Is your kid playing Among Us? Is it safe? What to know!

Episode 37:

Among Us the newest game to go viral among kids. Is your kiddo playing it? Is it safe? Listen in to find out what you need to know!

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FULL TRANSCRIPTION:

Speaker 1: (00:00)
Hey there. Welcome back to another episode of the beat at mom movement podcast. My name is Dolly Denson, and I am here today to share a little bit about a viral app app that has gone viral among kids. And you probably have heard about it. You probably already know about it because I bet your kid is actually playing it. If they do have a smartphone or access to all the digital things, which most of the kids do these days with all of the virtual learning. Right? So anyways, this what we're going to talk about this app, but I also want to talk about how my family playing this app has given me a couple of different insights that I wanted to share with you that I think would be great for all of us to think about. So stay tuned,

Speaker 2: (00:47)
Welcome to your source for tips, tools, and support to help you be that mom that is tuned in and proactive for yourself, your family, and for the wild ride of raising kids in this digital age, inspired by a mother's love with a relatable real life. Proud to be that mom flair. This is the bead that mom movement with your host Dolly Denson.

Speaker 1: (01:13)
We get started today. I want to talk about something that is new in is going to be another way that you can kind of team the crazy around all these digital things. If you've listened to my episodes prior to now, at some point, you've probably heard me mention that it is best to have boundaries around the use of the digital things, where they are not kept in a bedroom and that they are put in your possession at night. So your a kiddo is not tempted to be on them during the night to check in on things during the night. All of those things, what I'm talking about is called the loot box. It is currently in a Kickstarter campaign as they get the funds that they need to get it rolling, but their prototype has been mega successful in simplifying this whole thing around having a central place for you to charge all of the things at night, it's a smart, secure multi-device charger designed to help parents create healthier screen habits for their kids.

Speaker 1: (02:05)
The ones that have tested out the initial prototype have said they have less arguments as they know when they get their time, speaking of their kids. And most importantly, it helps them to be a healthier, happier family when they put boundaries around those things. So check out the loot box today. I will put a link in the show notes. They are at a discount at the moment as they are in their Kickstarter campaign, but they are close to getting all that they need for their funding. And they will be rolling this out shortly and the price will go up. So check it out at the link if you're interested in it, grab it today. Okay. The topic at hand today is the viral video game app called among us. Are your kiddos playing this yet? I actually didn't know anything about it until I was sitting in my living room one night, doing stuff on my computer while watching something.

Speaker 1: (02:54)
And my daughter came home with our bonus daughter, which is her best friend who spends a lot of time at our house because they're both in culinary school together, but they came home and sat down in the living room and they said to my son, do you want to play among us? And he was like, sure. And he oftentimes is not on his phone. He's usually on his computer. And so I was wondering why or how he knows about the game, because you know, he's on his computer when actually he knew about it before they knew about it and he was playing it on his computer. So that got me to thinking a couple of things and I will go into some of the details of this game and what you need to be looking for and all of that. But as I listened to them, play this, it made me think of a couple of things.

Speaker 1: (03:35)
I've talked about, how, you know, we need to have kind of a keen, highly sensitive approach to all of the things around the digital things. Not assume that our kid is just going to know how to navigate it. Not assume that they are just going to make the right decisions, not assume that things aren't going to influence them and possibly in a negative way, but as we set up boundaries around the use of the digital things, as they get older, there has to be this level of independence, right? So as I was listening to them, going back and forth about this game before I learned more about it, I thought, wow, the digital world and all of the things move so, so fast. And so number one, there's just no way for us as parents to keep up with it. It is more than a full-time job to know all the ins and outs of these things.

Speaker 1: (04:21)
So if our kiddo has a device has access to the digital things, it's, you know, I say it in almost every episode that it's imperative, that we have something in place to help us monitor, not to be spies, not to feel like we can't trust our kid, not to come from a place of restriction and, you know, distrust and all of that stuff. It to come from a place of being proactive in knowing that the influences are massive and something like bark, I don't know of anything else out there that compares to bark in terms of its versatility and them constantly being on the top of, or the cutting edge of knowing what's going on. It's kind of like they're our eyes and our ears to pay attention to the things that are important, not to worry about all of the little things. And as an example, let me tell you about as kind of a side note yesterday, I got an alert from bark.

Speaker 1: (05:14)
I have bark set up to monitor my youngest phone. I have bark set up as bark home to monitor our devices across the board at a high level. So basically to filter out someone accessing pornography, someone accessing, you know, the more extreme things in our home while our, all of the devices are hooked up to wifi. Right? So I get an alert from Bart yesterday. And a lot of times I get them in there, like detecting an email that he got, that is related to a video game. I have approved for him to play and it'll say something about violence or, you know, a weapon or something like that. So most of the time I'll look at those alerts and then you can set them up to where they have different levels of alertness, I guess, where, you know, you can say that I don't want to be notified about this thing from this certain cinder.

