@TimSweeneyEpic, @FortniteGame Has Invaded My Students' Minds, and I Demand You Give Them Back

For parents who don't play Fortnite, you are appeasing your kids by letting them play. I get it. You are the cool parent. You care about their school, their friends, their activities, and their well-being. I want to be that parent too.

For teachers who don't play Fortnite, you want your students to learn and know that they also play a game. You, too, try to be the cool teacher. You learn about the game, and you use the vernacular in class to build rapport with gamers (often about half your classes). I get that too. I know the lingo. I can do the dance.

For you, @TimSweeneyEpic, you have stolen an entire generation of students' minds, and I want them back.

We can make some kind of deal. I don't know--you can have them from 5-7 on school nights, and a maximum of 6 hours on the weekends. We can come to some kind of agreement on the specifics.

What I can't do, as an educator, is let you off the hook. Obviously, you are not alone. Tech companies thrive on keeping users online.

Tristan Harris writes an incredible article about it--"How Technology Hijacking Your Mind from a Magician and Google Design Ethicist" https://medium.com/thrive-global/how-technology-hijacks-peoples-minds-from-a-magician-and-google-s-design-ethicist-56d62ef5edf3 He estimates it is about a 12 minute read, but it can be scanned for highlights.

However, @TimSweeneyEpic, I suspect you are well aware of the way technology is used to keep users sucked into your game. But you don't even care about playing the games you create.

According to Stephen Totilo a Kotaku.com writer, "Even though much of his life would involve the creation of video games, Sweeney never became an avid gamer. Sure, he messed around with games, but, to this day, he thinks he has only finished two of them: Doom and Portal. He skipped Zelda and never touched a Final Fantasy. He tried Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario Bros., just for a few hours "I would play games long enough to discover what games were doing and how they were doing it. And then I'd spend the rest of my time building." ("The Quiet Tinkerer Who Makes Games Beautiful Finally Gets His Due" 2011).

I am appealing to you as your elder (June '70).

I, too, had an Atari. My brother and I cut lawns, so we could buy one. He, too, took apart lawnmowers and still takes apart all sorts of machines and puts them back together. He's older now and has his own tools, so he's no longer stealing my mom's steak knives to get stuff open. I didn't fix things nor build tech graphics to make computer games look better than what Atari had to offer. I write stuff and teach kids who hate to read. I am not wealthy and I have never owned a super fancy company.

But we are both responsible for educating this generation.

You and I had the benefit and the curse of moving from a small, finite source of information found in libraries with card catalogs and whatever the local library had to offer to an online world of infinite resources, information aggregators, and developing a way to winnow down the overwhelming search results.

We had the time to develop organically. We could read for hours without interruption. We could fiddle around outside or in the garage or at our friend's even cooler workshop. We could write letters to people starting with snail mail, an actual stamp, and a prayer that we would receive a response and transitioned to emails with automatic responses.

We had time.

We knew our time was valuable, and we were fairly selfish with where we spent our time. We did this because we were not dragged into a virtual casino that stole our time, invaded the reptilian part of our brains, and (as Tristan Harris opines) "hijacked" our minds.

I am not a Luddite. I love new technology. I love games. I love that I can get off work at Christmas break and play whatever game entertains me on any of my multiple game platforms for hours. I can play until the sun comes up.

But the crucial difference is education. Whether through self-education or through purposeful education, you and I have the ability to distinguish other ways to spend our time. Where to spend our time. Where to allot our resources. We know if we are being manipulated or robbed of our time. You know because you are able to hyperfocus on projects that appeal to your own "tinkering". I know because I am able to spend 2 hours writing a blog post that, perhaps, 37 people will read (based on the Blogger analytics' results of my last post). Like you, I am working and creating my own reality. Unlike you, I am not doing it for money. I just like to write.

I am going to do my part. I am going to try to stay current and create rapport with my gaming students. I promise that I will continue to educate myself and keep a "Growth Mindset" while building lessons for a new generation of students. I will not judge them for getting wrapped up in a game for hours nor scold them for being unable to keep from looking at their phones every few seconds. Heck, I don't want someone to judge who I am for staying holed up writing a blog essay.

But I need you to do your part.

You are going to have to acknowledge that our young people are too inexperienced to determine where they should spend their time. You and I weren't allowed to go to Vegas and gamble hours on end at 13. Our parents didn't plunk us down on a virtual street corner to fend for ourselves. Having Google out Fortnite's point of weakness for Android users is not your biggest problem.


Our problem, @TimSweeneyEpic, is that we had the ability to grow up and explore, and these kids have not. Our parents could kick us outside for hours and make us drink water from the hose without anyone calling the police on them for negligence. Our young people are not living in that same reality. Yes, they are exploring on their own. But we were able to start on the ground floor of actual books, and articles, and questionable gaming systems.

Now, I demand that you give them back their time. I get them from 7-3, Monday through Friday. We can negotiate the other terms.

I do not care what platform you use. I would love to see it incorporated as free educational games for teachers to use in class. (Not much money there, but how much do you need?) I can try to compete with you, but I feel you owe it to our young people to give back some of the time you have stolen.

The other Tech Giants love to give back through philanthropy. They throw money at problems.

Be better than them. Be bigger than them. Give back your users' time.

Parents and Educators--Here are resources to consider--
Check out Tristan Harris's Center for Human Technology--http://humanetech.com/ and his article "How Technology is Hijacking Your Mind--From a Magician and Google Ethicist"
Mack Ashworth's review--https://www.gamerevolution.com/guides/391403-fortnite-parent-review-is-fortnite-safe-for-children
Stephen Totilo's article on Tim Sweeney--https://kotaku.com/5865951/the-quiet-tinkerer-who-makes-games-beautiful-finally-gets-his-due