#101 Jane McGonigal: The Psychology of Gaming

Jane McGonigal is a PhD Game Designer who advocates for the use of video games to help people learn skills that transfer to the real world, heal physical problems like concussions and improve attitudes and self-esteem in children. Shane and Jane discuss how video games help with decision making, post-traumatic growth as well as how much is too much, what to watch out for and so much more. -- Want even more? Members get early access, hand-edited transcripts, member-only episodes, and so much more. Learn more here: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday our Brain Food newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Any game that you love, I don't care if it's League of Legends, it's Fortnite, it's Candy Crush, whatever you feel drawn to, we know that there is a transferable benefit. The confidence that you can build in, I can learn anything. I can teach myself, I can get better, I can develop new skills, even if I'm terrible at this the first time I tried it. Any game that's designed to be challenging is going to give you that benefit.

• 0:40Shane Parrish?

  Welcome to The Knowledge Project. This is Shane Parrish. This podcast on our website, fs.blog, helps sharpen your mind by mastering the best of what other people have already figured out. If you're hearing this, you're not currently a supporting member. If you'd like early access to the podcast, ad-free episodes, transcripts, and other subscriber-only content, you can join at fs.blog/podcast. Check out the show notes for a link. My guest today is Jane McGonigal. Jane is a PhD game designer who advocates for the use of video games to help people learn skills that transfer to the real world, heal physical problems like concussions, and improve attitudes and self-esteem in our kids. We're going to talk about video games, how they help you make better decisions, how they help your kids, how much is too much,

• 1:24Shane Parrish?

  what to watch out for, and so much more. It's time to listen and learn.

• 1:35Shane Parrish?

  What's happening, Jane?

• 1:37Speaker 00

  Oh, I'm super excited to be talking to you. Thanks for inviting me on the podcast.

• 1:41Shane Parrish?

  Your background is fascinating. You've got a PhD basically in video games, and then you got a head injury, and you made a game to help yourself recover. Can you tell me more about that?

• 1:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, I'd been studying the psychology of games and specifically how games change the way we respond to stress and challenge, not just in the games, but in everyday lives. I'd been studying that for 10 years. I was the first person to get a PhD in it. And then I was writing my first book about all of that research when I got a traumatic brain injury that, you know, it started as what seemed like just a normal concussion and it just, it didn't heal. And it was days and then it was weeks and it was months. And, you know, a year later, I'm still suffering difficulty with my memory and hard to get out of bed and, you know, dizzy all the time, these horrible migraines, depression, anxiety. And I guess I was lucky that at some point in that recovery, it

• 2:36Speaker 00

  occurred to me that I could use everything that I had learned about the psychology and neurochemistry of gaming and why we feel so motivated when we play, why we feel like we can take on any challenge, why it's easier to ask other people for help, right? I mean, nobody has a problem asking for, you know, tips on a game, resources in a game. Could I bring that to my own recovery? And that was the genesis of a game, Super Better, that I played for my own healing and that has now helped more than a million people recover from symptoms of traumatic brain injury, depression, anxiety, chronic pain, and other sort of challenges that we may struggle with and need just a kind of a fresh mindset on to, to stay engaged and feeling optimistic.

• 3:21Shane Parrish?

  You also did a lot of work on concussions, right? I remember listening to some of the background material for this. And the first, is it three hours or three days are critical? And then 30 and then a year?

• 3:32Speaker 00

  Yeah. So I'm lucky. I was able to get a clinical trial grant from the National Institutes for Health to actually test Super Better for traumatic brain injury recovery because there isn't a lot of Standard treatment for concussions, it's really just rest and try not to get a second hit, which can be more dangerous. So basically like hole up in a dark room. And it is important to give your brain rest during those, you know, first three days or first week. I went through a process with my own recovery where I learned that if you don't feel better in a week, they anticipate most people feel better in a month. And if you don't feel better in a month, then most people feel better in three months. And if you haven't

• 4:14Speaker 00

  felt better by 90 days, then it will be a year. And at that point, you may be stuck with it forever. So you kind of, a lot of people have this really difficult psychological experience of hitting all these milestones and they're still not better, which was also my experience. And when we tested super better in our clinical trial with Cincinnati Children's Hospital and Ohio State University Medical Research Center, we were specifically dealing with people who had this long concussion or post concussion syndrome who didn't recover on time. And then not only do you still have all the symptoms of concussion, now you're incredibly anxious, incredibly depressed, you're losing hope, your people who are taking care of you might be getting fatigued from, you know, having to support you or getting

• 4:57Speaker 00

  frustrated also. So you're feeling kind of socially isolated or less supported. So, so yes, it's kind of the longer it goes on, the more important it is to get some kind of tool that will help you stay optimistic and not fall into the the cycle. Because I mean, I could tell you the one, the one big breakthrough that we now know is that concussions make you incredibly depressed because your brain is trying to stop you from getting injured again. And so it kind of shuts down all the pathways that tell your brain it's worth getting out of bed. And so it can feel like feel suicidal, feel like there's no point in going on because your brain literally can't imagine anything good happening again. So, you know, it's good for your brain to try to protect you,

• 5:38Speaker 00

  but it's absolutely terrible for the person going through it. And we have to kind of, we can't, we have to overcompensate for our brain's protective mechanism and start looking for ways to believe that the future can be good because our brain is kind of overdoing it with the protection.

• 5:52Shane Parrish?

  I want to get into more about super better and what specifically about it helps you with recovery. But what else did you learn about concussions in general?

• 6:00Speaker 00

  I mean, there's a lot of inflammation involved. So it looks like, you know, little things you can do that tend to decrease inflammation systemically are

• 6:12Speaker 00

  Helpful for recovery. So there are dietary things like you can do like increasing turmeric in your diet, eating things like, you know, walnuts or fatty fishes that can help early on in the first year of recovery. And, you know, meditation, kind of things that systematically lower inflammation throughout the body because a lot of the, I want to say almost physical symptoms of concussion, the incredible headaches and the brain fatigue and fog comes from the inflammation. So, but there's really not a lot known about, about how to speed it up. It's like, it just basically you, you kind of wait and see and there's nothing, there's our, you know, super better

• 6:53Speaker 00

  has been shown in the, in the literature to improve depression, anxiety and recovery faster. But we don't, we don't exactly know why. We have some hypotheses that I could chat with you about. It's so under understood for something that affects so many people.

