes away the decision making. We wanted people to reach
for their phones first thing in the morning and jump
right into our games just as they check their social
(02:22):
media and emails. And as I'm reading that. You're not
in your head. And this is not a personal attack
on you. It is a question around the game industry
generally and the impact that it has on families. Now
you talk to parents about how they can navigate this
with their kids, it's almost like you've done a one
eighty I guess in some ways. Talk to me about this,
(02:44):
the complexity around this, and how kids can how families
can have video game time but without the fighting.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
If it's okay, justin, I want to expand on what
you're talking about because that just confirms everything that I know.
So I appreciate it. I'm going to go back and
track down that article on add it to my portfolio.
I have studied game addiction for a long time, not
just recently. Addiction is a complicated topic because you have
chemical dependency. I learned this from doctor Mark Gulston about
(03:13):
what is addiction, and it turns out there's a psychological
condition that people get into that is most easily described
as despair. Like literally think of the word despair to unpair.
It is painful to break all of your relationships. And
there's three modes maladaptive strategies humans used to deal with that.
(03:33):
So one of them is that people will think of
it as a job environment. People quit, people can become
reactive or toxic in the work environment, or people can
drop into learned helplessness and numb out. Well, those extremes
are tragic, right, Quitters suicide, people that become reactionary. What's
(03:53):
the extreme form of that violence. We've certainly seen a
growth in that. And the last one is numbing becomes addiction. Now,
when the data indicated for a long time that addictive
play was really limited to about seven percent of gamers
make three to seven percent, was a window the people
fell into that mode. But that radically changed in the
(04:16):
last ten years. And what really got my attention is
you have these nine, ten eleven year old kids that
are demonstrating addictive behaviors, let's call them compulsive obsessive behaviors.
What the heck? They don't have any of the hallmarks,
so it would indicate the emotional distress. They're not socially isolated,
they're not locked up. I mean they're like in loving
(04:37):
families that are supporting them. They're in schools, they're like,
nothing about their environment should predict this behavior. What is
going on? And what really came to my attention through
Professor Jonathan Height's book, The Anxious Generation, was the awareness
that exactly what's too indicated. They changed the algorithm they
were developing to. The algorithm we were developing to is
(05:00):
is called the self determination theory. It's part of Mihail
check sent me High's flow. It has three components autonomy, mastery,
and relatedness. And I'll come back to that. What changed
is they started developing too a different algorithm. As an
algorithm started coming out in early two thousands. They started
(05:22):
teaching it at Stanford and other schools, and it's called
the Hook algorithm. And the Hook algorithm does something that
is I don't agree with it, but it's exactly what
Sue talked about. We developed companies like we did the
most insane thing ever as a population. We started valuing
companies on how much attention they could steal, not the
(05:45):
value they delivered to their users, and it started in
social media. It was only a matter of time before
it spread to games. Notice who talked about mobile games.
He talked about like this was the turning point that
is wrecking everything. Is putting the Internet in kids' hands
twenty four to seven. It's with them everywhere, and that
(06:06):
is radically different than the old laptop gaming and console
gaming where you weren't going to lug your TV around
with you, right, you just you got up and walked away.
And also most of the games were barely ever online
and they didn't need online to play. And so what
did they do with the hook algorithm? So there's a
(06:27):
couple of things that I think would help your audience
understand what is actually happening and why this is so
devastating for their kids. So do I have your permission
to share? Because I want to back up so they
can understand, like why the hook algorithm is such a
problem for kids.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Yeah, just before you step into that, self determination theory
is the very foundation of pretty much all of the
work that I do. So happy families listeners are familiar
with me talking about how children need to feel like
they're getting a sense of progress and mastery. That's the
confidence need.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
It's standing the familiar when you already know in your
audience know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
And even that need for autonomy raight, the need to
feel choiceful. So that makes sense. But the hook algorithm,
which is, I know something that near Ale talks about
in his very popular book. That's something that we don't
talk about a whole lot here at all, the hijacking
of neural architecture by the world's smartest people from MIT
and Stamford and so on. So let's step into that.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Okay, So humans are unique for a couple of reasons,
a bunch of reasons, but there's two in particular. So
number one, and I learned this from Gabermante and his
book Scattered Minds. So this touches into how our brains develop,
and it touches into ADHD but also neurodivergence, and what's
not becoming the spectrum of autism is just how our
(07:43):
brains developed. And step one is we are the only
animal that our brain quadruples in size after birth. Wales
and elephants might be born with a bigger brain, but
it doesn't get much bigger. Number two one the hit
list of brain growth or chimpanzees with a doubling that
means fold increase, and by five years old, the average
human has ninety percent of the brain size they're going
(08:05):
to have as an adult, but more neural connections. That
mean kids are just a little bundle of potential. And
if you've ever seen that, like kindergartener, maybe learn how
to throw a ball or kick or unskilled, that's it right,
they are just ready to get wired up to get
good at something. Now. The second thing that makes humans
unique in the mammalian species. Every other mammal goes from
(08:29):
birth to reproductive age as fast as possible. Our neighbor's
dog was three years old when they had our labrador puppy,
Cookie three three years old, ready to reproduce. Humans don't
do that. We pause for seven years before puberty starts.
Seven years. What is happening in that seven year window, Well,
(08:53):
there's some research that was done that indicates what's happening
for kids in that seven year window is that that
is when we absorb our culture, not just the family.
We're part of the community, like it goes all the
way to the bones. That is where you're going to
build your cultural identity. If we dropped you in let's
say Japan before you know. In that seven year window,
(09:17):
you will not only speak fluently and natively, you'll get
the jokes, you'll know the food. You'll have a sense
of the design and the tastes of it, the smells
of it. You'll feel Japanese. If we pull you before nine,
you'll lose it. If we add you after thirteen, you'll
always feel like a foreigner, even if you learn to
speak fluently. So there's some magic that's getting baked into kids' brains.
(09:39):
Now let's go to the hook algorithm. What are they doing?
We as humans don't learn the way we think we learn.
We have baked into us a little trial and error loop.
And what's important about that is dopamine, which we all
think is sort of the achievement or hormone, does something different.
It really sparks learning. And when it's given in short
(09:59):
little doses, doesn't create satisfaction justin it creates craving. So
if you take that little hit craving thing and you
look at the trial and error, what happens is this
is about behaviors, not concepts, not intellectualism. We're talking like
physical movement, things that you need to do. Think about
(10:22):
picking up let's say a cricket bat. You're in Australia.
You're going to swing it a few times. What is
your brain doing in those first few swings. It's experimenting,
wait and feel. We're built for trial and error, and
what you're trying to do is map my behavior to
the results I get. And your brain is doing that
below the level of conscious thought. You're almost not even
(10:44):
aware that you're doing it. And so what the developers
learned is that if the reward in feedback is unpredictable
and variable, we can extend the window that you stay
in trial and error mode. What they did is they
built an algorithm. It starts with step one, the queue.
(11:04):
So why does every app you install on your phone
ask to turn on notifications Because it's the beginning of
the hook cycle. You've got to queue you to do something.
Then you're going to do a thing. Then we're going
to give you and this is the technical term, a
variable ratio reward. It's unpredictable and it's tuned to be
just the right amount to hold your attention, get you
(11:27):
your dopamine hit that never let you master the algorithm.
Then we're going to move you over to what's called investment,
and if we're lucky, what will happen is you will
start self cuing like a cigarette attic reaching for a cigarette.
And the difference between self determination games and hook games
(11:48):
are self determination is you're building skills that produce mostly
reliable results that you can build on, and you will
quote level up. You will use that skill to get
a largely predictable outcome, and then we'll give you more
complex things to go after, and away you go. That's progress.
