When I coached youth baseball, I remember vividly when our teams made the playoffs. While games were only supposed to be an hour or hour and a half long (six innings). During the playoffs, we scheduled for two full hours per game. Why so much time? Several reasons. Little league playoffs draw big crowds, so families need extra time to set up to watch the game. The other reason is the game might go into extra innings.

But as a coach, I spent a lot more time than two hours for every game. I showed up ninety minutes before the game to begin preparations. The back of my truck was filled with baseball gear. Pitching screens, buckets of balls, batting tees, and more. My F250 was like a mobile baseball training compound. It took me about 40 minutes to set up, leaving me a twenty-minute break. But kids always seemed to show up as soon as the hitting stations were ready.

Fortunately, I had many assistant coaches. I wanted to help fathers spend quality time with their sons, and in theory, baseball was a great way to do it. In practice, we spent as much time asking other dads to talk to our sons because none of them liked to be coached by their dad. But it all worked out. The boys didn't like getting instruction from their dads, but they sure loved it when their dad saw them make a great play.

By the time we had warmed up, played the game, then had a post-game snack with debrief, we had spent between four and six hours on the diamond. Four to six hours! Looking back on it, that is a crazy amount of time.

Yet, in fourteen years of coaching, I never once saw a parent barge out onto the field and demand their kid leave because it was dinner time. This never happened between innings, and I definitely never saw a kid pulled off the field mid-pitch.

As a matter of fact, the only arguments I got into with parents (or players) is when their child did not get to play more. (And I still carry some guilt about that.) Not one time did anyone tell me their kids were spending too much time at practice or in games.

However, when it comes to video games, I don't know a single parent who is happy with their child's video gaming. And I get it. Video games in many ways are scary. And parents have been told over and over again you must manage screen time. At the same time, however, many of these same kids have smartphones.

This to me feels like telling a kid they cannot have ice cream... but they may eat as many Cheetos and drink as much soda as they want. A variety of factors, many legitimately have made parents concerned about screen time. And I agree, managing screen time is important. Just like managing a young baseball player's health is also super important. Tommy John Surgery used to only be done for professional players. A player on my club team had Tommy John in middle school. (His school coach overpitched him.)

Excessive anything is bad. There is such a thing as playing too much sports.

However, my real concern about video game screen time is that only focusing on screen time masks the real problem with kids and technology.

We know playing video games for too many hours is bad... do you know why?

I think one of the reasons parents intuitively do not like video games is a simple one. They do not get to see their kid play the game; they only see the back of their head. The kid's entire attention is focused on the glass. Add to that, they cannot see their child's teammates or hear them. Gamers almost always wear headphones to mask background noise. (I sometimes wished those were legal in baseball.) Finally, most parents are not aware that their child may be playing in front of an audience. So, while the child is having an experience that is every bit as valid as playing in a baseball game, with teammates, opponents, and an audience - the parents - it appears they are playing alone.

However, the biggest threat to kids playing video games may not even be the video game, but their phone. The concern for screen time is not limited to video games but all screens.

Children between the ages of 5 and 12 need a lot of face-to-face social interaction. Their brains need to learn how to read facial expressions, they need to learn how to pick up on social cues, and how their behaviors affect other people. None of that can happen if you are staring at a piece of glass.

The real issue is that limiting video game time may not solve the real issue: Making sure your child gets enough face-to-face social interaction. Consequently, I recommend to parents that they first focus on how much in-person social interaction their kids are getting. If I have a house full of boys playing Smash Bros Ultimate on the couch, I will be super flexible with time. Making friends shoulder to shoulder is a thing.

However, if they are playing online, together with kids they know and can meet in the real world? I won't be as generous with game time as I would be in an in-person session, but I will have some flexibility.

However, if kids are playing online with total strangers? Ten minutes might be too much time.

The sad reality is that technology companies have completely abandoned their responsibility to keep kids safe online and to provide adequate interaction protections between gamers of different ages. For the most part, legit adult gamers are also irritated by the lack of age barriers. As an adult playing with kids 13 and under is awful. I don't care how mature your 12-year-old is, no thirty-year-old wants to hang out with them online.

But the ones who do... are not the ones you want your child to hang out with.

This is another reason I recommend parents negotiate the end of the game before it begins. This is not only to prevent a fight when game time is over, but because negotiating lets you set parameters around who your child is playing with.

However, my kids did not get unlimited video game time. It is actually really hard to get three or more kids together to play. (Think about how hard it is for you to schedule coffee with three of your friends! - kids' lives are even more scheduled!)

But if they could get a squad together, I would support it. I know remote play promotes teamwork and communication. Having employees who know how to cooperate and work well together online is a bonus.

In Summary

It is important to manage all of your child's screen time, and especially their smartphone time. When it comes to video games, I strive to balance socialization and interaction. I always preferred they played together in person first, online second. It was long isolated play sessions that we actively limited.

There is another reason I also suggest parents think about balancing socialization with screen time. The Buddhists say, "What you resist persists." When you state your goal in the negative, "limit screen time," you are likely to find yourself in a never-ending battle over screen time. It is far more effective to focus on what you are trying to create. Balanced socialization. Now your mental energy goes into finding ways to improve your child's socialization instead of fighting with them over game time.

It might seem like a little thing, but the words we use prime our reticular activation system (the filter of the mind) to let through the information we find interesting, and nothing is more interesting to the human brain than the words we tell ourselves.

So, instead of "managing", or "restricting", or "controlling" screen time. You might try to "Balance Socialization", or "Maximize social interaction." It is not the limiting of screen time that helps children grow into self-confident, self-reliant adults. It is time spent interacting face to face with peers, sharing experiences, and sticking together that helps their brains develop.