• 7:09Shane Parrish?

  What are your hypotheses on like, why that is working so well?

• 7:13Speaker 00

  Well, I think there's a kind of downward spiral with concussion where, yes, you have these symptoms that are very real and particularly the headaches and the nausea and the, the memory issues or concentration issues. But when you start to add depression, anxiety and social isolation or loneliness on top of that, then it creates an intensification of the inflammation that's triggering the physical symptoms. It makes it harder for you to do the things that we know can help you get better. I mean, if you just lie in bed all day, it's actually not good for recovery. You do have to get out of bed. You have to kind of work up to a threshold that's like 10% below it triggers your symptoms and keep pushing that. But if you're too depressed or you're too anxious,

• 7:56Speaker 00

  then you never make any forward progress. Plus you've got all the extra inflammation, all the extra cortisol, the adrenaline. So, you know, I think what the researchers that I worked with at Penn and Oshu, and I believe is probably helping with the concussion recovery, is it's take, it's basically getting people out of the way. You know, if you can, if you cannot make anything worse, you know, don't add any extra problems so that the depression and anxiety don't intensify it. And then you'll have a little more energy to do the things that will help you get better faster, a little more willpower, not to push yourself because you, you have faith in the recovery process. So you're not going to do things that actually set you back two weeks or 30 days because you pushed too hard.

• 8:41Speaker 00

  So it's basically reducing the, reducing things that make it worse so that you can have just that little extra bit of energy so that you stay engaged with the normal healing process.

• 8:51Shane Parrish?

  That's crazy. And then, so it also gives you something to think about and do that's not too far in the future, right? Like it, because part of what I understand about concussions is we lose our ability to think about the future.

• 9:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's really interesting. So one thing that happens is when you try to imagine the future, it loses that vividness, the detail. You describe it in a more sort of general or vague way. So there's actually a functional loss in your ability to imagine the future. And then when you do imagine the future, even if you're thinking about things that normally you get, would get you excited, your brain is basically refusing to fire up the pathways that allow dopamine to get you excited and motivated and, and paying attention. Even when you imagine the future, it just looks all kind of bleak and, and gloomy. What SuperBetter does is, you know, the first thing it does is it basically tries to

• 9:46Speaker 00

  trick your brain into believing that something good could happen as a result of your own actions. And it starts incredibly small. I mean, the first four things you do in SuperBetter are, you know, stand up and take three steps and no matter how you're feeling, because that gets the blood flowing and it automatically disrupts the inflammation process. So like, great, you did one good thing that will actually help your brain and all you had to do is take three steps. In fact, I'm gonna just do it right now because I've been sitting at my computer. All day and I have a migraine right now, so I'm gonna just do a little bit to feel better. But you know, or you would send a text message to somebody to thank them, you know, for for any supports they've given you or inspiration or encouragement, or just tell them something that you appreciate about them.

• 10:29Speaker 00

  And just that, just to remember that even with whatever you're going through, you can still make somebody's day. And that gives you power and agency. Yeah, your life sucks right now, but you know what? You have a mom or you have an old teacher or you have, you know, there's somebody out there who would really smile to hear some kind of words from you. Um, so we're just super better is all about showing you the power you have, the smallest things you can do to feel happy, to feel successful, to feel important to others, to feel hope. And and every time you do that, you force your brain to fire up those dopamine pathways. Like, sorry, brain, you wanted to stay depressed and believe nothing good could happen, but I just showed you. I just proved to you that something good could happen as a result of your own actions. And so we're essentially like reverse engineering.

• 11:14Speaker 00

  We're, we're trying to get in there and say, yeah, yes, I'm not going to go, you know, mountain biking, but I am going to stay engaged with my day. And there's, it is, it is a pretty complex system. There's a lot to do in super better, but that's really at the heart of it. It's just every day, wake up, do a few things that remind you of your power and actually measurably objectively improve how you feel physically, emotionally, you know, mentally, socially. And that will give you some hope for your future.

• 11:42Shane Parrish?

  I love how you renamed yourself Jane, the concussion slayer.

• 11:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, because I was so mad and I, you know, I mean, I didn't, I didn't ask for it. I was dealing with it and I was just, you know, thought of Buffy, the vampire slayer who did not choose to be the slayer. They just, she was born into that and she just had to accept it and battle those demons. And, you know, I was, I mean, I, it, it sounds almost ridiculous because I was also suicidal. So it's like, how does something so ridiculous or so absurd actually help? But I think what a lot of times that we, what we've seen with our super better users is that people who are the most frustrated, who have Have had had tried have tried so many different things and they're still dealing with

• 12:28Speaker 00

  whatever it is, you know, anxiety keeps coming back, depression keeps coming back, the pain keeps coming back, that just trying something new and having that open mindedness and curiosity and a sense of playfulness about it is really helpful. And it's interesting, when I first released Super Better, which has been almost 10 years now, I think there was some pushback or skepticism, like, how is a game going to help people with something serious? And isn't this dismissive of real people's problems? And I was getting letters from people with terminal diagnosis, stage, you know, stage four and beyond cancer, ALS, who were using it, because what else were they going to do? I mean, they had sort of

• 13:08Speaker 00

  run out of conventional, you know, treatments or, you know, therapy, and they just, they needed to create meaning for themselves and create purpose for themselves. So, yeah, it's like, Super Better may not be for you if you're really happy and totally like killing it. But if there's something that you just can't fix in your life, or your brain, or your body, then it may be something that's helpful.

• 13:32Shane Parrish?

  Let's zoom out for a second, away from concussions and Super Better. And what is it about video games? Like, people have an aversion to video games, but there's so many useful tools and insights and lessons that we can draw from them.