Hook other rooms give you illusions of progress, but what
(12:11):
they're really trying to do is keep you stuck in
this trial and error loop, hammering your dopamine to maximize
your craving to the point where you can't even put
it down. And that's the behavior that is absolutely driving
kids and parents and everyone bonkers. It's not a game anymore.
(12:32):
It's not entertainment. Like literally what Sue said, it is
how much money can we make stealing people's attention? And
guess whose attention is almost vulnerable to being stolen?
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Your kids for the benefit of people who are not
familiar with persuasive design elements. Would you mind sharing maybe
half a dozen of the most common, the most popular
persuasive design elements in the games that children play today.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Okay, so for me, I am not a designer of
those games. And that's a fantastic question. So here's the
hack I give parents that it would be like if
you want to avoid them, there's three things you can do.
So one of them is it's simple, and I'm not
trying to be Look, I don't own any stock in
video game companies. I don't own a video game company,
(13:20):
so I have no personal stake in this. But Number
one is buy your games, pay for the game. Be
the customer of the developer, be the person that you're
trying to satisfy. Number two, pick games that you can
play offline that do not demand and always on internet connection.
Remember what Sue said about, oh, we're optimizing everything about
(13:40):
the user behavior. They can't do that if you're offline,
they don't know what you're doing. So pick games that
you could play in front of a couch and a
TV with the internet off. Can you play that game?
If you have to be online, You've got to be
extremely cautious about what you're playing because you're dealing with
a company that can outtrack everything you're doing and look
at selling that to somebody the values it more than
(14:03):
you do. And the other third hack is if you
talk to your player and you ask them what is
hard about this game for you? What do you find
interesting or challenging if it's a skill based game. So
let's take Minecraft. Okay, Minecraft generally and ninety nine percent
of the instance, I'm not aware of an instance where
(14:24):
that's become addictive. The way these hook games are. Kids
will talk about I'm learning to use redstone, I'm building something.
They talk like project managers. They have a goal, they're
trying to achieve something. They might be working with friends.
They could take you in the game and show you
what they're doing. It is like a little world they're building.
When they're dealing with a hook game, they start complaining
(14:47):
almost instantly, this is unfair and this is broken, and
this is where you see that like I can't ever
remember seeing my kids rage spike a controller after playing Minecraft.
But when you're in an addictive they don't even know
what they're doing. They have a hard time describing it,
but they'll begin to tell you where the game is broken,
or I can't sleep at night, or like it's almost
(15:09):
like a trauma conversation. So one of the biggest clues
is how does your child think about and discuss playing
the game. And if they're using the language of progress,
you're probably playing a good game. If they're using the
language that talks about suffering or things that sound like
suffering or unfairness, think of it this way. Do they
(15:31):
sound empowered or do they sound like a victim. If
they sound like a victim, get them away from that game.
If they sound like they're developing skills and growing, that
might be a game that is Spend some more time
and understand what's going on there. There's a higher probability
that's a safer game. But the mechanisms that I most
see with the hook games are they hide critical elements
(15:54):
off screen. There's nothing you can do as a player
to control the probability of a better outcome. Like things
just show up like here's a loot crate or here's
a bunch of gems, go ahead and match it. Like
the preconditions are masked from the player and they're just
presented with another situation. They're presented with another situation. And look,
(16:15):
we see this in social media right the number one
variable racial reward is people's fickle approval. Go talk to
people that are on social media, ask them what's the
result you're gonna get on that post. They're like, I
have no idea. It's all trial and error. I'm just
gonna keep coming back until I get one that hits,
and I'm gonna tune it. I'm gonna tweek it until oh,
that doesn't work anymore. And the games are not doing
(16:38):
that faster. More systematically is if the outcome is detached
from the behavior, you only get that randomness reward. That's
when you're in trouble.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Scott, one of my favorite things to do when I'm
presenting on screens and kids in a parent's setting. When
I'm running, one of my presentations is to pull out
the book Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief. I'm sure
you know it well, and there's this scene as Percy
and Annabeth and Grover are racing across the United States.
They're trying to save the world, trying to save his mom,
all that sort of stuff. They end up in Las
(17:17):
Vegas at the Lotus Hotel and Casino. They're exhausted, they
need a break. They walk in and instead of freshening
up and getting the rest that they need, they're drawn
into the games room. This is games room, especially for kids,
and Percy has this interaction where the whole it says,
the whole lobby was a giant game room, and I'm
(17:38):
not talking about cheesy old pac Man games or slot machines.
Then he describes how incredible it was and how they
started playing and he got really into it. And he's
talking to this guy called Darren Daubrn and the guy
keeps using words like groovy, and then as they're having
this conversation, he realizes that he uses different language. He
only feels like he's been two two weeks in the
(18:00):
games room, but when he asks him what year it is,
Darren says nineteen seventy seven. Then he meets someone from
nineteen eighty five, someone from nineteen ninety three. They all
claimed they hadn't been in here very long, a few days,
a few weeks at most. They didn't really know and
they didn't care. And then the penny Drop says, this
moment of insight, then it occurred to me, how long
had I been here? It seemed like only a couple
(18:21):
of hours, But was it I tried to remember why
were we here? So I love this. He's completely forgotten
that he's trying to save the world because he's so
enmeshed in the game. He goes over to Annabeth, still
building her city. Come on, I told her, We've got
to get out of here. No response. I shook her, Annabeth.
She looked up, annoyed. What we need to leave? This
place is a trap, Anabeth. There are people here from
(18:42):
nineteen seventy seven, kids who have never aged. You check
in and you stay forever. What's your response?
Speaker 2 (18:50):
One of the groups of people and one of the
reasons I do what I do. I coach use baseball
for fourteen years, and I'm very passionate about reason good man,
but also helping other men. Families are as good men.
Moms will come to me because they've got a boy
who's stuck in gaming, and by the time they're in
their early twenties or mid twenties and they have become Hickey,
(19:10):
Gamori or neat, not employed in education or training. That
is a heavy lift to get a kid out of
that room. But if we can reach them at the
age we're talking about, if we can reach him in
that magic window, that seven to thirteen, that seven year window,
and give them a sense of purpose and direction and
(19:32):
keep games as just an interesting challenge part of their lives,
something fun to do, but not this sole purpose of
their lives. We have a much better chance of preventing
these kids from getting lost. We are missing, by some counts,
six hundred thousand millennial men from the workforce, and gen
Z's right on their heels, and Alpha right after him,
(19:52):
and so I think that's a real thing. I think
it's a real phenomenon in our economy, and we're seeing
it globally. They're just they're checking out.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Yeah, And the danceta of effect of that is you're
not going to find somebody who's romantically interested in you,
which makes it harder to form families, and it makes
it harder to get the progression that's necessary to live
a fulfilling and relational life.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Right in the United States, sixty seven percent of college
students are now women. And in my family, some of
the girls that started asking where are the guys. Yeah,
these are massive changes that are happening to our culture
that have long term implications we don't fully understand yet.
But I find it hard to believe that we could
(20:33):
be blase about watching a huge chunk of the population
just vanish.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
This place is a trappy checking you stay forever. I
love it. Your father three. Have any of your children
had compulsive, problematic, or even addictive tendencies when it comes
to games? Clearly games have been a big part of
your family's life.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Oh yeah, Well for me, it started with my oldest
and we didn't get into we were really in that.
