Just Guyton

Last night, I was participating in the Lil Weezy Cup on Fortnite while talking to my youngest daughter on FaceTime.

She was playing Fortnite too, but because she lives in a different time zone, she wasn’t playing the Lil Weezy Cup. She was just playing regular Battle Royale.

She plays duos, so Fortnite paired her with a random teammate.

And then I heard this tiny little voice coming through her game.

My daughter asked him, “How old are you?”

“I’m six.”

SIX.

Immediately, I said, “That’s a baby! Why is that baby on a mic?”

Now, before somebody comes for me, I know six-year-olds aren’t technically babies. But I’m almost 50. That’s a baby. 😂

And this little guy was just talking away like it was no big deal. He had been randomly paired with a complete stranger and was perfectly comfortable having a conversation.

Thank God that stranger happened to be my daughter.

Because my daughter is going to be kind to a child.

But Fortnite doesn’t run background checks on your character before putting you on somebody’s team.

Not everybody on the internet is kind.

Not everybody playing video games is going to hear a six-year-old voice and think, I need to watch what I say because I’m talking to somebody’s child.

And unfortunately, there are some genuinely sick people in this world.

And just so we’re clear, this isn’t coming from someone who thinks video games are the problem.

We’re a family of gamers. 🎮

I play Fortnite. My daughter plays Fortnite. My husband plays Fortnite. Both of my grandsons play Fortnite.

Gaming is something our family genuinely enjoys.

So I’m not standing outside the gaming world pointing a finger at it. I’m saying this because I’ve spent enough time inside it to know what can happen when kids have an open mic.

I used to love playing Prop Hunt on Fortnite. Eventually, I stopped playing it because of the voice chat.

I’d get into games where kids had their microphones on and were saying absolutely horrible things to one another. Cussing. Screaming. Throwing racial slurs around like they were nothing.

Sometimes you could hear their parents yelling in the background.

One time, I played with a little kid who couldn’t have been more than eight or nine years old, and it sounded like his parents were having a full-blown war with each other somewhere behind him.

And there we all were—complete strangers—hearing it through his microphone.

That’s something I don’t think we talk about enough.

An open microphone doesn’t only allow strangers into your child’s world.

Sometimes it broadcasts your child’s world to strangers.

When I was growing up, we played outside.

I’m Gen X. Our entire generation practically has the same running joke: we raised ourselves.

We disappeared outside, came home when we were supposed to, and somehow lived to tell the tale. 😂

But here’s the difference.

When we were running around outside, we didn’t have a headset connecting us instantly to random adults anywhere in the world.

Technology changed the neighborhood.

And maybe parenting has to change with it.

I’m certainly not writing this from some pedestal of perfect motherhood.

I wasn’t the best parent.

There are a million things I would do differently today if I could go back knowing what I know now.

That’s hindsight.

My children are grown now, and I can look backward and recognize things that I couldn’t always see while I was living them.

My dad had rules when I was growing up. You came home from school. You did your homework. You did your chores. Then you worried about whatever else you wanted to do.

There were expectations.

Kids today deserve some freedom too. They deserve games and friends and time when Mom and Dad aren’t hovering over their shoulders.

But they also deserve parents who are interested in their world.

Know what they’re playing.

Know who they’re talking to.

Listen occasionally.

Ask questions.

And if you’re letting your little babies play Fortnite, please pay attention.

Because not everybody who plays Fortnite is nice to kids.

There are sickos in this world, and sometimes an open microphone is all it takes to give a stranger access to your child.

But I can promise you one thing.

If your baby happens to land on our team, we’ll fight like hell to protect them. ❤️

We’ll probably remind them not to wander off by themselves, tell them there’s a shield potion behind them, make sure nobody is being ugly to them…

And yes.

We’ll reboot them too. 😂🎮❤️