• 13:44Speaker 00

  I mean, people who don't play video games have an aversion to games. But, you know, I mean, there are 2.3 billion people on the planet now who regularly play video games. So like, one in three people have actively chosen to make games a part of their lives, which is really exciting.

• 13:58Shane Parrish?

  My mom is not one of those.

• 14:00Speaker 00

  You don't even know. I would, I bet she might be. I mean, she might be doing something on her phone, like a little, you know, cat collecting game or something. I talked to so many people who swear they've never played a video game, and they are, they are like on level 1200 of Candy Crush Saga. This happens all the time. So you know, what is it about games? Look, I mean, my God, we could have like a 12-hour podcast series at least on this, but the the most important thing is this is my life researching, you know, the potential benefits of games played, you know, by the right person at the right time for the right reason. And the number one thing we know, any game that you love, I don't care if it's League of Legends, it's Fortnite, it's Candy Crush, whatever, whatever

• 14:44Speaker 00

  you feel drawn to, we know that there is a transferable benefit, which is you get better at learning new things, at dealing with systems that are frustrating and having to adapt, you know, you're learning new rules, you're learning new interfaces, it's designed to frustrate you and you have to adapt and get better, and you build confidence in your ability to get better. And every game does this, and it's it's something that we shouldn't trivialize, we shouldn't pretend that that games are, you know, just escapist or just a pastime, that they actually build, you know, this kind of growth mindset, they build this resilient way of dealing with challenges, and they, especially for young people, for

• 15:28Speaker 00

  kids who grow up learning game after game, I have five-year-old twin daughters who just got their first tablet this year, and they've already taught themselves to play over 100 different games on this tablet. And every day they come and show me like, Mom, look at this game I learned, want to watch me play this game? And the just the confidence that you can build, and I can learn anything, I can teach myself, I can get better, I can develop new skills, even if I'm terrible at this the first time I tried it. That's something your whole life until you're like 100 years old and desperately trying to keep that neuroplasticity going, and how do I keep my, you know, brain healthy and active? And where's that gray matter going to grow? You can grow it by learning something new that's hard for you. So from, you know, five years old to 100 years old.

• 16:12Speaker 00

  Any game that's designed to be challenging is going to give you that benefit.

• 16:17Shane Parrish?

  So how should parents think about that with kids? Because there's a lot of questions around screen time and whether I should let my kids play certain video games or not. How do you think about that?

• 16:27Speaker 00

  Okay, so the number one thing is you have to be in conversation with your kids around what they're playing. And there are three really powerful questions that I ask my kids and anybody I'm trying to get to know better and like understand their relationship to games and understand their personal strengths. So you ask them about whatever their favorite game is right now. What does it take to be good at this game? What skills does it require? What kind of personality or temperament does it require? You ask them, what have you gotten better at since you started playing this game? And you ask, what's the hardest thing you've accomplished in this game? And ask them to tell you about how they did it. You know, what did you have to do in order to meet that challenge?

• 17:09Speaker 00

  Because it turns out that people who can talk about what they've gotten better at, what real skills, whether it's, you know, being able to manage my breathing under pressure, my heart rate under pressure, if they're a competitive esports player, or if it's creativity, maybe it's I don't give up when things are hard, it's communication in stressful situations with my teammates, it's I can get, I know where to look whenever I, I don't know what to do. I'm a really good information finder. Whatever it is, people who can talk about that, they tend to bring those skills to their work, to their learning, to their relationships, to their hobbies. And all you have to do to get somebody to transfer the benefits of games to real life

• 17:54Speaker 00

  is just have that conversation. And you can do it with yourself, too. Like, just have a little game journal. Every time you play a new game, you're like, what am I getting better at playing this game? What's the hardest thing that I have achieved by when I've been playing this game? And what did it take to do it? And so if you're having those conversations with your kids, I don't care what they're playing. I don't care if they're playing Fortnite, you know, for 20 hours a week and that stresses you out. By the way, 21 hours a week is like the tipping point where we do start to see it can get in the way of. Physical health or mental health. So, you know, okay, less than 21 hours a week. But other than that, it can be anything, the killing zombies, you know, like it's stuff that you don't understand why they enjoy it. You can still ask those questions and you can still have that conversation and you can reflect back

• 18:38Speaker 00

  to anybody. Like when I watch my husband play a game, you know, I can, I can tell him what I think, what strengths I think he's showing and I can show him that I see all of those great things and those great qualities in him. Games are just a great way to tell each other, you know, what we're good at and what we want to be appreciated for and what we value in each other. And so we should just have more of those conversations.

• 19:01Shane Parrish?

  Are there better times a day for kids to play?

• 19:03Speaker 00

  Hmm. Yeah. So, okay, there's a really counterintuitive study that I, parents always like, oh, when I tell them about it, because it's, it showed the opposite of what most parents assume is true. Um, which is if you want kids to retain what they study better, you should have them play video games first and then do their homework and then study before they go to sleep. Because if you study first and then as your reward, you get to play games. When you go to sleep, your brain is going to focus on the most salient problem it was recently trying to solve. I'm sure, I don't know if you've ever had this experience, you go to sleep and your brain starts like, just it's working on whatever you were just really fixated on.

• 19:46Speaker 00

  So you want that brain to be fixated on, you know, the calculus or what, you know, the, the, whatever the foreign words you're studying are, um, not on the level that you were trying to solve in a game. So actually reversing the order is, is a really good tip. Um, the, the key is just to setting a hard time limit so that, you know, they play for 90 minutes and they switch to work or whatever it is. Um, but yeah, you don't, you don't want to have the game right before bed unless you're, you've recently been traumatized, which is, this is like, can we do a PSA? Well, public service announcement. Um, if you're having flashbacks of a traumatic event or you're ruminating on something that

• 20:30Speaker 00

  it's making you crazy, like you can't get this bad experience out of your mind. You're, you can't get this, you're replaying this conversation over and over again because you, you feel like you said the wrong thing and you just feel fixated on it. Playing a game right before bed. Will essentially hijack the attention center and especially the visual centers. If it's a game that's very visual, I mean, Tetris is like the golden game in clinical trials. When they studied this effect, it's like Tetris is the best option because it literally hijacks your brain. Like you close your eyes and you see the falling, you know, Tetris blocks. But any game that can really focus your attention will make it less likely for you to be then lying in bed, trying to fall asleep with all these negative thoughts or having

• 21:14Speaker 00

  nightmares and flashbacks that you can't control. So yeah, you should play the game right before bed if you're, if you're dealing with that problem. But otherwise, you know, do something else like your learning or your, whatever your growth stuff is, read, do that before bed instead. It'll stay in your brain better.