Their version of cell phones were flip phones or sidekicks
with texting like the internet smartphone. They were adult, not adults,
but they had hit high school by the time the
(21:15):
iPhone came out. It was too expensive to give it
to them, so they didn't really get it till college.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Yeah, it might all spend the same born in the
light naughties and mid twenties now and just kind of
a skyped that in a way that the younger kids didn't.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Right, And I want to go back to the brain
development and why it's different for a second, because the
part of your head that protects you from these algorithms
is your executive function. That doesn't begin to develop in
humans until high school. So my kids, by the time
they got smartphones were already protected from it because their
brains were finishing developing. That when you're dealing with kids
(21:48):
that are thirteen or younger, or sixteen or younger, they
don't even have it yet. You as an adult or
having a completely different experience with these games than your
kids are. They don't have the circuitry in their heads
to protect them from the algorithm, so they're even more vulnerable.
So the issues that we have with my kids was
understanding how to end game time. And this is something
(22:09):
I've coached a lot of parents on is how does
it video game end? But we know how board games end,
we know how sports games end. But there's a million
ways at games end, and some of them you can
turn off, some of you can't even pause. And I
don't know a single parent that would walk out into
the middle of a baseball pitch while their kid is
getting ready to throw a pitcher and graunded by the collar,
(22:31):
going we're going to dinner now. It would be humiliating.
Nobody would do that. But I see parents do that
to their kids with video games because number one, all
they see as a kid with headphones are going to screen.
They have no idea they're playing with anyone. They have
no idea they're playing against another team, and they're clueless
that there's an audience. During COVID, we did thousands of
(22:53):
online tournaments for high schools and colleges, isolated kids who
couldn't go anywhere. We had nine spectators for every player.
It was crazy. So for your child emotionally ripping them
out of that environment, guess what it really them off
because it would have set anybody to get yank out
of the middle of work or lose work or whatever.
(23:15):
And so most of the instruction I did was to
help parents understand how to end game time without a fight.
And the key was number one, know how the game ends.
Number two, Negotiate with your kid how they're going to
end before they begin, and give them a choice. Hey,
we're in the car at five o'clock sharp, are you
sure you want to jump in that online game with
(23:36):
your friends? Uh, I'll play a Nintendo instead because I
can pause that, I can stop it without stress. And
the third one is a thing we do thousands of
times every month. When it's a few minutes before game
time is over. We flick the lights in the room.
We don't yell at them We don't scream at them,
we don't touch them. We flick the lights. Humans are
(23:57):
super sensitive to peripheral vision. And when the entire lights
in your rooms start going on and off, they're gonna
look up. That's your cue. Gently touch them on the
shoulder and go. You have five minutes to wrap this up,
reinforce their sense of agency, their sense of control. They've
agreed to end game time on time. And what I
hear is ninety five to ninety eight percent of the
time kids and they'll wrap it up, they get up
(24:20):
and they move on when it's a healthy game. I
even hear this from the kids, Oh my god, I
can put this game down. They feel like they've gotten
agency back, they feel like they've gotten control back. And
what I hear from my friends that are family therapists,
the psychologists, when they're playing the addictive games, it's a
meltdown and the kid is out of control. They're just regulated.
(24:42):
They're miserable. So it's miserable for everybody because we're giving
them free games. I feel bad for parents. They think
they're giving their kid a toy.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
We really emphasize real solutions for parents. So struggling with
this and what you've just stepped us through. There is
so valuable. The challenge that I know parents are going
to face as they listen to that is but what
about the five percent who don't respond? What about the
five percent who when the lights start flashing, say no
(25:13):
and they start the meltdown already, or they say I
need fifteen more minutes, I'm not ready yet. What kind
of response do you have for that?
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Okay, so let me expand that. A lot of y'all
have very smart kids, and so they will try to negotiate, well,
let me just finish this match, and then they'll jump
into a match mode that never ends. Right. There'll be
all sorts of games are going to play, and part
of that is welcome to be an adult and a
parent and work with them. I am a fan of
(25:46):
getting off games the kids themselves lose the ability to
self terminate if the player cannot voluntarily end the game.
Because that's really what the difference is, right is, most
of the friction with my kids was built around me
forcing an end condition on them while they were in
the middle of something at grossing, and that could be
(26:09):
pretty disturbing. What we're talking about now is a difference
between that condition and I'm hooked, and I am not
a fan of hooked games. I'm like, get off of them,
get away from them. There's better things to be doing
with your time. There's no good outcome from being in
this hooked environment. And we haven't even talked about how
can none of these companies do age verification? There was
(26:33):
a a I think it was Ubs Wahlberg, and there's
some analysis of some of these game platforms. I have
bad news for you. Guess what the number one platform
for pedophiles is now games? Young kids play free games? Yeah,
Red Books, Yes, one hundred percent. And you have the
most valuable company on the planet, or one of them,
(26:53):
Meta that somehow can't manage to do age verification. We
do an age verification all the time the real world.
Why can't we do it online? We don't want to.
They don't want to change their model, so it doesn't
help parents like I think kids. I think parents and
kids deserved as the same protections online that they get
in the real world. But your question was what do
(27:14):
I do about the five percent? Well, I would start
with one. If you're seeing that behavior, go through the
question process, can you play that game offline? Well, why
don't we try to move into a game we can
play offline. If you walk your way through buying a
game that can be played offline and you're still seeing that,
then I would encourage you to see professional help because
your child is likely going to be suffering from compulsive
(27:36):
gamer syndrome. I think they call it. But if you
just start taking away, and this is the stuff we
see over and over again is if you detox right,
take it away, get them out, get them moving, get
them out in a natural environment, get them into nature,
get them to decompress. It's like taking their phones away. Man,
it makes a huge difference. And that's one of probably
(27:59):
one of the single biggest things that we see is
it's how dangerous the phones are and the tablets. Is
that that's where a lot of these games and shovelwear
come from. You know. Some of the tips are make
sure your phone has a bedtime, no screens in the
bedroom at night. Lots of parents think, oh, my kid
is oh they turned the screens off, Like no, they
(28:21):
don't think wit to U fall sit and they get
up and go play again. And teachers just ask your teachers,
is my kid palling a sleeping class. That's your single
biggest clue that kids are sneaking more game time. I
have a friend who found their son had a burner
phone so they could be online with games a burner phone,
Are you kidding me? Like, the links they're going to
(28:43):
because they're hooked are just crazy. So part of it
is getting them away from that and then getting them
into an environment where they're they've got control. That's the
biggest thing is are these games either reinforcing their sense
of agency or these games completely deleting it? And step
(29:03):
one is get rid of the games that are deleting
their sense of agency. Then walk yourself through the progression,
and if you get to the end of your rope
they really can't let it go, then you probably need help.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
If we want to have effective conversations with our children
about reducing screen time and gaming time, or at least
making sure that it's healthier and productive than many parents
feel that it is. What do you encourage parents to do?
How do you guide them so that the kids aren't
running around behind their back and being deceitful, or so
(29:36):
that World War three isn't blowing up in the living
room in the middle of this game.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Part of the reason I'm doing this to get out
and talk is that it's tough. Like keeping phones out
of the hands of kids is extremely difficult. And the
world probably you and I grew up in, which is hey,
go out and play with your friends. You send kids outside.
Today there's nobody out there.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
I say to my kids all the time, I wish
you could have the childhood that I had that was
so it was so active, it was so social, it
was so so engaged in the world around us, instead
of sitting on the carpet in the living room and
staring at a screen and being with your friends there.
It's just I feel like we lived in such a
rich world relative to what we have today. For the kids.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Look, let's you know, let's be honest. Like my wife
and I as parents struggle with how much we're on
our phones. We struggle. My son was the one that
came in because by the time they're in their twenties now,
they are wanting to spend more time with us. He
had the phone stack. We went to dinner and he goes, okay, everybody,
stack your phone's up. Whoever pulls our phone first is
paying for dinner, you know. And it was like, I
(30:44):
love he came up with that. I loved that one.
That was great. But at the end of the day,
it's do they need a smartphone or do they need
a phone? And when I talked to educators are like,
we don't want your kids on their phone in school.