Speaker 1: (06:00)
Right. So I open this up thinking, you know, was probably just another one of those things. And it's something about the mention of a weapon and it's actually from text messages. And so I thought, huh, okay. So I look at it and it's actually a conversation between him and his Papaw about hunting. So it made me laugh because bark detected it and it was something innocent. And it was something that I was aware of, but I would not have seen that alert if I didn't have bark in place. Right. So there's that one level that we need to have something monitoring as our ears and our eyes and this, I promise this episode is not all about bark, but something that's on a high level helping us in that way, because we cannot keep up with this. And it was very obvious when my kids started talking about among us.

Speaker 1: (06:43)
And yes, they have smartphones. They are older teenagers now. So they have a level of independence that I have allowed, but I still have bark as a way to monitor. Right. So my first point is that, that we cannot keep up with all of these things, but we can have something in place that helps us to monitor like that, that helps us to filter through wifi just because kids are curious and sometimes they don't know what they're in until they're in it. Right. But the second thing is that the digital things aren't all bad because what I observed in this little moment of time, that almost seemed like it

Speaker 3: (07:15)
Like slewed time,

Speaker 1: (07:18)
I listened to them, go back and forth is that this game brought them together. They were working together to do, to, you know, to accomplish the tasks of the game. And I thought it was really cool because my son was sitting on his computer. So it's apparently something you can buy through steam or something like that. And they were both on their phones. And so as I sat there, I listened to them and it was almost like they have another language that they were talking, which I'll talk about in a second. And all of this is something they were very familiar with before it even entered the realm of my awareness that it existed. Right. So if you have a younger kid, of course, you need to be, I recommend you reeling that awareness level up in the sense that you need to be much more proactive about what is out there.

Speaker 1: (08:04)
So I'm not saying don't be proactive, but as they get older, you can develop this confidence in what they're doing as you have monitored them closely and still have the high level of monitoring in place. Okay. So I just listened to them and it was just an amazing thing to see them actually doing something together. They were all sitting in the same room, talking about this, you know, and just having a good time together. And so, you know, that's what mothers want, right? The kids, when they're young, they do all the things together and then they get a little bit older and they never want to spend any time with each other. And so it was really cool to observe that the other thing is that I don't allow them to do all the digital things in their bedrooms. My older girl, my girls, yes, because they're older, but my son, he stays in the commonplace.

Speaker 1: (08:46)
And that has helped us to, even if he is playing his games, his gaming things, he is still there with us. He sees what we're doing. We're talking to him, he's interacting with us. And when we weren't doing that, and we were allowing that in his bedroom, there was this sense of isolation. And you know, it, he would spend too much time on that because we weren't aware that we should limit the time. And it created a place of like him feeling isolated and divided from us. And I do think that it was an integral part of us getting past that by moving the digital things out into the common area. So all of them sitting together was awesome to look at and watch. So since then, I have jumped into learning a little bit more about among us. I have not actually played it, but I talked to my kids a lot about it and I've read about it.

Speaker 1: (09:31)
And the cool thing is this game, I think is one of the positives in the digital world right now in the sense that the risks that are out there are minimal. Of course it is still something that you need to gauge if it's appropriate for your kiddo, depending on age and their experience and all of that. But let's dive into a little bit more about among us and the things that you need to be aware of so that you can make this a positive digital experience and something that you can do as a family. So among us is a digital take on classic who done it type game. The one that comes to mind for me is the board game clue. I loved playing that game as a kid discovering who did it, right? So that is basically what among us is it's designed for four to 10 players and it's a murder mystery game.

Speaker 1: (10:17)
I can't say murder very well. Can I? And it is set on a spaceship. Players are assigned roles as either the good guy or the crew mates or the bad guy, the imposters with the crew mates, fulfilling basic ship, upkeep tasks and postures sabotaging. Ooh, I can't talk today. Sabotaging the ship and killing crewmates when tensions rise or a body is found the players, a symbol in emergency meetings to discuss who the imposter is and vote to kick them out of the airlock and into outer space. This is where the fun begins of the game because players theorize about actual evidence, like seeing a player in the same room, or even speculate about motives that have nothing to do with the game itself. And an example that the bark blog talks about with this such as you voted for me, because you're still mad. I kicked you out of the group chat.

Speaker 1: (11:06)
If the crew mates managed to figure out who the imposter is, they win. If not the imposter reigns victorious, as they slowly wipe out the ship's entire crew. So among us has a slang that comes with it. So this is the language that I kind of heard my kids talking about, or my kids saying. So sus S U S is short for suspicious. This is where they will call attention to another's motives, such as you've been quiet in the past few votes. That's pretty sus. Then Vince is another word players who are imposters can fast travel through the game using air vents, something the other players can't do an emergency meeting is where players can call a meeting at any time. But usually after a crew, mate turns up dead to jointly discuss and vote on potential. Imposters as scaled is the name of one of the maps users play on it.