• 21:30Shane Parrish?

  Is there a difference between the benefits we get from single player games versus multiplayer games?

• 21:35Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's, you know, I say right game, right time, right person. You know, if you're trying to control your attention, you might have an easier time with a single player game. If you're trying to manage anxiety, or you wanna, you know, slow your heart rate down, or you, you need some, you need a positive emotion because you're having a hard day. You know, just pull out your phone or your switch or whatever and do a little solo gaming that gets you in the right frame of mind. And then, you know, social gaming, I mean, we know that people who spend a lot of time playing the same game with the same people report getting more social support in their everyday lives. So even if it's a game like Pokemon Go, where you might not see the other player, you might not be speaking to them.

• 22:20Speaker 00

  Maybe we're doing remote raids together. We're just sending each other virtual gifts every day. You're more likely to text somebody that you've had an interaction within the game, or pick up the phone and ask them for help with a problem, or just feel like you have a rich network of support if you need it. It's sort of that safety net that you feel like you have in your life that makes us, I don't know, less anxious or feel less alone. If you play the same game with the same people, League of Legends, whatever it is. And so, yeah, you know, I try to have a balance in my life. You know, if, if I'm super anxious, I'm not gonna, and I'm trying to like. Focus my mind, I'm not going to do Pokemon Go because that's not quite stimulating enough. I might need to do something a little more challenging.

• 23:01Speaker 00

  But you you start to learn and curate a set of games in your life that plays the right role for you. And I, you know, I think the more that you can articulate this game gives me this benefit. And I play this game because, you know, it helps me in this way. We don't see people like that developing, you know, pathologies around gaming. They're not the people who are feeling overwhelmed. They're playing forty hours a week, sixty hours a week. It's taken over their lives. You know, the people who run into the problems tend to be escapist gamers, who just feel like games are the only thing that, you know, keeps them sane. They want to avoid reality, but they're not thinking about the benefits that it can give them

• 23:45Speaker 00

  to make them, you know, stronger in real life or more capable of meeting those challenges.

• 23:50Shane Parrish?

  It strikes me that in some of the multiplayer games, like leading a guild or leading a party and coordinating these things, coordinating resources, coordinating attacks across the internet has become an incredibly valuable skill set almost overnight.

• 24:05Speaker 00

  Yes, right. Well, right now, with so much virtual work happening and, you know, even in the future of work, you know, we know that workers are going to have to be comfortable collaborating with AI programs and managing, you know, their own swarm of bot programs are going to have to be able to work in virtual reality, to control robots or drones or, you know, there's there are all these skills around virtual environments, virtual collaboration, remote collaboration, that gamers are definitely at the leading edge of developing the skills for. And I always say, like, if you're worried about the future of work and not sure what to do to get ready for it,

• 24:47Speaker 00

  you could you could do a lot worse than to play some challenging video games. You know, we have every reason to think that the future of work will be, you know, more like Fortnite than the kind of office jobs that we have today.

• 25:00Shane Parrish?

  What are the best games for kids to play, do you think? And in different age groups, say like, under 10, 10 to 15? And I know that it's dependent on kid and timing, but there's probably some games that give you better lessons possibly than others.

• 25:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, first of all, there's a cultural currency to playing the games that your peers are playing. And one of the big benefits that we know kids get is that kind of social confidence when they are in the culture as their peers. So, I mean, it changes from time to time. Minecraft is still very popular and gives you a wide range of, you know, do you want a little bit of adrenaline? Do you want the creepers to be able to destroy what you create? Or do you want to be in a nice peaceful, creative mode? That's an environment where you can choose how you want to play. And there's a big community around it.

• 25:57Speaker 00

  Pokemon Go is great because it gets people active and out exploring their real world environments. And I certainly know my kids started getting way more active steps and we started playing it together, and that's important. I think whatever is kind of in the peer group is a good thing to do because particularly for young kids, we're seeing that being a part of that culture is really important. And you know, Wall Street Journal had an interesting article about how gamers, kids in the US who have been gamers their whole lives, seem to have adapted psychologically better to the pandemic, to being forced to do at-home learning and not be able to go out to like playgrounds and their sports as usual.

• 26:42Speaker 00

  That they adapted better because they already had all these sort of rich online communities and ways to stay connected. So, I mean, for me, if you're a parent, you know, if there's a game that all your kids' friends are playing, even if it looks a little bit like, ooh, I don't know, is there some realistic violence or not? The benefits they get from playing the same game as their peer group should outweigh whatever you might feel uncomfortable about seeing on screen. That said, you can also have conversations with your kids about, you know, why you prefer they don't play. I mean, I think- Just because I know the benefits of games, I'm not like a crazy person. Like, I'm not, I totally can see that there's gore in games,

• 27:26Speaker 00

  or there's behaviors in gaming communities that are disgusting, and all this sorts of bad stuff. And if you see that, I mean, shut it down. And I personally, you know, when I play Fortnite, I don't even, I love Fortnite, but I'm like total stealth mode, and I just hope, I hope to outlast everybody. I don't kill people, because I just, like, I'm not into that. It doesn't make me happy. I feel bad ending someone else's game. And I don't even like that kind of comical violence. And you can talk to your kids about that and be like, I don't play games where I kill people, because I don't know. I just don't feel good about it. And that's, have that conversation too, and help them reflect on it, I think is, is a valuable thing to do, too.