So there's a bit movement right now in the US.
I think they just passed it in New York to
have phone free schools, and I'm all for that. So
(31:06):
some of this is we need some legislation, we need
to set some ground rules. These are our communities, our economies,
and I think parents need to be aware of what's
happening and we need to demand protections for our kids.
Until that happens. I'm currently researching what are some of
the best most effective software solutions, But what we keep
(31:27):
hearing is whatever you install some IP blocker on the phone,
or you get a rout or whatever, the kids just
go to a website at school, to go to a
friend's house to look up how to get around it,
and I get around it. And what we never had
to do I don't do in my house. But what
I've heard people have success with is specifically the devices,
(31:47):
is lock them up, like physically make sure you have
that device in your hands at night at bedtime, and
it gets locked and only the parents have access to it,
and that activity makes a big difference. What I've seen
now that is a new thing is schools, well meaning
(32:08):
schools are giving kids chromebooks and the kids are getting
the free games through the chromebooks. And I've been like,
go get a console. They're not that expensive compared to
the misery you're suffering. And when the kid has redirected
to a safer form of play, like they just I
(32:29):
just hear they're like, oh my god, we can end
game time without a fight. Even our son is happier
and they're having healthier conversations. So Arthur Brooks talked about
it is sometimes you can't eliminate something, but you can
replace it. And so that's one of the key is
that can you replace it with something healthier? And I'm
not an expert in social media, I know girls are suffering.
(32:52):
And what's happened is this attention stealing economy hurts boys
by giving them fake agency. They're not really doing anything,
but the game makes them feel like they are, so
they're are pretending to do risky things and pretending to
develop skills and they're not really. And girls are seeking
community and they're going out and they're pretending to see community,
(33:13):
but they're not really the biggest thing we need and
this is that huge opportunity for NGOs, faith organizations and
even schools. But kids really need is they need to
get out in environments where they're face to face doing
something at the same time and high commitment, hard to join,
hard to leave, so they have a reason to stick
(33:34):
together and work out all the bumbling social awkwardness that
is part of growing up and learning to be human.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
Scott, we need to start to move towards conclusion. For
a lightning round. Yes, no questions, short answers.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
I'll do my best.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
I know that whenever I do one of these, I'm like, oh,
but this is so much more. I want to say,
let's see how we go. If you do need to expand,
let's keep it really taught. Question number one, and these
are intentionally meant to be provocative. Number one. Are parents
who allow high levels of, if not unlimited, gaming access
failing their children?
Speaker 2 (34:08):
No, I cannot say that definitively.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
Did your Disney background make you more lenient about screen time?
Than other parents that you've seen.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
No, I was already in the video game industry before
I joined.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Disney Roadblocks yes or no. No, absolutely not Fortnite Yes
or no, absolutely not Minecraft.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
We talked about this before, but I'd like to get
some clarity on it. Is the gaming industry deliberately designing
addictive mechanics that target children.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
There are studios and companies that are doing what you're describing.
There are many companies that are not. It is a
diverse industry, and there are some great companies out there
producing great, engaging entertainment. And that's part of the reason
I'm doing what I'm doing. I'm angry at the industry
I love that can create fun, compelling, great entertainment is
(35:05):
being co opted by thieves. It's not right, Scott.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
Do you believe violent games desensitized children to real world violence?
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Man, No, I've wrote enough studies to indicate that's likely
not true.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Is the rise of gaming culture creating a generation that
is less equipped for physical and face to face social
realities and challenges.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
I didn't get to talk about it, but we were
seeing a rise in what they're calling synthetic or virtual autism,
steering at glass is breaking the kid's connection between how
their behavior affects other people. They don't recognize the cues. Well,
they're becoming face blind. They're losing the ability to read
other people's emotions, and we're seeing a up to four
(35:56):
or five year degradation or slow down and social emotional intelligence. Like,
there's data to indicate this is true. This is not
an opinion.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
And the last question, do you think the metaverse will
eventually replace traditional childhood experiences?
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Here's what we're fighting is if it's not the metaverse.
This was the whole premise behind Jonathan Height's book, is
that we've moved to a phone based childhood instead of
a play based childhood. We need to get back to
a play based childhood because you're priming. The culture our
kids are absorbing is now Internet culture, not our culture,
(36:32):
not real world culture, but an environment that prioritizes novelty
over norms and normallessness is really deeply unhealthy for humans.
We need a community to be a part of to
experience our individuality. Individuality and isolation is not individuality, it's pain.
(36:55):
And so yeah, I really am a firm believer now
that we have to get back to a play based childhood.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
Scott, you're doing amazing work. The conversation that we've had
today is so important for parents. His kids love to game,
and you've provide us with some number one great information,
but um to some really practical strategies to assist when
things get tricky around kids screens, games and the conflict
that can sue. As we wrap up, is there anything
(37:23):
that you want people to know?
Speaker 2 (37:25):
There's one thing we didn't touch on is it's very
important to me. This is something I try to catch
a lot of parents on is focus on that social
emotional development. Don't I don't get obsessed with absolute screen time.
If my kids are in front of a console playing
with their friends in person hours, let them have at it, right,
it's a social engaging interaction dynamic. If they're online by
(37:49):
themselves playing with god knows who, or they're on their
phone playing with god knows who, ten or fifteen minutes
might be too long, and so it's really about what
is the social environment that they're learning from, and that's
the piece that we want to optimize around. And I
encourage parents play the games with your kids. If you
can't play with them, that's another big red flag. In fact,
(38:12):
playing badly is a gift because these kids are not
seeing what it looks like to struggle. Everybody's presenting perfect
appearances online in games and social media, and so they
think they're the only ones struggling. Emotionally, show them what
it looks like for a mature adult to struggle to
learn to do something well, and normalize those behaviors with them.
(38:33):
But I hear over again from parents is it dramatically
changes the conversations they have with their kids around gaming
and on how their kids are feeling.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Scott's such a valuable discussion. If people want more information
about you and what you do, where should they go
and how can they be in touch?
Speaker 2 (38:51):
Scottnovis dot com is my personal website. I wish we
had operations in Australia. Game truck dot com is that
if you want to know more about the company I founded.
But if you want to reach me, Scottnervous dot com
is the best way to reach out to me, and
I'm most active on LinkedIn.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Willing to all of those resources. In the show notes,
Scott has been such a such a delight to have
you on and so grateful for what you've shared.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
Thank you was that helpful?
Speaker 1 (39:16):
So helpful. I know every parent who's listener is going
to be like, oh yeah, I'm going to do the lights.
The Happy Families podcast is produced by Justin Roland from
Bridge Media. For more information about making your family happier,
you can visit us at happy families dot com dot
you and check out some of my webinars about keeping
kids in healthy relationships with their screens happy families dot
(39:39):
com dot you,
It's not every day that we have a former vice
president at the Walt Disney Company on the Happy Families Podcast. Today, though,
is the day where that's happening. Scott Novus is a
video game industry veteran, the founder of Game Truck, the
largest mobile video game party company in the United States,
and a dad of three. He's worked with Disney, He's
created best selling games, He's authored books, and I could
(00:27):
go on and on about Scott Novos's pedigree. Today's a
podcast you do not want to miss if you have
children who game, which is pretty much everyone. Welcome to
the Happy Families Podcast, Real parenting solutions every day on
Australia's most downloaded paring podcast. My name is doctor Justin
Coulson and I am so excited about my conversation Scott Novis.
(00:51):
Welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Oh my gosh, thank you for having me here, Justin.
I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Right now, I reckon there's about fourteen and a half
fifteen million parents who really hate you because they can't
get their kids off the games that you've invented. I'm
obviously stirring a little bit here, but this is an area.
