Gamers the New Social Group?

Gamers are notoriously anti-social.  It turns out, however, that notoriety for something does not make it true.  The anti-social basement gamer of the '90s hardly even exists anymore, with the advent of MMOs.  Serious gamers that play modern games must be social to be successful in their games.  Multi-player first person shooters typically pit teams of players against each other, requiring team work to win.  MMOs, perhaps the most popular genre of games among modern gamers, frequently present players with challenges that require them to work together.  While modern gamers may often had poor face-to-face social skills, their team work skills are awesome.

Only children are not notoriously anti-social, but it turns out that the lack of face-to-face interactions is causing behavior that is normally considered anti-social.  Only children do tend to be more self absorbed than children with siblings of similar age.  Their interactions are primarily with adults, and some psychologists have claimed that this may make them more mature.  They also tend to be happier living along, and studies have also found that only children are more prone to strong anxiety in face-to-face interactions with others.  Only children are becoming far more common in the US, and while some benefits have been correlated to being an only child, some experts are suggesting that the next generation may be composed primarily of people who live along and conduct nearly all of their social interactions online.

Here is the kicker: Gamers are already well suited to this kind of social interaction, but most Americans are not.  Gaming helps build online social skills, and it can also help improve face-to-face social skills, as LAN parties and face to face gaming groups are becoming more popular among gamers.  Non-gamers do not have this kind of social web that includes a common activity to connect them.  Unless a majority of the next generation are gamers (it could happen), gamers may be the next generation's social class.  And don't expect public school social interactions to help.  Many people build social networks in high school and even college, but very few high school social relationships last far past graduation and many college social relationships are lost or become long distance online relationships after college.

What can we do to ease only children into this, so they do not suffer from a lack of social skills?  In some cases it may not matter.  Telecommuting is becoming more common, making face-to-face social skills matter less.  From the perspective of careers, the need for social skills depends on the career.  Close personal relationships, however, nearly always require face-to-face social skills.  While people who have interacted closely for a long time might be able to manage without decent social skills, establishing such a long term relationship does require some face-to-face social skills.  Japan and Korea are already having a problem with this, and it is resulting in birthrates low enough that economic collapse is becoming a serious concern.  The governments of both countries have started campaigns designed to help people meet, establish relationships, and get married.  Our recent recession may even be a consequence of an unsustainably low birth rate.  If we just ignore the problem (or even embrace it, as some advocates of single child families do), it will eventually come back around with far more severe consequences.

I am no psychologist, but I do have some suggestions that may help: Parents of only children should find opportunities for face-to-face social interaction for their children.  This does not necessarily have to be with children of the same age, since most social relationships after adulthood are not with people the same age.  A great opportunity for social interaction is games.  I prefer table top games, but sports can work as well.  A good blend of competitive and cooperative games is ideal, as competition and team work are both important in work and non-work relationships.  For proactive parents who want to give their child the best chance, I would even recommend socially oriented computer games, and the parents should have some involvement as well.  MMOs are great options, because the opportunity for social interaction is extremely high.  Many real time strategy games (like Starcraft and Starcraft 2) can be fairly social as they are naturally competitive but also provide the opportunity for team work.  There are some entirely cooperative games, like Minecraft, that can be very beneficial to social skills when played with other people.  I want to stress that parents should be involved with their children in these games.  One reason is to moderate potentially unhealthy social interactions, which do sometimes occur.  Another reason is to make sure the child is interacting in a beneficial way (when I play MMOs, I tend to play on my own; this is not very beneficial for social skills).  A third reason is to make sure that the child is not spending an unhealthy amount of time playing the game.  Social skills are great, but only if they are often used for interactions in the real world as well as the game.  This has several benefits.  One is that it will help the child learn to communicate effectively using an electronic platform.  If most social interaction is online in the future, knowing how to interact online will be important.  It will also help improve team work skills.  If done with significant parental involvement, it can also help form a more lasting long term relationship between parents and their children  Overall, the right online games will help improve general social skills and online social skills, while face-to-face games will help counter the anxiety common in only children during face-to-face social interactions.

As a gamer, it does not bother me that gamers are likely the new social class of the future.  It does bother me that many non-gamers may have a hard time functioning in society as a consequence of limited social skills though.  Really, we probably need more research on this, however, until that happens, my suggestions should be helpful, and they are based on research on the affects of gaming on people.