• 28:03Shane Parrish?

  Is there truth to the violence in video games leads to violence in adulthood?

• 28:08Speaker 00

  No, isn't that, we're such idiots. Like, the fact that we're still talking about that decades after it's been like systematically disproven. I mean, like, the most conclusive evidence that it's not true is that the number of people who play, you know, I, I put violent in quotation marks, because the really violent games are like American football. I mean, talk about concussions, right? We actually have violent games that we play, and they're, most of them are physical sports, where we actually do violence to ourselves and our own bodies and to each other. You know, video games, the number of people and the hours that we've spent playing them has skyrocketed, and yet violent crime has gone down almost on the same curve. And so it's just, it's like completely ludicrous.

• 28:53Speaker 00

  And nobody actually believes it increases violence. So the one thing we know is that if you are ideating on a violent activity, let's say you're like a really disturbed individual, and you start to have fantasies of acting out, your fantasies are likely to be informed by whatever media you're consuming, whether it's graphic novels, or movies, or video games. And so you may act out what you've seen in a game. If you weren't a gamer, you might act out what you've seen in a movie. If I had someone in my life who I was worried had, you know, violent fantasies, or was having a severe, like, psychotic break.

• 29:28Speaker 00

  I wouldn't be excited about them being obsessed with a game where they're like creating an arsenal of realistic weapons. I would definitely be concerned about that. But if somebody is not having a psychotic break, it's not generally something that we need to. There's literally no evidence that it does anything like that.

• 29:46Shane Parrish?

  Are there any warning signs that parents should watch out for in their kids? That borderline addiction or behaviors that, what are those?

• 29:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, the first thing you do if you have any concerns is start counting up the time that's spent playing, right? So if it's over 21 hours a week, I do recommend that you start trying to control it or shape it, unless they are an extremely accomplished esports player. Because, you know, people can make, you can make hundreds of thousands of dollars in tournaments. It's a job. You can play 40 hours a week if it's your full time job, fine. But, you know, short of that, keep a, keep a log for a week or two. See how many hours it is. Because in, in all of the studies that have been done of kids, of adults, of all the negative impacts of games, no study has found negative impacts at less than 21 hours a week. So just, you know, want to be safe, great.

• 30:40Speaker 00

  Keep it three hours a day. That's plenty of gaming for somebody's wellbeing. The other warning sign is if gameplay seems to increase in intensity while real life problems are also increasing. So what you don't want to see is like a direct relationship between like more problems, more games. What I talk about is attention. And, you know, if somebody seems to be going down a, a dark tunnel of, of addiction, where it's not, it's not that they're neurologically addicted to the game. It's just that everything else seems so hopeless. The game feels like the only place where they can make any progress or have any meaningful connection.

• 31:22Speaker 00

  You need to work with them to put their attention on other things as well. So that there is a hope of improving. School or work or their body or their friendships, relationships, whatever they need to repair. You have to say, you know, it's good to get, it's good to find relief in the game. And now we have to bring our attention to some of these other things. And then we can go back to the game, you know, it's like a, it's a dance. Spend a couple hours gaming, spend a couple hours bringing your attention to getting your body or getting your relationships, your, your studies in order. Yeah, that's, I mean, that, that's a red flag. You don't want to see more gaming with more problems. That's, that's the downward spiral we were talking about.

• 32:01Shane Parrish?

  So for all the, the tweens and teens out there listening to this and getting your parents to listen to this as evidence that they should let you play more video games. You should get your grades up as you play more.

• 32:12Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, it, it, it, grades, whatever. I mean, like I, I, by the way, I'm like, I'm, I've been radicalized around schooling and the amount of anxiety and stress that kids are under. Especially in the American school system, it's so absurd. The idea that for the first 18 years of your life, you should be just constantly worried. That you're not going to perform, you know, to some artificial standard, that your behavior is not going to be acceptable. That, you know, I mean, the whole, my kids, I've, I've disenrolled my kids, you know, from our school district this year. And we're hoping to just, I don't know, unschool. I don't know what we're going to do, but what, what has happened to, you know, I still have nightmares about high school.

• 32:56Speaker 00

  I was, you know, I was one of those like 4.0, you know, high achieving students. And I still have nightmares that I forgot to study, that I haven't been going to class, you know? And then I have to remind myself in my dream, like, Jane, you have a PhD. It doesn't matter whether you graduated from high school or not, like you're okay. But we are traumatized and we, if we want to talk about like, how do we create more resilient young people? We need to stop traumatizing them with this completely arbitrary system of consequences for just for who, I mean, who cares? It just, it's so ridiculous. American schools need to be, I mean, we just need to get kids out of these prisons of the mind.

• 33:38Speaker 00

  And, uh, and you know, I, that's a, that's another story, but we've done long-term damage to, to kids' mental wellbeing and, and their, you know, brains ability to. I don't know, generate, self motivate, you know, outside of these external pressures.

• 33:55Shane Parrish?

  Talk to me a little bit more about developing resilience and maybe self esteem and self efficacy with kids.

• 34:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, what, what we, I think what we really want to see in kids is that they get curious about something. And they learn how to follow that curiosity, whether they're, they want to learn how to cook stuff. So, you know, what is it going to take for them to be able to make the meals they want to make? And, and all you have to learn skills, you have to learn techniques, you have to, you have to learn math to make the, the recipes work out. It's just whatever you want to do, because in, in real life, the only thing that's going to make you successful is having some kind of inner drive that is related to your interests and your passions and your authentic skills.

• 34:42Speaker 00

  And so giving kids a chance to give time and attention to what they are authentically curious about and what they feel like they might be good at or want to get better at. I mean, if I, what I'm hoping to do with my kids is just allow them to build on their strengths, you know, for, for years. I don't know when we'll put our kids in a, in a normal school, but for now, you know, the things that, that get them up out of bed that they're excited to do. They get better at it so much faster than when you try to teach them something that you think they should know. What my kids can teach themselves, you know, about drawing, watching YouTube tutorials. And I mean, if they care about it, they can learn, you know, a year's worth of stuff in a week, it feels like.