Ninety two percent of Australian parents are worried about the
extent which their children are on screens, whether it's social
media or gaming. And while I'm on this provocative bent,
(01:18):
there's a guy called William Sue. He's a former game developer,
founder of Storm eight. He knows about this as well.
He's launched more than fifty mobile games collectively. They've been
downloaded more than a billion times. They've generated billions of
dollars in sales. And I have a quote here from
a New York Times essay where he says this, I'm
very familiar with game addiction, as that's what I thought
(01:38):
about every day for more than a decade. In brackets,
he says, we sold the company in twenty twenty hed
I hired product managers and engineers to track everything players
did and analyze their behavior. Using the data we collected,
we experimented with every feature of our games to see
which versions allowed us to extract the most time and
money from our players. For us, game addiction was by design.
(02:02):
It meant success for our business. That's the ultimate goal,
he says. This is the compelling statement that really grabs me.
That's the ultimate goal. To build habit forming games that
have players coming back every day. In other words, it
takes away the decision making. We wanted people to reach
for their phones first thing in the morning and jump
right into our games just as they check their social
(02:22):
media and emails. And as I'm reading that. You're not
in your head. And this is not a personal attack
on you. It is a question around the game industry
generally and the impact that it has on families. Now
you talk to parents about how they can navigate this
with their kids, it's almost like you've done a one
eighty I guess in some ways. Talk to me about this,
(02:44):
the complexity around this, and how kids can how families
can have video game time but without the fighting.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
If it's okay, justin, I want to expand on what
you're talking about because that just confirms everything that I know.
So I appreciate it. I'm going to go back and
track down that article on add it to my portfolio.
I have studied game addiction for a long time, not
just recently. Addiction is a complicated topic because you have
chemical dependency. I learned this from doctor Mark Gulston about
(03:13):
what is addiction, and it turns out there's a psychological
condition that people get into that is most easily described
as despair. Like literally think of the word despair to unpair.
It is painful to break all of your relationships. And
there's three modes maladaptive strategies humans used to deal with that.
(03:33):
So one of them is that people will think of
it as a job environment. People quit, people can become
reactive or toxic in the work environment, or people can
drop into learned helplessness and numb out. Well, those extremes
are tragic, right, Quitters suicide, people that become reactionary. What's
(03:53):
the extreme form of that violence. We've certainly seen a
growth in that. And the last one is numbing becomes addiction. Now,
when the data indicated for a long time that addictive
play was really limited to about seven percent of gamers
make three to seven percent, was a window the people
fell into that mode. But that radically changed in the
(04:16):
last ten years. And what really got my attention is
you have these nine, ten eleven year old kids that
are demonstrating addictive behaviors, let's call them compulsive obsessive behaviors.
What the heck? They don't have any of the hallmarks,
so it would indicate the emotional distress. They're not socially isolated,
they're not locked up. I mean they're like in loving
(04:37):
families that are supporting them. They're in schools, they're like,
nothing about their environment should predict this behavior. What is
going on? And what really came to my attention through
Professor Jonathan Height's book, The Anxious Generation, was the awareness
that exactly what's too indicated. They changed the algorithm they
were developing to. The algorithm we were developing to is
(05:00):
is called the self determination theory. It's part of Mihail
check sent me High's flow. It has three components autonomy, mastery,
and relatedness. And I'll come back to that. What changed
is they started developing too a different algorithm. As an
algorithm started coming out in early two thousands. They started
(05:22):
teaching it at Stanford and other schools, and it's called
the Hook algorithm. And the Hook algorithm does something that
is I don't agree with it, but it's exactly what
Sue talked about. We developed companies like we did the
most insane thing ever as a population. We started valuing
companies on how much attention they could steal, not the
(05:45):
value they delivered to their users, and it started in
social media. It was only a matter of time before
it spread to games. Notice who talked about mobile games.
He talked about like this was the turning point that
is wrecking everything. Is putting the Internet in kids' hands
twenty four to seven. It's with them everywhere, and that
(06:06):
is radically different than the old laptop gaming and console
gaming where you weren't going to lug your TV around
with you, right, you just you got up and walked away.
And also most of the games were barely ever online
and they didn't need online to play. And so what
did they do with the hook algorithm? So there's a
(06:27):
couple of things that I think would help your audience
understand what is actually happening and why this is so
devastating for their kids. So do I have your permission
to share? Because I want to back up so they
can understand, like why the hook algorithm is such a
problem for kids.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Yeah, just before you step into that, self determination theory
is the very foundation of pretty much all of the
work that I do. So happy families listeners are familiar
with me talking about how children need to feel like
they're getting a sense of progress and mastery. That's the
confidence need.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
It's standing the familiar when you already know in your
audience know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
And even that need for autonomy raight, the need to
feel choiceful. So that makes sense. But the hook algorithm,
which is, I know something that near Ale talks about
in his very popular book. That's something that we don't
talk about a whole lot here at all, the hijacking
of neural architecture by the world's smartest people from MIT
and Stamford and so on. So let's step into that.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Okay, So humans are unique for a couple of reasons,
a bunch of reasons, but there's two in particular. So
number one, and I learned this from Gabermante and his
book Scattered Minds. So this touches into how our brains develop,
and it touches into ADHD but also neurodivergence, and what's
not becoming the spectrum of autism is just how our
(07:43):
brains developed. And step one is we are the only
animal that our brain quadruples in size after birth. Wales
and elephants might be born with a bigger brain, but
it doesn't get much bigger. Number two one the hit
list of brain growth or chimpanzees with a doubling that
means fold increase, and by five years old, the average
human has ninety percent of the brain size they're going
(08:05):
to have as an adult, but more neural connections. That
mean kids are just a little bundle of potential. And
if you've ever seen that, like kindergartener, maybe learn how
to throw a ball or kick or unskilled, that's it right,
they are just ready to get wired up to get
good at something. Now. The second thing that makes humans
unique in the mammalian species. Every other mammal goes from
(08:29):
birth to reproductive age as fast as possible. Our neighbor's
dog was three years old when they had our labrador puppy,
Cookie three three years old, ready to reproduce. Humans don't
do that. We pause for seven years before puberty starts.
Seven years. What is happening in that seven year window, Well,
(08:53):
there's some research that was done that indicates what's happening
for kids in that seven year window is that that
is when we absorb our culture, not just the family.
We're part of the community, like it goes all the
way to the bones. That is where you're going to
build your cultural identity. If we dropped you in let's
say Japan before you know. In that seven year window,
(09:17):
you will not only speak fluently and natively, you'll get
the jokes, you'll know the food. You'll have a sense
of the design and the tastes of it, the smells
of it. You'll feel Japanese. If we pull you before nine,
you'll lose it. If we add you after thirteen, you'll
always feel like a foreigner, even if you learn to
speak fluently. So there's some magic that's getting baked into kids' brains.
(09:39):
Now let's go to the hook algorithm. What are they doing?
We as humans don't learn the way we think we learn.
We have baked into us a little trial and error loop.
And what's important about that is dopamine, which we all
think is sort of the achievement or hormone, does something different.
It really sparks learning. And when it's given in short
(09:59):
little doses, doesn't create satisfaction justin it creates craving. So
if you take that little hit craving thing and you
look at the trial and error, what happens is this
is about behaviors, not concepts, not intellectualism. We're talking like
physical movement, things that you need to do. Think about
(10:22):
picking up let's say a cricket bat. You're in Australia.
You're going to swing it a few times. What is
your brain doing in those first few swings. It's experimenting,
wait and feel. We're built for trial and error, and
what you're trying to do is map my behavior to
the results I get. And your brain is doing that
below the level of conscious thought. You're almost not even
(10:44):
aware that you're doing it. And so what the developers
learned is that if the reward in feedback is unpredictable
and variable, we can extend the window that you stay
in trial and error mode. What they did is they
built an algorithm. It starts with step one, the queue.
