Right now, many parents are spending more time with their children and more time observing their children’s interactions with video games. As a result, parental anxiety about video games is acute. But, often what seems to be distress caused by playing games is something a little different, and easily addressed. So, my advice is that before you lock up the electronic devices, try tweaking a few things first.

The game is too hard.

Mihayli Csikszentmihalyi’s idea of flow comes up a lot in game design. The gist of the principle as applied in games is that if a game is too easy for a player, she gets bored; if it’s too hard, she gets frustrated. Game designers use this idea a lot because it explains a lot of player behavior (even if Csikzentmihalyi himself isn’t big on video games).

Adult players drop bad games, but children might be less equipped to make that judgment call and keep engaging with a game that is poorly made or a bad fit for their skills. Also, children, well, act like children. So, a frustrated child who keeps engaging with something that is elevating frustration is probably going to seem pretty emotionally dysregulated.

Try solving the problem in a couple different ways:

• Try coplaying with your child, so that when one player becomes frustrated, the other player steps in. This is also an opportunity to provide media mentorship, demonstrating to your child how to express and address frustration and when to put a game down.
• If you don’t have time to play alongside your child, you can help your child find games that match her skill level. Resources like Common Sense Media rate games in part by age appropriateness and include notes on design and interface.

The timing is all wrong.

Many parents, understandably, put time limits on children’s game time. But, sometimes these limits don’t make sense for the type of game the child is playing.

A tale of two games

For example, I really like playing Animal Restaurant. I can check in to the game and play for 5 minutes and feel like I did something. Then, while I’m gone, the in-game restaurant earns tips and completes the tasks I’ve set up for the cat staff. Cute! Fun! 5 minutes for this game is totally fine.

But I’ve also been belatedly playing Kentucky Route Zero, a beautiful, surreal adventure game with a rich plot. 5 minutes here would barely let me get the game set up and running meaningfully. 20 minutes would probably be just enough to be pretty frustrating. 45 minutes to an hour is ok. 1.5-2 hours is great.

These are two very different games. If I was given 15 minutes for Animal Restaurant, I’d be perfectly happy. In fact, I often pull the game up while waiting for appointments or to take a quick break from my day between tasks. If I was given 15 minutes for Kentucky Route Zero, I would not be able to progress meaningfully in the game, so every time I opened it, I’d be at roughly the same place, repeating a task I’d already done the work to get past.

What to do instead

Depending on your child’s age, you can try different strategies for setting limits, if they really seem necessary.

• You, as the parent, can spend an hour or two playing the game to get a feel for it, and set a limit based on the specifics of the gameplay.
• You can try a daily or weekly limit for screentime instead of a per session limit, allowing your child to meter that time as she sees fit. So, for example, if she get 10 hours total for the school week, she can choose to burn through 4 hours in one night and then not play at all another night.
• You can have a discussion with your child about what increment of time works for the game. Have this discussion separate from when the child is actively playing, since mid game, she may (understandably!) want to argue for the longest amount of time rather than the most reasonable.

Something is broken.

In Office Space, three men take a fax machine out into a field and destroy it against a backdrop of the Geto Boys’ “Still.” The scene plays for laughs, but it’s a nice moment of catharsis, too. Who hasn’t had to wrangle with a printer, computer, fax machine, or DVD player that just doesn’t quite play by the rules? And, who hasn’t found themselves pretty angry in response?

Rage against the machine

A Colorado man got so fed up he shot his computer 8 times. Asked about the incident, he said, “It was glorious.” Computer rage is not uncommon among adult workers frustrated with technical problems. If middle-aged middle managers find themselves absolutely furious about tech problems, what can we expected from middle schoolers?

If your child transforms into a ball of fury while they’re playing a game, it could be hardware failure, glitches in the game, internet instability, or other technical issues. As lean development tactics have become widespread in the industry, players are often playing a minimum viable game that developers assume they’ll patch and update over time. This means playing games held together with the digital equivalent of Duct tape and twine.

Breathe in peace

Unfortunately, parents can’t do a lot about widespread practices that dump buggy games into the consumer market. However, this is another opportunity to provide media mentoring and help children develop emotional regulation and coping skills:

• If you can, spend time familiarizing yourself with the hardware devices your child uses, so that you can help troubleshoot if necessary. You can also spend time coaching your child on how to troubleshoot for themselves.
• Similarly, even spending a few minutes with a game, either with your child or on your own, can help familiarize you with the interface enough to help her navigate problems.
• Model the type of behavior you want to see. We all have frustrating technical issues sometimes. Demonstrating behaviors like troubleshooting, taking a break, or asking for help will support your child in developing their own responses.