• 35:24Speaker 00

  So, yeah, I think what the, the really resilient kid is going to be the, the one who knows how to follow a passion and teach themselves and build their own like sense of motivation about what they want to wake up and do.

• 35:38Shane Parrish?

  Are there things that we can do as parents in your mind to help the kids teach themselves?

• 35:43Speaker 00

  I mean, I'm just starting this process myself. I mean, well, let me, let me say that anybody who's interested in this, if you just start Googling unschooling, there are experts on this who can, who can speak to. The difference between learning on your own what you want to learn and being like forced to perform under pressure what somebody else thinks you need to know. And so just starting down that rabbit hole of unschooling is it's, you know, I had never heard of that term until this past year. And there's a great book, it's called Why Are Your Kids Still in School? It really woke me up and I thought, yeah, you know, especially in the pandemic. Like, this is a good time to ask that question. Why are we letting someone else design our kids' everyday lives? I mean, the amount of time they spend in school.

• 36:28Speaker 00

  I'm a game designer, I'm really good at designing experiences and, you know, environments where you get to learn and grow and improve skills. And so I'm, I think, I think we need to rethink ceding all of the power of what our kids do every day to a bureaucratic and unimaginative anxiety-producing institution.

• 36:48Shane Parrish?

  I agree, it's very check the box to you, right? It's like you're, you might be doing algebra in grade two, but you know, if you don't share your lunch, then.

• 36:58Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, it's truly, I mean, honestly, like, it's just, if my kids can learn how to be helpful family members this year, instead of what they would normally be learning in kindergarten, what do we really want them to be able to do when they grow up? Just to be like good, helpful people who can wake up with an idea of what will give them energy and excitement to do in their day.

• 37:21Shane Parrish?

  And be able to like take charge, right? And if I want to learn something, I know how to learn it, I know what to do. And I feel like I have the confidence and self-esteem that I can, I can take that challenge on.

• 37:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 37:33Shane Parrish?

  Do video games help us make predictions about the future? Or are there things that we can do to prime us for learning?

• 37:38Speaker 00

  Ah, what can I, so there is one aspect of video gaming that kind of makes you a better futurist. So sort of my career kind of like forked like an alternate timeline where I started developing and being trained as a professional futurist. When I started my research in gaming and I was doing all this research into like, well, what if we were using games to change the real world and not just virtual worlds? I was discovered by the Institute for the Future, which is the world's oldest future forecasting organization. It's been around for 60 years now. And they said, well, it sounds like you're actually inventing the future. So like, come be a future futurist with us because the best way to predict the future

• 38:21Speaker 00

  is to actually be the one who's inventing it and deciding what it will be. So in my professional futures practice, what I've discovered is that people who spend a lot of time playing games are actually very effective at anticipating second, third, fourth order consequences of future events. So, you know, like when you're playing a game, you might be imagining like, okay, if I do this, then what is the other player going to do? Or if I use this resource, you know, what will happen next? Well, how will I solve a problem if I don't have that resource anymore and I have to try another way? And so you start to like, think one step ahead, two steps ahead, three steps ahead. And you develop essentially all of these essentially alternative timelines in your mind of all the different ways the game could play out.

• 39:06Speaker 00

  And that, you know, certain games facilitate this more than others. Like if you're a chess player, you can imagine 100 different futures and hold them all in your mind at the same time. Right? And we do see that with, with real time strategy games as well. And so that's actually really helpful for things like in technology. I've been doing a lot of work on the sort of ethical or responsible development of new technologies at scale. You know, what happens when something you created has a billion users? There's going to be a lot of unanticipated consequences, uses that you did not intend, but suddenly pop up. And so I do a lot of work with technology companies using gaming methodologies to help

• 39:46Speaker 00

  them essentially game out what different people might do with the tech or, you know, how, how that ecosystem is going to operate in these more sort of surprising and complex ways, the more that they scale. So that, that, and that if you, if you're a gamer, you're pretty good at that. And oftentimes we'll bring gamers in to work with companies to game out scenarios because they do have that creativity and imagination, you know, if X, then Y, if Y, then Z, if Z, then, and you just keep going and going.

• 40:16Shane Parrish?

  Are there ways that we can strengthen the neurological pathways to allow us to imagine things that we haven't encountered before?

• 40:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a particular obsession of mine. So as a, as a futurist, you know, one thing I do is I create forecasts about the future and then I'm often, and they're based on research and

• 40:35Shane Parrish?

  Forecast as in like multiple possible futures or forecast as in like this future will continue and here's how it might adapt.

• 40:43Speaker 00

  We describe worlds that you might wake up in one day. So like, one of the worlds that I'm very interested in exploring and have created some games around is, you know, when, when we're all, when neurological sensing devices are connected to social networks, you know, what that world might be like. We know that many people are working on this technology, you know, Elon Musk is working on it. Facebook is working on it. There's all kinds of deeply funded stealth startups working on it. I think it's fair to say in like 10 years, we're all going to be broadcasting subconscious or like pre-conscious thoughts and feelings in ways that we can't do it today. And so I'll describe a world, you know, imagine

• 41:26Speaker 00

  there's a social network called Feel That, has a billion people on it and you can subscribe to people's feelings or emotional states. So, you know, I start asking, I'll, I'll get 10,000 high school students and say, okay, can you imagine, you know, this network exists? Would you be on it? You know, if you are, who would you like feel your feelings? Who would you block? Who would you like to feel? You know, who would you be scared to feel? We try to game out, you know, how do you think a network like this would be used in politics? You know, how would it be used in marketing? How could it be used in learning? How could it be used for good? How could it be used for evil? Actually, working with high school students on that was, was really good because kids today are so used to new technologies, just kind of miraculous technologies coming into

