A parent and his son pick up Wii remotes to begin a friendly round of video games together. It’s a typical scene for a supervised visitation monitored by Tyler Secor, M.S., at the Youth and Family Project, Inc. in West Bend, Wis. While a parent playing a video game with their child may not seem like a big deal on the surface, Secor is using electronic gaming devices as tools to aid in the healing process for children affected by trauma.

“Every child that I’ve worked with has experienced trauma in their life and a big marker of trauma is that control is taken away,” Secor explained, “Especially with abuse. That’s what abuse is all about, control. So when [children] play video games they get to have some control in a safe space.” Secor, 27, is a family visit supervisor and mental health counselor for the non-profit organization whose mission is to provide support, counseling and educational programs for families divided by crisis. “A lot of the kids will play Wii while they’re there because they get to feel in control when they’re with a parent that they may not have felt in control around before. It’s also a safe way to interact with their parents,” he said. An avid fan of video games himself, Secor is focused on blending his passion for gaming and technology with his career in social work in order to positively enrich children who have experienced emotional trauma. He earned his Bachelors in Psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay in 2015 before earning his Masters in Clinical-Mental Health Counseling from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in August. It was during his time in Green Bay where he first implemented the use of video games as a tool to help children process difficult emotions.

Learning About Grief Through Play

“I was doing an internship at a grief camp and we had to do a project there,” he explained. “I was trying to think of a cool project I could do, something that not everybody else was doing. I thought about this game, a Zelda game, “Majora’s Mask.”

The storyline of the game, The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, is about a society finding out that a moon is barreling towards their planet which will be destroyed in three days. Players of the game move through the storyline and watch characters process emotions of their inevitable death in different ways. Some people run for cover. Some people stay. The video game player has to take the main character, named Link, on side missions that actually help other characters find closure on the news of their impending demise. It’s also up to Link to save the world from being destroyed.

Secor worked with kids who played the video game at Camp Lloyd, a week-long grief camp for children dealing with the death of a loved one, as a therapy activity for the children who have experienced loss. This activity brought Secor to a larger question he is exploring throughout his work. “How do video games help people learn or help people process their own grief?” he said. Secor and other professionals are studying the effects of video games in order to unlock positive outcomes from regular usage. While studies often find links between video games and aggressive behavior, one study actually suggests a connection to the decrease in violent crimes and gaming.

The study from researchers at Villanova University analyzed four things: changes in video game sales and violent crimes, keyword searches for violent video games and violent crime, monthly changes in video games and violent crime and finally, violent crime following the release of popular violent video games. Study results showed that monthly video game sales were related to a concurrent decrease in aggravated assaults and that homicide numbers decreased in the months following the release of M-rated violent video games.

The findings in this study contradict claims by other entities that suggest a link between violent game-time and aggressive behavior. Researchers from the 2014 study suggest that one possible explanation for their findings is that players are able to release their aggression in a virtual world instead of in reality. Therefore, it is cathartic for the user psychologically to spend time playing video games.

Secor echoes similar findings from his work experience. “The whole deal with video game addiction is that people feel like kids are using video games to run away from their feelings, when they’re not. It’s the opposite. They may be processing some anger by playing a game, or sadness.”

Monitor Screen Time, Connect with Your Little Gamers

It’s common for many parents to worry about the amount of screen time their child consumes since 67 percent of homes in the U.S. own a device that plays video games, according to a 2017 report by the Entertainment Software Association. Furthermore, 65 percent of U.S. households have a least one person who plays three or more hours of video games each week. While the amount of usage can bother some parents, Secor is working to lift the negative stigma from video games and instead shift the focus to how parents can use gaming consoles as potential tools for emotional and mental health therapy in their homes. “My thought is that if video games are helping people connect their heads and their hearts and people are already playing them, then why pathologize them? Why not use them if they are helping to meet the same needs sought by therapy?” he said, adding that it’s important to note that he never imposes video games on his clients. Instead, he takes cues from parents who show interest in working with a gaming console activity.

Learn The Gaming Basics

It’s that simple act of a parent picking up a remote, Secor believes, that transforms a game console from an entertainment device into a teaching tool. “If you learn about video games that means that you care about that on some level and if you care about that, what does that mean? You care about them,’” He said. “You don’t have to love it or become obsessed with it, but it’s like anything else. There’s a degree of learning about what your kid is interested in, in order to connect with them.

Even though it can be challenging to keep up with gaming technology, Secor recommends parents should learn the basics of how to start and stop a game so they are able to enforce limits. Limiting screen time teaches children the importance of self-regulation. Furthermore, Secor encourages parents to ask their kids questions about the game itself to challenge their critical thinking of the storyline. When they are playing video games, children have time to explore their own emotional limits and how they choose to react when certain emotions arise. “I’m seeing a lot with that- recognizing limits. Kids work on trying to stay calm and sorting through options when they play. ‘I could get mad, or I could try this or I could ask mom or I could take a break,” Secor said.

As a counselor, his number one priority is to take care of the emotional and environmental well-being of children, but feels truly rewarded in his career when he is able to help both kids and parents make breakthroughs on how to process emotions they have not previously handled in a healthy and safe way. “Real growth and change happens when a client is able to meet you on their terms and in their way,” he explained. “It’s really something special to see clients lower their guard through the lens of video games and be able to be authentic and not feel ashamed. A big problem, especially for boys and men, is that they struggle to connect their heads and their hearts. When they recognize those goosebumps they get at a meaningful point in a game’s story, or the way their chest sinks when a character they love experiences tragedy… it allows them to tap into that [emotional] well in a safe way. For traumatized and neglected children, these are messages that give them hope and watching that happen before my eyes is why I do what I do.”

Markey, P. M., Markey, C. N., & French, J. E. (2014, August 18). Violent Video Games and Real-World Violence: Rhetoric Versus Data. Psychology of Popular Media Culture. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000030