(11:04):
So why does every app you install on your phone
ask to turn on notifications Because it's the beginning of
the hook cycle. You've got to queue you to do something.
Then you're going to do a thing. Then we're going
to give you and this is the technical term, a
variable ratio reward. It's unpredictable and it's tuned to be
just the right amount to hold your attention, get you
(11:27):
your dopamine hit that never let you master the algorithm.
Then we're going to move you over to what's called investment,
and if we're lucky, what will happen is you will
start self cuing like a cigarette attic reaching for a cigarette.
And the difference between self determination games and hook games
(11:48):
are self determination is you're building skills that produce mostly
reliable results that you can build on, and you will
quote level up. You will use that skill to get
a largely predictable outcome, and then we'll give you more
complex things to go after, and away you go. That's progress.
Hook other rooms give you illusions of progress, but what
(12:11):
they're really trying to do is keep you stuck in
this trial and error loop, hammering your dopamine to maximize
your craving to the point where you can't even put
it down. And that's the behavior that is absolutely driving
kids and parents and everyone bonkers. It's not a game anymore.
(12:32):
It's not entertainment. Like literally what Sue said, it is
how much money can we make stealing people's attention? And
guess whose attention is almost vulnerable to being stolen?
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Your kids for the benefit of people who are not
familiar with persuasive design elements. Would you mind sharing maybe
half a dozen of the most common, the most popular
persuasive design elements in the games that children play today.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Okay, so for me, I am not a designer of
those games. And that's a fantastic question. So here's the
hack I give parents that it would be like if
you want to avoid them, there's three things you can do.
So one of them is it's simple, and I'm not
trying to be Look, I don't own any stock in
video game companies. I don't own a video game company,
(13:20):
so I have no personal stake in this. But Number
one is buy your games, pay for the game. Be
the customer of the developer, be the person that you're
trying to satisfy. Number two, pick games that you can
play offline that do not demand and always on internet connection.
Remember what Sue said about, oh, we're optimizing everything about
(13:40):
the user behavior. They can't do that if you're offline,
they don't know what you're doing. So pick games that
you could play in front of a couch and a
TV with the internet off. Can you play that game?
If you have to be online, You've got to be
extremely cautious about what you're playing because you're dealing with
a company that can outtrack everything you're doing and look
at selling that to somebody the values it more than
(14:03):
you do. And the other third hack is if you
talk to your player and you ask them what is
hard about this game for you? What do you find
interesting or challenging if it's a skill based game. So
let's take Minecraft. Okay, Minecraft generally and ninety nine percent
of the instance, I'm not aware of an instance where
(14:24):
that's become addictive. The way these hook games are. Kids
will talk about I'm learning to use redstone, I'm building something.
They talk like project managers. They have a goal, they're
trying to achieve something. They might be working with friends.
They could take you in the game and show you
what they're doing. It is like a little world they're building.
When they're dealing with a hook game, they start complaining
(14:47):
almost instantly, this is unfair and this is broken, and
this is where you see that like I can't ever
remember seeing my kids rage spike a controller after playing Minecraft.
But when you're in an addictive they don't even know
what they're doing. They have a hard time describing it,
but they'll begin to tell you where the game is broken,
or I can't sleep at night, or like it's almost
(15:09):
like a trauma conversation. So one of the biggest clues
is how does your child think about and discuss playing
the game. And if they're using the language of progress,
you're probably playing a good game. If they're using the
language that talks about suffering or things that sound like
suffering or unfairness, think of it this way. Do they
(15:31):
sound empowered or do they sound like a victim. If
they sound like a victim, get them away from that game.
If they sound like they're developing skills and growing, that
might be a game that is Spend some more time
and understand what's going on there. There's a higher probability
that's a safer game. But the mechanisms that I most
see with the hook games are they hide critical elements
(15:54):
off screen. There's nothing you can do as a player
to control the probability of a better outcome. Like things
just show up like here's a loot crate or here's
a bunch of gems, go ahead and match it. Like
the preconditions are masked from the player and they're just
presented with another situation. They're presented with another situation. And look,
(16:15):
we see this in social media right the number one
variable racial reward is people's fickle approval. Go talk to
people that are on social media, ask them what's the
result you're gonna get on that post. They're like, I
have no idea. It's all trial and error. I'm just
gonna keep coming back until I get one that hits,
and I'm gonna tune it. I'm gonna tweek it until oh,
that doesn't work anymore. And the games are not doing
(16:38):
that faster. More systematically is if the outcome is detached
from the behavior, you only get that randomness reward. That's
when you're in trouble.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Scott, one of my favorite things to do when I'm
presenting on screens and kids in a parent's setting. When
I'm running, one of my presentations is to pull out
the book Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief. I'm sure
you know it well, and there's this scene as Percy
and Annabeth and Grover are racing across the United States.
They're trying to save the world, trying to save his mom,
all that sort of stuff. They end up in Las
(17:17):
Vegas at the Lotus Hotel and Casino. They're exhausted, they
need a break. They walk in and instead of freshening
up and getting the rest that they need, they're drawn
into the games room. This is games room, especially for kids,
and Percy has this interaction where the whole it says,
the whole lobby was a giant game room, and I'm
(17:38):
not talking about cheesy old pac Man games or slot machines.
Then he describes how incredible it was and how they
started playing and he got really into it. And he's
talking to this guy called Darren Daubrn and the guy
keeps using words like groovy, and then as they're having
this conversation, he realizes that he uses different language. He
only feels like he's been two two weeks in the
(18:00):
games room, but when he asks him what year it is,
Darren says nineteen seventy seven. Then he meets someone from
nineteen eighty five, someone from nineteen ninety three. They all
claimed they hadn't been in here very long, a few days,
a few weeks at most. They didn't really know and
they didn't care. And then the penny Drop says, this
moment of insight, then it occurred to me, how long
had I been here? It seemed like only a couple
(18:21):
of hours, But was it I tried to remember why
were we here? So I love this. He's completely forgotten
that he's trying to save the world because he's so
enmeshed in the game. He goes over to Annabeth, still
building her city. Come on, I told her, We've got
to get out of here. No response. I shook her, Annabeth.
She looked up, annoyed. What we need to leave? This
place is a trap, Anabeth. There are people here from
(18:42):
nineteen seventy seven, kids who have never aged. You check
in and you stay forever. What's your response?
Speaker 2 (18:50):
One of the groups of people and one of the
reasons I do what I do. I coach use baseball
for fourteen years, and I'm very passionate about reason good man,
but also helping other men. Families are as good men.
Moms will come to me because they've got a boy
who's stuck in gaming, and by the time they're in
their early twenties or mid twenties and they have become Hickey,
(19:10):
Gamori or neat, not employed in education or training. That
is a heavy lift to get a kid out of
that room. But if we can reach them at the
age we're talking about, if we can reach him in
that magic window, that seven to thirteen, that seven year window,
and give them a sense of purpose and direction and
(19:32):
keep games as just an interesting challenge part of their lives,
something fun to do, but not this sole purpose of
their lives. We have a much better chance of preventing
these kids from getting lost. We are missing, by some counts,
six hundred thousand millennial men from the workforce, and gen
Z's right on their heels, and Alpha right after him,
(19:52):
and so I think that's a real thing. I think
it's a real phenomenon in our economy, and we're seeing
it globally. They're just they're checking out.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Yeah, And the danceta of effect of that is you're
not going to find somebody who's romantically interested in you,
which makes it harder to form families, and it makes
it harder to get the progression that's necessary to live
a fulfilling and relational life.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Right in the United States, sixty seven percent of college
students are now women. And in my family, some of
the girls that started asking where are the guys. Yeah,
these are massive changes that are happening to our culture
that have long term implications we don't fully understand yet.