• 42:09Speaker 00

  existence that they can hold that in their mind. But a lot of times, you know, if I'm talking to a government agency, like if I were talking to a security organization about what they might need to anticipate in a neuro sensing social network world. They might have all kinds of blocks, like they just can't imagine it because they've never experienced it and it doesn't feel real to them. It doesn't seem plausible. And we've, you know, I can't tell you how many times I've presented a forecast where I'm like, okay, I want you to imagine you're in this world. And they'd say, I can't imagine that. Like, I literally just can't even picture that. And what I realized is, in addition to being able to accurately describe worlds we might wake up in, because you can look

• 42:51Speaker 00

  at the signals and look at the driving forces and say, like, yeah, pretty good chances this is going to happen someday. So like, we should start thinking about what we're going to do in that world, who we can help, what the ethical dilemmas are, who's going to be hurt by it, you know, how can I take advantage of it? But a lot of people, they can't do any of that work because their brain says, mm, never experienced that before. Therefore, my pattern recognizing machine says, not going to happen, right? Because we, our brains get stuck in looking for continuation of patterns. And so when you predict a disruption, the brain can't picture it. And one thing you can do to actually help people take these possibilities more seriously, is get them to imagine themselves

• 43:33Speaker 00

  in that world and try to like go into it as if it were a virtual reality world, like just in their own minds, picture it. Look around. You know, the first time you unbox the neurosensing device, what does it feel like? You know, what color is it? What room are you in? Who's with you when you put it on? Who's the first person that you subscribe to feel? You ask them to create a kind of vivid story. And then the next time they're asked to think about this technology, their brain says, oh, yeah, that, that does seem reasonable, or that could happen. Because your brain has an easier time picturing it because now it can remember what you already imagined. And that feels like evidence. So if you want people to take seriously, things that sound unthinkable or unimaginable,

• 44:17Speaker 00

  just getting them to just tell a story, even if you think it could never happen, just, you know, start imagining it, tell that story, the next time they think about it. They feel like it could be more real and then the next time and then the next time and the brain starts to actually finally get it. And I'll tell you, I've been doing pandemic forecasts for, you know, two of my biggest games, one in 2008 and one in 2010 forecast big respiratory pandemics that start in China for the year 2019 and 2020. And I have heard from players all year long who played those games a decade ago. Okay, you know what? I put my mask on in January. I didn't need the government to tell me. I didn't listen to any propaganda.

• 45:00Speaker 00

  Like, I understood because you had me wear a mask. I had people running around Stanford in 2008 wearing masks, you know, because we had this like, we were, we were simulating for six weeks of pandemic and, you know, how would we have class and how would we throw birthday parties? We saw, we pre-solved all of that stuff and felt the anxiety and felt the annoyance and the frustrations and the physical, you know, you can, you can help people prepare for and imagine these futures just by like, by essentially gaming them, living them, simulating them, so that when they roll around, you're not frozen, you're not stuck in the old ways of thinking or doing. Your brain's ready to go because it's already accepted that this is possible. And so you can act faster and adapt faster.

• 45:45Shane Parrish?

  I like that because then you've already experienced it. You've already gone through the friction of sort of accepting it and dealing with the whatevs. And now when it happens, you can just sort of like switch on that part that you've already used.

• 45:56Speaker 00

  Yeah. Do you want to hear the, one of the next things that I'm really trying to get people to wrap their minds around?

• 46:01Shane Parrish?

  Yeah, totally.

• 46:02Speaker 00

  Um, yeah. So, um, government mandated internet shutdowns. It seems so implausible that like, we just wake up and the government would have said, you know what? No internet for three weeks.

• 46:14Shane Parrish?

  Didn't they try this on Ready Player One?

• 46:16Speaker 00

  Right. There's a, there's a great organization, accessnow.org, that's tracking government mandated internet shutdowns all over the world. There were hundreds of instances, and it's not just in authoritarian countries. The number one place where the government shuts down the internet is a democracy, it's India. And the number one reason given for internet shutdowns is safe, public safety, to prevent the spread of misinformation. Really, they're often linked to protests or the spread of truth in authoritarian countries. But, you know, our, our president has the power, according to the War, War Powers Act.

• 47:00Speaker 00

  He can shut down internet, can shut down TV and radio, can shut down mobile service.

• 47:05Shane Parrish?

  What? That's crazy.

• 47:06Speaker 00

  But so, it is crazy. And, but the thing is, also, it's already happening. So William Gibson, the science fiction writer, he has this great quote, "The future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed." And we often think this is someone else's problem. Like, okay, yeah, in the Philippines, they're always shutting down the internet, or in India, this is someone else's problem. But it could be our problem, too. And it, I, I think people should start prethinking, what are they gonna do if they wake up and the internet's out and mobile phones don't work? Because, let's say, there's too much disinformation about the election results. So it's not for public safety, we're shutting it down. Or the next pandemic, let's say, five years from now, there's another pandemic,

• 47:50Speaker 00

  and people are spreading misinformation. So they shut the internet down to stop the spread of misinformation. There are lots of plausible reasons, and we're so used to thinking of the internet as this kind of stable, neutral resource that we just, we just take for granted. And I actually created a, I created a game to help people really start making plans for, what do you do if the internet's just randomly shut off, you know, every few days or every few weeks? Could be just for a few hours, could be for a few days each time, but we have to like adapt. You don't know any given day if it's gonna be there or not.

• 48:28Shane Parrish?

  I, I wanna talk about something you mentioned there, which is the misinformation. How do we, how do we get better at filtering what's real and not? And I guess, in a way, thinking for ourselves about the information being presented.

• 48:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, we probably shouldn't think for ourselves is is part of the problem. I mean, we do, we need to have trust. There needs to be trust in some expert or external system. I mean, if you're, if you're always just sort of trusting what you think, your brain is going to get you in trouble because we have all kinds of mental biases or hiccups. The brain doesn't want to, the brain will always reject information that doesn't align with its current way of thinking unless you can really shake it up. You know, what, what, at least what I try to do in future thinking is because I know people will reject things that don't, don't gel with their own experience of reality.

