It’s funny how parents spend hours upon hours looking over books, blogs and other websites about raising children and what parenting methods work best, but billionaire and founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerburg, waltzes in and tells parents they should allow their children to play video games.
Zuckerburg made this comment during a town hall Q&A session, even telling parents that if he didn’t play video games a child, he probably would have never gotten into computer programming later on. That means Facebook would have never existed and we would still be using MySpace for our social media needs today.
The Zuckster also shared a childhood memory, telling the audience that when his sister refused to have snow ball fights with him during the winter, he decided to create his own snowball fighting game that he could play on his own. While he did admit that the game turned out to be terrible, he also states that the experience is what inspired him to get into computer programming.
He went on to say that “I do think this dynamic around kids growing up, building games and playing games is an important one because I think this is how a lot of kids get into programming. I definitely would not have gotten into programming if I had not played games as a kid.”
While some parents might be skeptical about this kind of advice, Zuckerburg does indeed have a point here. Children should explore their interests more, whether it be video games, writing, science, or countless other things, you never know what will inspire a child to pursue their future careers. I’m sure some parents are going to scream in outrage at this kind of advice, but I believe those individuals don’t see the bigger picture here.
Think of this way. The only way young children are going to learn what their interests are is if they try new things. I didn’t even know I enjoyed writing until I started my own blog experiments. I then started writing a few blog posts a week for the blog and was eventually asked to be a reporter for an upcoming sports website. Looking back, I have to admit that none of that would have happened if I didn’t start doing that blog experiment.
In the end, it’s all about exploring your interests and seeing what gets you excited in life. For Zuckerburg, it was messing around with a snow fighting game; for me it was a blog experiment; for you, who knows what it could be! Just get out there and try new things and wait for different opportunities to open up as you go along.
What do you think of Zuckerberg’s comments about video games? Should parents allow their kids to play more video games? Or do you think they need to spend their time on other studies?
Good to read!