Speaker 1: (11:56)
And it's a spaceship. And then tasks are where much of the game is spent. They perform assigned duties around the ship and these activities keep the players moving around, providing alibis for imposters and opportunities for crew mates together, evidence. And then the words cyan blue, red, green, et cetera. If you're hearing those random colors, it's often used as a shorthand to identify a player instead of having to memorize usernames. So let's talk about what are the potential dangers that you should know about this game. Apart from the mildly violent nature of the game, the main danger facing kids as they search for imposters and complete their tasks is the chatting, always the chatting, right? If you haven't learned anything from my podcast, you've probably learned that so that when you were introducing a game, you need to look at the features and see whether or not there is chatting.

Speaker 1: (12:43)
But in, among us, the chat is kind of necessary in order for them to have the emergency meetings. It is where they hold the emergency meetings to discuss who might be the imposter. A chat sensor is available in the settings menu, but you can't disable chatting entirely. So be aware of potentially inappropriate conversations that could happen with strangers. This whole little thing I talked to my kids about and my bonus daughter about and ask them have yellow, who do y'all play with, you know? And they said, we typically just play with each other. Or we play with some of our friends from school. And then I said, well, have you ever played with strangers? And they said, a couple of times they've let someone in. But if they start doing anything weird in the chat, they kick them out is what they said. So if you have a younger kid that's playing this, I would recommend that you make it kind of family thing, a local thing where everybody on the same wifi is playing it.

Speaker 1: (13:33)
And you're in your own little game and not allow the stranger thing, not allow someone else to come into the game, unless it's someone that, you know, the other thing that my kids say is the chat goes so fast. That there's not a lot of time for conversation between them like doing their tasks. So they said, even if someone is seeing something funky, the game just moves so fast and you don't have time to sit there in the chat. So if someone's weird, they kick them out. That's what they told me. So the other thing to be aware of is that a lot of times, and sun does this with some of his other games, is they move to discord or another type of chat platform using FaceTime or zoom or something like that to chat and have more in-depth conversations. And that's where some of the potentially inappropriate content could expose, you know, your child could be exposed to.

Speaker 1: (14:19)
So just, you know, set up your rules around how your child will be able to play this game. They're allowed to be on discord. You know, that's a whole nother can of worms and monitoring and making sure that inappropriate people aren't getting in touch with them. But I think the biggest rule of thumb would be to allow to, you know, set it up to where they're only playing with those that they know. So as far as the whole private and public thing, you can set it up to where they're playing a private game that requires codes to play. There's a public game option. I'll let you play with complete strangers, but we don't advise this. So if you decide that among us is appropriate for your family, it's, you know, I highly recommend you have them, you play it together. It's something that parents and kids can play together.

Speaker 1: (15:03)
And it truly is kind of a fun and popular thing for them to do now. So it's a way for you to put a positive spin on the digital things and show them that, you know, you can play safely while also, you know, limiting the amount of time that they're on it and those types of things. Okay. So I hope this was helpful for you. I know that sometimes the stuff that I share can be intense. It can be disturbing. You may be wanting to run from the Hills of Parenthood because, you know, there's just so much to tackle, but there is a positive to all of this. And among us is one of those things. If you can just set up the rules and the boundaries around its use and make it something that you do together, I personally loved playing the game clue.

Speaker 1: (15:46)
If you don't want to deal with the threats of the digital world, pullout clue, it kind of has the same type of feel to it, but just know that together we can navigate this. That is the point of my podcast is for us to be that mom strong and put a positive light on all the things and be proactive in this space while allowing our kids to grow and learn how to be healthy and happy around all the tech things, for them to be a tool and not to be something that determines the future of their lives and that doesn't tell them who to be and what to light, but it's something that they can use as a tool. Okay. So I hope you found this helpful, please check out loot box. I think it is an awesome, awesome thing. I have spoken with the creators of it and it is just going to be so, so popular.

Speaker 1: (16:34)
It is at a mega discount right now. So if you look at my link and you want to get it, grab it now, help them get this funded so they can get it out to more people. And then you will get yours and be able to kind of team the crazy around keeping all the digital things in your house. It's does say that it actually fits, you know, we'll charge up to 12 USB devices. It can fit four laptops. It's designed to four laptops, 15 to 17 inches there's space for iPods, tablets, mobile phones, gaming controllers, TV, remote, basically, it's everything you need that needs to be charged, but also put away. So you don't have like this massive, like pile of charging stuff over in the corner type thing. Okay. Grab it while it's at a mega discount and tame, the crazy of parenting in the digital world. Okay. Thanks for listening. I will chat with you. Yeah.

Speaker 2: (17:25)
Thanks for tuning in being that mom isn't easy, but together we can be that mom's strong. Don't forget to leave a review, connect on social and join Dolly's free community till next time.