But I find it hard to believe that we could
(20:33):
be blase about watching a huge chunk of the population
just vanish.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
This place is a trappy checking you stay forever. I
love it. Your father three. Have any of your children
had compulsive, problematic, or even addictive tendencies when it comes
to games? Clearly games have been a big part of
your family's life.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Oh yeah, Well for me, it started with my oldest
and we didn't get into we were really in that.
Their version of cell phones were flip phones or sidekicks
with texting like the internet smartphone. They were adult, not adults,
but they had hit high school by the time the
(21:15):
iPhone came out. It was too expensive to give it
to them, so they didn't really get it till college.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Yeah, it might all spend the same born in the
light naughties and mid twenties now and just kind of
a skyped that in a way that the younger kids didn't.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Right, And I want to go back to the brain
development and why it's different for a second, because the
part of your head that protects you from these algorithms
is your executive function. That doesn't begin to develop in
humans until high school. So my kids, by the time
they got smartphones were already protected from it because their
brains were finishing developing. That when you're dealing with kids
(21:48):
that are thirteen or younger, or sixteen or younger, they
don't even have it yet. You as an adult or
having a completely different experience with these games than your
kids are. They don't have the circuitry in their heads
to protect them from the algorithm, so they're even more vulnerable.
So the issues that we have with my kids was
understanding how to end game time. And this is something
(22:09):
I've coached a lot of parents on is how does
it video game end? But we know how board games end,
we know how sports games end. But there's a million
ways at games end, and some of them you can
turn off, some of you can't even pause. And I
don't know a single parent that would walk out into
the middle of a baseball pitch while their kid is
getting ready to throw a pitcher and graunded by the collar,
(22:31):
going we're going to dinner now. It would be humiliating.
Nobody would do that. But I see parents do that
to their kids with video games because number one, all
they see as a kid with headphones are going to screen.
They have no idea they're playing with anyone. They have
no idea they're playing against another team, and they're clueless
that there's an audience. During COVID, we did thousands of
(22:53):
online tournaments for high schools and colleges, isolated kids who
couldn't go anywhere. We had nine spectators for every player.
It was crazy. So for your child emotionally ripping them
out of that environment, guess what it really them off
because it would have set anybody to get yank out
of the middle of work or lose work or whatever.
(23:15):
And so most of the instruction I did was to
help parents understand how to end game time without a fight.
And the key was number one, know how the game ends.
Number two, Negotiate with your kid how they're going to
end before they begin, and give them a choice. Hey,
we're in the car at five o'clock sharp, are you
sure you want to jump in that online game with
(23:36):
your friends? Uh, I'll play a Nintendo instead because I
can pause that, I can stop it without stress. And
the third one is a thing we do thousands of
times every month. When it's a few minutes before game
time is over. We flick the lights in the room.
We don't yell at them We don't scream at them,
we don't touch them. We flick the lights. Humans are
(23:57):
super sensitive to peripheral vision. And when the entire lights
in your rooms start going on and off, they're gonna
look up. That's your cue. Gently touch them on the
shoulder and go. You have five minutes to wrap this up,
reinforce their sense of agency, their sense of control. They've
agreed to end game time on time. And what I
hear is ninety five to ninety eight percent of the
time kids and they'll wrap it up, they get up
(24:20):
and they move on when it's a healthy game. I
even hear this from the kids, Oh my god, I
can put this game down. They feel like they've gotten
agency back, they feel like they've gotten control back. And
what I hear from my friends that are family therapists,
the psychologists, when they're playing the addictive games, it's a
meltdown and the kid is out of control. They're just regulated.
(24:42):
They're miserable. So it's miserable for everybody because we're giving
them free games. I feel bad for parents. They think
they're giving their kid a toy.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
We really emphasize real solutions for parents. So struggling with
this and what you've just stepped us through. There is
so valuable. The challenge that I know parents are going
to face as they listen to that is but what
about the five percent who don't respond? What about the
five percent who when the lights start flashing, say no
(25:13):
and they start the meltdown already, or they say I
need fifteen more minutes, I'm not ready yet. What kind
of response do you have for that?
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Okay, so let me expand that. A lot of y'all
have very smart kids, and so they will try to negotiate, well,
let me just finish this match, and then they'll jump
into a match mode that never ends. Right. There'll be
all sorts of games are going to play, and part
of that is welcome to be an adult and a
parent and work with them. I am a fan of
(25:46):
getting off games the kids themselves lose the ability to
self terminate if the player cannot voluntarily end the game.
Because that's really what the difference is, right is, most
of the friction with my kids was built around me
forcing an end condition on them while they were in
the middle of something at grossing, and that could be
(26:09):
pretty disturbing. What we're talking about now is a difference
between that condition and I'm hooked, and I am not
a fan of hooked games. I'm like, get off of them,
get away from them. There's better things to be doing
with your time. There's no good outcome from being in
this hooked environment. And we haven't even talked about how
can none of these companies do age verification? There was
(26:33):
a a I think it was Ubs Wahlberg, and there's
some analysis of some of these game platforms. I have
bad news for you. Guess what the number one platform
for pedophiles is now games? Young kids play free games? Yeah,
Red Books, Yes, one hundred percent. And you have the
most valuable company on the planet, or one of them,
(26:53):
Meta that somehow can't manage to do age verification. We
do an age verification all the time the real world.
Why can't we do it online? We don't want to.
They don't want to change their model, so it doesn't
help parents like I think kids. I think parents and
kids deserved as the same protections online that they get
in the real world. But your question was what do
(27:14):
I do about the five percent? Well, I would start
with one. If you're seeing that behavior, go through the
question process, can you play that game offline? Well, why
don't we try to move into a game we can
play offline. If you walk your way through buying a
game that can be played offline and you're still seeing that,
then I would encourage you to see professional help because
your child is likely going to be suffering from compulsive
(27:36):
gamer syndrome. I think they call it. But if you
just start taking away, and this is the stuff we
see over and over again is if you detox right,
take it away, get them out, get them moving, get
them out in a natural environment, get them into nature,
get them to decompress. It's like taking their phones away. Man,
it makes a huge difference. And that's one of probably
(27:59):
one of the single biggest things that we see is
it's how dangerous the phones are and the tablets. Is
that that's where a lot of these games and shovelwear
come from. You know. Some of the tips are make
sure your phone has a bedtime, no screens in the
bedroom at night. Lots of parents think, oh, my kid
is oh they turned the screens off, Like no, they
(28:21):
don't think wit to U fall sit and they get
up and go play again. And teachers just ask your teachers,
is my kid palling a sleeping class. That's your single
biggest clue that kids are sneaking more game time. I
have a friend who found their son had a burner
phone so they could be online with games a burner phone,
Are you kidding me? Like, the links they're going to
(28:43):
because they're hooked are just crazy. So part of it
is getting them away from that and then getting them
into an environment where they're they've got control. That's the
biggest thing is are these games either reinforcing their sense
of agency or these games completely deleting it? And step
(29:03):
one is get rid of the games that are deleting
their sense of agency. Then walk yourself through the progression,
and if you get to the end of your rope
they really can't let it go, then you probably need help.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
If we want to have effective conversations with our children
about reducing screen time and gaming time, or at least
making sure that it's healthier and productive than many parents
feel that it is. What do you encourage parents to do?
How do you guide them so that the kids aren't
running around behind their back and being deceitful, or so
(29:36):
that World War three isn't blowing up in the living
room in the middle of this game.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Part of the reason I'm doing this to get out
and talk is that it's tough. Like keeping phones out
of the hands of kids is extremely difficult. And the
world probably you and I grew up in, which is hey,
go out and play with your friends. You send kids outside.
