Why Parents Must Talk About Hate in Gaming

After joining the GameChangers Fellowship, 95.7% of students said they better understood antisemitism and extremism — and how to respond. Awareness begins at every age, including ours.

In the last year of my deep dive into the world of trust and safety in gaming, as we built the first ADIR GameChangers Fellowship, I have discovered a number of tensions. Or maybe they are not tensions at all, but truths that coexist and challenge us in different ways. These questions meet us at many levels of life: as individuals, within our families, and in the circles and communities we belong to.

The one I want to raise today has to do with our children, and the world of online games, behaviors, and the conversations we have, or do not have, around them.

On one hand, I have heard from people in the gaming industry and parent associations who argue that parents today are deeply aware of the intricacies, risks, and culture of the gaming world. They believe parents are not only informed but are active partners in pushing for better oversight.

Allow me to generalize for the sake of the conversation.

When I look closer to home, to my own circle, my children’s school, and our parent community, what I notice is not silence but fear. Fear of saying the wrong thing. Fear of being judged. Fear of not being liked. Before speaking about parenting or technology, we cushion our words with phrases like “Of course, every parent has to decide for themselves,” or “I am not judging,” or “You obviously know best how to raise your child, but…”

Why?

Why can we not talk more openly? Why can we not share what we see, what we worry about, and what we have learned without apology?

I think this fear is the first barrier we have to overcome.

We need to rebuild spaces where we can speak with honesty. Around a dinner table, in a community group chat, or at a school event where learning from one another matters more than being liked.

We also need to accept that these conversations are nuanced and that staying informed is part of modern parenting. Because when I look around, many parents do not actually know what is happening in the deeper layers of gaming. In the chat rooms, the private servers, the spaces where culture and content blend faster than we can follow.

And if we do not know what is happening, how can we give our children the language or the confidence to navigate it?

At ADIR, through the GameChangers Fellowship, we have seen what happens when young people take that challenge into their own hands. When we asked students to build tools to fight antisemitism, extremism, and hate in gaming, what we found was not cynicism but clarity. They wanted to act.

Some joined because they are girls who experienced harassment and stopped sharing in gaming communities. Others because they are Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, or immigrants who have felt excluded in online spaces. But all of them came together because they wanted to make a difference.

They wanted to turn gaming from a place of toxicity into a place of connection and creativity.

Maybe that is where we start as parents too, by letting go of the fear of not being liked and replacing it with the courage of what we might do together.

If you want to go a bit deeper into this space, I recommend reading Digital Aftershocks by Mariana Olaizola Rosenblat and Luke Barnes from NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights.  It explores how digital ecosystems, including gaming, are being used to influence and radicalize, and it offers important context for why conversations like this matter.https://bhr.stern.nyu.edu/publication/digital-aftershocks-report/

And if you are interested in hearing more about how GameChangers came to be, and what we are learning from students building tools for safer digital spaces, feel free to spend 15 minutes with this recent conversation I had with Kevin Hogan https://www.techlearning.com/news/facing-hate-in-online-gaming