Every Kid Is An Athlete (Even Your Gamer!)
15 Reasons Why Team Sports Will Always Beat Screen Time
Last week, I discussed the gift of a busy schedule full of sports, music lessons, and school clubs and how these extracurriculars—combined with screen-free downtime—were the key to raising healthy, well-adjusted kids.
I also shared how letting my oldest son, Adam, quit his extracurriculars was the single biggest parenting mistake I made at that time. When he asked to quit baseball and tennis, I thought, Maybe it’s too much. Maybe I’m overscheduling him.
But there was another false belief in there, too. When Adam asked to quit baseball and began to play more and more video games, I also thought, “Not every child needs sports. Maybe he’s just more of a ‘gamer kid’ and not athletic.”
Now, I know better. Now, what I know is this:
ALL boys (and girls) ARE athletic (even those who are physically challenged).
Boys are drawn to video games and can easily choose them as their #1 activity.
If left to their own devices (literally), children will forsake their natural need to move in favor of sedentary, antisocial activity because video games have such a strong pull.
And while I often use male pronouns and refer to video games, the same concept applies to girls and social media.
Why kids need so much physical activity
Children need to move to release energy, focus their minds, learn, and achieve physical and emotional health.
Why? The simple explanation is that physical activity—especially “heavy work” like sports, chores, and active play—helps to “dump energy” and regulate energy levels. This energy release is needed to reduce hyperactivity and aggression and improve focus. Studies have shown that just 20 minutes of exercise can improve behavior problems in the classroom. Research also shows that exercise increases oxygen flow to the brain, which results in better academic performance.
Conversely, when your child or teen is restrained and overstimulated by a sedentary screen, an imbalance in his energy state can trigger irritability or an inability to focus, affecting their success at school and their relationships with family.
Why in-person team sports beat video games every time
While pick-up basketball and impromptu games of street hockey in the cul-de-sac have their own merits, we cannot discount the benefits of organized sports, which include:
A scheduled reason to get off the couch! Physical work does not happen on a video game (or any screen, for that matter.) Practice and game schedules can create positive routines and habits for kids by giving them a reason to get off the couch. Because screens are everywhere, we must be more purposeful to get our kids moving. Having somewhere to go, like basketball practice, makes a big difference, especially for families looking to bring their gamer back into the real world.
Improved physical coordination. We can all agree that sitting on a sofa does not improve your physical coordination (even if your son tries to convince you that shooting bad guys in a game is helping his eye-hand coordination). Hitting a baseball is one of the hardest challenges in sports, for example, but building eye-hand coordination in a video game doesn’t help you hit a baseball. The fact is that many video game skills do not transfer to real life, but physical activity in a sport does. No amount of hours spent on Madden Football will help your child improve his football skills on his high school football team.
Expanded social opportunities. Developing multiple friend groups on teams apart from school (or within school) is very beneficial as kids get older. One way to lower teen anxiety and depression is to have different friend groups and not put all your friends in one “basket.” That way, when one group lets your teen down—and they will—they have another option for meeting social needs.
Respect and commitment to a coach and team. An authority figure (besides a parent) is very healthy in the life of a child. When your child is motivated to respect a coach and be committed to a team, his character will develop.
Reflection. So what if your child is not the best player on the team? He will learn how to fill his role to the best of his ability and learn to be proud of that. Team sports will help your child define who he is in the “pack.” He will quickly learn his role and feel confident as he keeps working toward getting better. He may want to quit if he is not the best, but don’t let him. He may be better in one sport and not as good in another. This realization will help him practice functioning at the top, in the middle, or at the bottom, a valuable skill that will be needed for the rest of his life.
Teamwork. Being part of the team will show your son how to respect the role of everyone on the team. Getting a teammate home from third base with a sacrifice hit on his end prepares him for being a good friend and a better leader in real life. He learns by doing that you can’t win without the support of everyone on your team.
Mental toughness. All children benefit from some pressure mixed with responsibility. This is how they learn to conquer new challenges with confidence. Throwing a pitch with a full count in the bottom of the ninth or shooting the potential winning shot at the buzzer are priceless moments for your son. In these (healthy) stressful situations, he will be tested and grow. Video games will never offer this gift the way real life does, and trust me, every boy knows the difference between real challenges and video game challenges. Video games have a reset button, sports do not.
Testing their limits. Boys need challenges and opportunities to push themselves to their highest potential while learning to keep their cool, control their impulses, and build patience. Every boy knows that testing his limits in real life is much harder than testing his limits in a video game.
Hard work. Sports are hard. Maintaining a schedule and physically preparing to play a sport requires discipline. Preparing to run a 5K cross-country race, get a hit in baseball, catch a football, or make a free throw requires persistence. It’s not the result that matters in sports, but the process and preparation that benefit a child. Playing a video game is not hard work.
