What is Fortnite?
Pros and Cons of Fortnite on Children and Students from the perspective of educators. Fortnite is one of the most popular online video games on the planet in 2021. Billions of players, including students from all countries, play Fortnite online. Fortnite consumes thousands of hours of our students’ lives. Students from the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand play Fortnite together.
Fortnite is a Free Play game that allows players to land on an island and kill each other, with teaming up as an option. The last man standing wins. Normally Fortnite updates include additional features. Fortnite is available to play on Google Play, PC, Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, and other devices. Fortnite is temporarily not available on iPhone, and Android due to financial disputes (06/08/2021).
Fortnite often distracts students from Google Classroom, i-Ready, and most remote learning tools. However, there are many cons and few pros of playing Fortnite. In this article, we will discuss the pros and cons, and the mental impact Fortnite has on student’s cognitive growth, and behavior.
Student Gaming
Exciting games have managed to transcend from purely recreational to the creation of e-sports tournaments with high stake rewards. Winning players have made more than 9 million dollars. Attached to this comes fame, wealth, and a massive social media following.
Fortnite player Tyler Blevins better known as Ninja has more than 14 million followers on Instagram. This person is looked up to by many young students. Tyler Blevins might not be aware due to his youth, that he is a role model to millions. However, it is the responsibility of the parents to educate the students at home.
Fortnite is a free-to-play platform where you can play for free and pay for extras, equipment, and accessories. Students spend hundreds of dollars on this game, including resorting to theft. Fortnite has been able to gain ground among famous athletes such as Antoine Griezmann, and Harry Kane.
Not to mention numerous YouTubers who upload themselves playing for millions of views. For instance, the most influential and famous Fortnite player Kyle Giersdorf has a following in the millions.
The influence of Fortnite on students is significant, considering most players are young, in many cases even minors. With this article, we like to guide parents, students, and teachers. We offer advice, tips, and resourceful information so that they can best handle this game.
Through caution, and discipline students, and parents can avoid the negative effects on your personal and academic life.
How does Fortnite affect the behavior, learning, and emotional stability of students?
It is important to clarify at first that it is not the technology itself that generates benefits or risks, it only has the potential to do so. Whether technology is more positive than negative depends on how we use it. Hence, parental involvement is important to moderate the negative potential of technology, including Fortnite.
Video games can be useful to promote learning, to develop analysis, reasoning, collaboration, and decision-making skills in our students. Game design is a very lucrative career that requires no college on many occasions. Knowledge of coding and game design can get you a salary of at least six figures.
Fortnite Addiction
The game developer Epic Games recommends Fortnite for teens 13 and older. This is based mainly on the open chat and violent content; the final decision is left to the parent. It is up to you to decide if your child just likes the game or has become addicted to Fortnite.
Some researchers believe that it is possible to be addicted to video games. Thus, the American Psychiatric Society (APA), and the World Health Organization (WHO) have identified a condition called “Video game disorder” which could be considered as a kind of addiction. However, more research is needed on this.
Our recommendation
We recommend doing everything possible to take advantage of the game as an instance of intrinsic motivation. As for associating games, you may use permissions to high or low academic performance.
For instance, making it clear that during the school week, your child will not be able to play Fortnite unless he achieves some exceptional achievement in school or his extracurricular activities. It is important to set limits to avoid excesses or addictions in our children.
In these times of pandemics, Fortnite can help promote the socialization and learning of your children, so we should not dismiss it as bad at first glance.
It is important to actively talk with children about what they do and listen to everything they tell you about the game, be open and receptive to what they want to tell you so that you can enter that world that they have discovered, instead of being outside.
You could even play with them a few times, and thus make it easier to accompany your children in their training process. We must strive to understand the logic with which our children think.
Considering educators have to follow the standards’ guidelines oftentimes students who may find the material easy or difficult cannot receive individualized attention resulting in either less of a challenge or more. Teachers cannot reward students with Fortnite playing time.
It is also important to clarify to our children that foul language of the real world still applies in Fortnite. There have been many instances of children cursing and threatening other students over Fortnite’s open chat for whatever reason. This happens in a way that they would not normally dare to say face to face. We must make it clear to them that the rules of conduct still need to be applied.
It is also important to make sure that children have good relationships with all members of the family and get enough sleep. Both are vital to the development of a child’s life.
Pros and Cons of Fortnite
After giving some advice, we would like to explore some of the advantages and disadvantages that Fortnite offers us as parents when it comes to stimulating our children’s learning:
Fortnite Pros
- a) Develop thinking skills: in this game, you need to learn to think fast to be successful.
b) Teamwork: There are Fortnite modes where you can play with friends, which helps to develop collaborative, and social skills.
c) Socialization: we have already said it, but it is worth repeating it. During this pandemic, online socialization is the safest and most reliable way for our children to keep in touch with their friends, family.
d) short time frame: each game only takes a maximum of 20 minutes, many times it takes less time, which helps to control the use of Fortnite, although you cannot fall into the temptation of “one more round”.
Fortnite Cons
- a) It is a violent game: even if it is to a lesser extent than other popular games today, it is still a violent game, with weapons, violence, and death. We recommend playing it yourself or watching around on YouTube to see if you agree with the level of violence.
- b) Open chat function: The open chat function, like any other online chat room, can be dangerous, seeing all kinds of insults and other inappropriate languages between players. It is important to monitor this feature carefully and disable it if the insults get too far.
- c) In-app purchases: we recommend setting a parental lock so that your children cannot buy new skins and extras without your explicit permission, especially if they have your credit card connected to their gaming accounts.
- d) It can be addictive: Fortnite can be addictive if it is not properly moderated.
Classroom and Student Analysis
I believe that the modern classroom is not ideal. There are several factors to consider when we emphasize the unbalance in the real-world classroom. From observations, I observe a classroom in New York taught by a relatively young teacher, Mr. John. He highlighted how the school where he taught “money was not an issue” many other schools he visited suffered tremendously from low budgets. This is where gaming and gaming addiction adds to the disadvantage some students suffer.
To emphasize the importance of technology let just say that without technology research and instructional delivery are impossible. However, there is the classroom management factor, which includes monitoring students for classroom gaming, and inappropriate technology use.
With the advantages offer in the modern classroom, I feel school funds are the main issue. However, I also feel that States’ Standards also play a role. For example, educational standards play a key role in the enlightenment of the students.
Yet, the educational process greatly standardized tends to leave numerous students behind, I believe. Students who do not have an IEP may be outcast by the standardized system when they simply require a different approach.
A national study into the effectiveness of education in regards to the challenge it poses the students found that “Many students — 21 percent of 12th graders and 37 percent of fourth-graders — reported that math classes were “too easy” (Resmovits, 2012)“.
Ultimately, although there are many factors that influence students’ education, unfortunately not all students get the same benefits leaving many students with a thirst for more, teachers must strive to keep students engaged.
Parents can moderate how much Fortnite children play, and what they do in the game. Fortnite is a violent game, but it is also entertaining. There is a balance when students are rewarded when they complete an important task. Thus, there is a rewards system in which there is positive behavioral reinforcement with a very appealing reward that is Fortnite. Pros and Cons of Fortnite on Children and Students, what do you think?