Today there's nobody out there.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
I say to my kids all the time, I wish
you could have the childhood that I had that was
so it was so active, it was so social, it
was so so engaged in the world around us, instead
of sitting on the carpet in the living room and
staring at a screen and being with your friends there.
It's just I feel like we lived in such a
rich world relative to what we have today. For the kids.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Look, let's you know, let's be honest. Like my wife
and I as parents struggle with how much we're on
our phones. We struggle. My son was the one that
came in because by the time they're in their twenties now,
they are wanting to spend more time with us. He
had the phone stack. We went to dinner and he goes, okay, everybody,
stack your phone's up. Whoever pulls our phone first is
paying for dinner, you know. And it was like, I
(30:44):
love he came up with that. I loved that one.
That was great. But at the end of the day,
it's do they need a smartphone or do they need
a phone? And when I talked to educators are like,
we don't want your kids on their phone in school.
So there's a bit movement right now in the US.
I think they just passed it in New York to
have phone free schools, and I'm all for that. So
(31:06):
some of this is we need some legislation, we need
to set some ground rules. These are our communities, our economies,
and I think parents need to be aware of what's
happening and we need to demand protections for our kids.
Until that happens. I'm currently researching what are some of
the best most effective software solutions, But what we keep
(31:27):
hearing is whatever you install some IP blocker on the phone,
or you get a rout or whatever, the kids just
go to a website at school, to go to a
friend's house to look up how to get around it,
and I get around it. And what we never had
to do I don't do in my house. But what
I've heard people have success with is specifically the devices,
(31:47):
is lock them up, like physically make sure you have
that device in your hands at night at bedtime, and
it gets locked and only the parents have access to it,
and that activity makes a big difference. What I've seen
now that is a new thing is schools, well meaning
(32:08):
schools are giving kids chromebooks and the kids are getting
the free games through the chromebooks. And I've been like,
go get a console. They're not that expensive compared to
the misery you're suffering. And when the kid has redirected
to a safer form of play, like they just I
(32:29):
just hear they're like, oh my god, we can end
game time without a fight. Even our son is happier
and they're having healthier conversations. So Arthur Brooks talked about
it is sometimes you can't eliminate something, but you can
replace it. And so that's one of the key is
that can you replace it with something healthier? And I'm
not an expert in social media, I know girls are suffering.
(32:52):
And what's happened is this attention stealing economy hurts boys
by giving them fake agency. They're not really doing anything,
but the game makes them feel like they are, so
they're are pretending to do risky things and pretending to
develop skills and they're not really. And girls are seeking
community and they're going out and they're pretending to see community,
(33:13):
but they're not really the biggest thing we need and
this is that huge opportunity for NGOs, faith organizations and
even schools. But kids really need is they need to
get out in environments where they're face to face doing
something at the same time and high commitment, hard to join,
hard to leave, so they have a reason to stick
(33:34):
together and work out all the bumbling social awkwardness that
is part of growing up and learning to be human.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
Scott, we need to start to move towards conclusion. For
a lightning round. Yes, no questions, short answers.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
I'll do my best.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
I know that whenever I do one of these, I'm like, oh,
but this is so much more. I want to say,
let's see how we go. If you do need to expand,
let's keep it really taught. Question number one, and these
are intentionally meant to be provocative. Number one. Are parents
who allow high levels of, if not unlimited, gaming access
failing their children?
Speaker 2 (34:08):
No, I cannot say that definitively.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
Did your Disney background make you more lenient about screen time?
Than other parents that you've seen.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
No, I was already in the video game industry before
I joined.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Disney Roadblocks yes or no. No, absolutely not Fortnite Yes
or no, absolutely not Minecraft.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
We talked about this before, but I'd like to get
some clarity on it. Is the gaming industry deliberately designing
addictive mechanics that target children.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
There are studios and companies that are doing what you're describing.
There are many companies that are not. It is a
diverse industry, and there are some great companies out there
producing great, engaging entertainment. And that's part of the reason
I'm doing what I'm doing. I'm angry at the industry
I love that can create fun, compelling, great entertainment is
(35:05):
being co opted by thieves. It's not right, Scott.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
Do you believe violent games desensitized children to real world violence?
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Man, No, I've wrote enough studies to indicate that's likely
not true.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Is the rise of gaming culture creating a generation that
is less equipped for physical and face to face social
realities and challenges.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
I didn't get to talk about it, but we were
seeing a rise in what they're calling synthetic or virtual autism,
steering at glass is breaking the kid's connection between how
their behavior affects other people. They don't recognize the cues. Well,
they're becoming face blind. They're losing the ability to read
other people's emotions, and we're seeing a up to four
(35:56):
or five year degradation or slow down and social emotional intelligence. Like,
there's data to indicate this is true. This is not
an opinion.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
And the last question, do you think the metaverse will
eventually replace traditional childhood experiences?
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Here's what we're fighting is if it's not the metaverse.
This was the whole premise behind Jonathan Height's book, is
that we've moved to a phone based childhood instead of
a play based childhood. We need to get back to
a play based childhood because you're priming. The culture our
kids are absorbing is now Internet culture, not our culture,
(36:32):
not real world culture, but an environment that prioritizes novelty
over norms and normallessness is really deeply unhealthy for humans.
We need a community to be a part of to
experience our individuality. Individuality and isolation is not individuality, it's pain.
(36:55):
And so yeah, I really am a firm believer now
that we have to get back to a play based childhood.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
Scott, you're doing amazing work. The conversation that we've had
today is so important for parents. His kids love to game,
and you've provide us with some number one great information,
but um to some really practical strategies to assist when
things get tricky around kids screens, games and the conflict
that can sue. As we wrap up, is there anything
(37:23):
that you want people to know?
Speaker 2 (37:25):
There's one thing we didn't touch on is it's very
important to me. This is something I try to catch
a lot of parents on is focus on that social
emotional development. Don't I don't get obsessed with absolute screen time.
If my kids are in front of a console playing
with their friends in person hours, let them have at it, right,
it's a social engaging interaction dynamic. If they're online by
(37:49):
themselves playing with god knows who, or they're on their
phone playing with god knows who, ten or fifteen minutes
might be too long, and so it's really about what
is the social environment that they're learning from, and that's
the piece that we want to optimize around. And I
encourage parents play the games with your kids. If you
can't play with them, that's another big red flag. In fact,
(38:12):
playing badly is a gift because these kids are not
seeing what it looks like to struggle. Everybody's presenting perfect
appearances online in games and social media, and so they
think they're the only ones struggling. Emotionally, show them what
it looks like for a mature adult to struggle to
learn to do something well, and normalize those behaviors with them.
(38:33):
But I hear over again from parents is it dramatically
changes the conversations they have with their kids around gaming
and on how their kids are feeling.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Scott's such a valuable discussion. If people want more information
about you and what you do, where should they go
and how can they be in touch?
Speaker 2 (38:51):
Scottnovis dot com is my personal website. I wish we
had operations in Australia. Game truck dot com is that
if you want to know more about the company I founded.
But if you want to reach me, Scottnervous dot com
is the best way to reach out to me, and
I'm most active on LinkedIn.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Willing to all of those resources. In the show notes,
Scott has been such a such a delight to have
you on and so grateful for what you've shared.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
Thank you was that helpful?
Speaker 1 (39:16):
So helpful. I know every parent who's listener is going
to be like, oh yeah, I'm going to do the lights.
The Happy Families podcast is produced by Justin Roland from
Bridge Media. For more information about making your family happier,
you can visit us at happy families dot com dot
you and check out some of my webinars about keeping
kids in healthy relationships with their screens happy families dot
(39:39):
com dot you,
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