• 49:20Speaker 00

  We know that one thing that can interrupt that and kind of force a rethinking is a really strong emotion. So when I try to, when I create this future forecast, I try to get people to sit with, you know, a strong feeling of anger or anxiety or envy. I try to, you know, you wake up one day and this is happening. How do you feel? What do you do? And try to get an emotional component going because the region of the brain that sort of is constantly monitoring the environment for change, the, that says, you know, maybe your strategies aren't working or you need to be open to information that is counter to your current beliefs.

• 50:02Speaker 00

  That, that does get, that does get jolted up by really strong emotions. So that's also how propaganda works too. So, you know, any good technique that can be used for good can be used for not so good. And so maybe, I mean, in a way, what we're just saying is we need to like use propaganda methods, but for, you know.

• 50:21Shane Parrish?

  For good.

• 50:22Speaker 00

  For good. That's, that's a day, that's a slippery road to go down, but we, we, we need to play on people's emotions more because that's how, that's how conspiracy theories work. It's how propaganda works. It's all based on emotion. So we can't just talk, you can't just reason your way out of that. You just have to, you have to trigger the emotions around, you know, facts.

• 50:44Shane Parrish?

  Speaking of reasoning, what can we learn about just making better decisions from video games?

• 50:49Speaker 00

  Hmm, what can you learn about making better decisions?

• 50:52Shane Parrish?

  In the real world.

• 50:53Speaker 00

  In the real, well, yes, in the real. I mean, I actually think that this is kind of meta. But every time you play a game, you're choosing how to spend your time and attention. And that's a decision we're constantly making that is often operating at a subconscious level. And we don't necessarily take ownership of it. And if you can start to ask yourself, why am I playing this game? And why did I want to play it now? And start to articulate why you're making the choice to play. I think that that actually can help you develop a clear, like more clarity in all the things you do. You know, if I'm choosing between X and Y, you know, why might I choose one or the other?

• 51:37Speaker 00

  If you can articulate the why. And I think video games have been done it's just a terrible disservice in, you know, the past couple of decades. People talk about them as just escapist fun. And, you know, people play games for really deep reasons and compelling reasons. And they play a powerful role in people's lives. And just to act like they're this, you know, oh, it's just some fun that I have, has really robbed people of the language and the self-knowledge to talk about why they play. So I, I mean, there's a lot of other kind of decision-making that goes within, goes on within a game. But even just deciding what to play when, if you can understand that and talk about it, then you can start to understand all the choices that you're making in your life and what brings you benefit and why.

• 52:21Shane Parrish?

  It seems like people, people do jump on video games in some ways because it seems like everything is being gamified these days from every job. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? How do you think about that?

• 52:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I think I'm really angry at the, the organizations that have tried to use game mechanics to essentially exploit what games do well in service of goals that they have, but that are not in the interest of, you know, a player or a user or an employee, right? Like, I mean, when we talk about gamification, usually what we're talking about are people who are, you know, being, being motivated to do something they don't want to do, whether it's like work, work harder, buy more stuff, pay longer attention or engage more in something that they probably should stop and go do something else. And it's, it's a really, it's a, it's, it's a way of trying to.

• 53:18Speaker 00

  To control people's engagement against their own interests. And that's certainly not something that I support. Anytime I hear gamification used in that way, it makes me, you know, really angry. Because we should be making things that support people in doing more of what they authentically want to do. And that brings them benefit. You know, in my own work, in my own career, I had the opportunity once to make a game for the New York Public Library. And they were celebrating their 100th anniversary. And they were dealing with the problem of like, young people don't go to the physical library anymore. And there's like this generational, just dropping off a cliff of use of the library.

• 53:59Speaker 00

  And so they thought, well, how can we motivate young people to do what we want them to do? And they, they, they were like, let's gamify it. We'll give them points for checking out books. We'll give them, you know, achievement badges for visiting different collections. Well, that's what the library wanted them to do. But, you know, the young people obviously didn't want to do it because they'd be doing it if they wanted to do it. And so the idea of gamifying that behavior really was just frustrating to me. So what I proposed instead was, what if I make a game that if you play the game, what you've actually done is written a book that can be printed on demand and put on a shelf at the library. You'll be a published author with your name in the, in your public library catalog.

• 54:40Speaker 00

  And then maybe you'll feel cool about hanging out in the library because that's where your book is. And it will feel like home and a place of creativity. And I came to that idea by seeing a statistic that 92% of young people in the US say they want to write a book someday. Because they feel like they have a story that's worth, you know, being told or a voice that's worth being heard. And so, you know, for me, we should be making games that give people opportunity to do something that they'd love to do. But it, it seems like outside of their reach. So if I can make it easier for you to finish writing a book in a night or a weekend, you know, kind of like nano Rymo on steroids, you know, the, it's like a month long writing. Game where you have to, where everybody tries to write a novel in a month.

• 55:23Speaker 00

  So we did that like in a night, in a RMO in a night. And now you're an author, like, yes, like, put that on your college application. Or like, check that off on your life goals accomplished. Or now you can write a second book because you know you can do it. And this next book can be, you know, one that's really, you know, even better. For me, that's what people should be thinking about when making games is what do people really need help accomplishing that is meaningful and awesome? And we should not make games to try to manipulate people into doing things that they don't want to do. That seems fair, right?

• 55:56Shane Parrish?

  Yeah, it definitely seems fair. I think that's a great place to end this conversation, Jane. I want to thank you so much for your time today. It's been a fascinating conversation.

• 56:05Speaker 00

  Oh, and thank you for having an open mind about, you know, games and about the benefit they can bring and how, you know, how we can play more and still have awesome lives.

• 56:20Shane Parrish?

  Hey, one more thing before we say goodbye. The Knowledge Project is produced by the team at Fernham Street. I want to make this the best podcast you listen to, and I'd love to get your feedback. If you have comments, ideas for future shows or topics, or just feedback in general, you can email me at [email protected] or follow me on Twitter at Shane A. Parrish. You can learn more about the show and find past episodes at fs.blog/podcast. If you want a transcript of this episode, go to fs.blog/tribe and join our learning community. If you found this episode valuable, share it online with the hashtag The Knowledge Project or leave a review. Until the next episode.