Opportunities for new friends. Communication is critical for building friendships. Through face-to-face verbal and nonverbal interactions with their teammates, children develop higher thinking areas of their brains critical for maintaining positive emotional health and confidence in social situations. Sure, our sons can have friends on a video game, but this is very different from an in-person team. It lacks the full physical communication advantages and brain benefits of an in-person connection. If face-to-face communication is a D1 varsity sport, then virtual communication is high school intramurals.
Leadership. Sports participation provides a platform for kids to build common bonds and trust with others and learn to deal with adverse conditions in a safe atmosphere. As relationships deepen, leadership skills emerge and can be practiced and developed in a team setting. Rising to a leadership role in a real sport takes longer and is more challenging than rising on the leaderboard in a video game.
Empathy and compassion. Sports teach humility. Kids need opportunities to build real-life empathy, and participating in sports is a wonderful way to take the focus off self and learn to think of others. The gratification of winning or the overwhelming feeling of defeat can help your child learn humility and empathy for others. When you take your eyes off yourself and help the player on your team who is struggling, or when you understand what it is like to lose, you become more compassionate.
Competition. Boys crave competition, which is one reason why they love gaming. Sports provide an excellent balance of real-life competition and physical exercise. Video games, on the other hand, provide huge surges in adrenaline without any physical outlet. This can cause issues with focus and impulse control. After all, the energy must go somewhere!
Preparation for real life. No video game will prepare your child for future conflict in a boardroom like team sports will. While some may argue that video gaming is the same, deep down, every boy knows that real-life accomplishments trump virtual ones. Sports experiences allow your kids to practice the process and accomplish a goal in a healthy environment. This safe yet challenging environment is the perfect platform for learning many things that will serve them well in college and beyond.
Memories. With sports, the whole family can bond over traveling, eating out, having camaraderie with special new family friends, and having end-of-season celebrations. All the beginnings and endings in a sports season follow a natural order and create meaningful stories of shared experiences. These become lasting memories that become the glue needed to hold emotional health together during tough times. The day you killed a bad guy in your video game rarely makes it to the family scrapbook, but that first home run ball you hit will be a treasured family heirloom for years to come.
It’s never too late to course-correct and change the game plan
After our mistake with our oldest son, we took the video games away and put our younger daughter and sons in sports. Our daughter went on to become a college athlete at a D1 school. She didn’t play video games or have a smartphone or social media to distract her. I often wonder what her trajectory would have been like had she spent 4 hours a day distracted by a phone. When it came to her little brothers, we started them early. We focused on the discipline of team sports and not on their skills when they were little. In fact, one of our sons once made it through a basketball season without making a single basket until the playoff game when he finally scored. You bet he still remembers sinking that one! Did we take him out of basketball because he was not the best player on the team? No. We invested in a nice driveway rim and put one over the door in his bedroom so he could practice. He was better the next season and learned the valuable lesson of working hard and reaching goals.
You see, it isn’t about having the best player or worrying that they are not feeling adequate. It is about putting our kids in gritty situations and giving them goals that allow them to stretch themselves. We have experienced many championship seasons, but we are just as thankful for the seasons when not a single game was won.
Childhood sports come in all shapes and sizes. They can help heal family relationships and prove to be the key or lifelong emotional health as memories linger forever and become a rich part of the tapestry of their lives.
So, even if your son or daughter doesn’t feel like an athlete now, remind them that they are. Remove the gaming system from your house and get your kids off the couch, onto the court, field, or just outside. Pretty soon the “buzzer” is going to sound, and childhood will be over. This season only happens once, but the lessons learned with the team will last a lifetime.
For more support on how to finally get the video games out of your house, join our Connect Plus group. There, you will not only be able to chat with like-minded families, but you’ll have access to our 30-Day Detox, as well as other ScreenStrong resources, to help you make the transition from the digital world to the real one.
ScreenStrong Resources
Podcast - “When Dads Play: The Influence of Parental Gaming on Kids with Lt. Col. Dave Grossman”
Podcast - “Navigating Screen Challenges: Real Questions, Real Solutions with Laura Wurzburger”
Melanie Hempe, BSN, is the founder of ScreenStrong, a nonprofit organization, and the author of the Kids’ Brains and Screens Series for students and parents. She is dedicated to preventing and reversing childhood screen addictions by providing scientific evidence and community for families around the globe. Her educational material is filled with everything she wished she had known before her oldest child suffered from a screen addiction. ScreenStrong has created what every family needs—education and the community—to skip toxic screens through adolescence so teens can reach their full potential.
Visit here for family resource materials and here for our Phone-Free Schools Guide, and visit ScreenStrong.org to learn more and join the community that is saving childhood.
I just submitted a request to coach our local boys running club in response to this. Thanks for the reminder!