🎾 please tell me I’m not the only one who wasted countless dollars of my allowance, trying to knock over milk bottles at a carnival?
The other day, I posted a reel about the way we frame being addicted to technology and how ridiculous it would sound if we were talking about books with the same language.
But does that mean we’re minimizing the ways that gaming can be predatory? I would actually argue that assuming this is isolated to gaming is minimizing the actual issue: predatory design.
If someone had taken the time to explain to 6yo me what I learned in a Mark Rober video in my late 30s, it would’ve saved me some internalized shame, but it also would’ve helped me understand how predatory design doesn’t just make use our psychological wiring, it actually overrides it.
I know that a caregiver who chooses to blame video games is doing so to protect their child, which is noble and admirable work. And, the best antidote to the guilt and shame that can come with falling victim to predatory design, is connection and empowerment.
Explaining how these things work, and how predatory design is a part of many parts of our lives, doesn’t minimize how that design shows up in technology, it just destigmatizes it.
This actually makes it more likely that our message will get through since we are removing the morality of associating it with a particular activity.
