Return Of The iPad Kid

Many of us grew up playing games on our iPads on road trips or while waiting in lines. This was just the beginning of the “iPad kid” phenomenon and it has only grown more intensely. We seem to have moved on from playing games to pass time in the car to playing games to pass time at school.

Now We Can All Be Gamers

There are so many kinds of games tailored to specific interests. Some people enjoy games that replicate video games like Call of Duty or Clash of Clans, while others are more into a Y8 replica like Dress To Impress and Papas Pizzeria. With a wide variety of gaming options come all the different platforms these games are played on. 

A lot of this trend of going back to playing games to pass time began in 2022 with the start of Wordle in the New York Times Games. The prime time of wordle was when you and your friends would go up to each other and ask if you got the wordle and if you hadn’t gotten it yet, it would be game on until you did. The real OG gamers were playing 2048 on their computers in high school, merging all the numbers together until they reached the seemingly impossible 2048. 

Unity Of The Overstimulated 

To pass the time, social media was the go-to outlet for a lot of people, but the shift to gaming has a lot to do with how people have shorter attention spans. Soley watching movies and shows has become a more difficult task because of TikTok and Instagram reels which are a big stream of shorter videos ready to stimulate us differently. 

Social media and the constant and endless scroll can get repetitive and boring at times. Many of us who have lost our attention span to the constant social media scroll, are surprisingly able to spend hours playing games on their phones, computers and iPads. This could be because social media is consistently more negative information and we’re getting drained. 

Reconnecting With Our Younger Self 

Regardless of which games you play today, they are a small representation of what you played when you were younger to pass the time. These games have become such an important aspect of our daily pass times. We have become accustomed to having easy access to our favorite games which gives us a quick dopamine fix. Uber and Lyft have installed tablets to have riders play games while in the backseat. This seems like a reminder of who we were as kids playing games in car rides with our parents.

Everything we do while we play games we do it as a way to connect with our inner child. You could be in class, or at the library and will see phone and computer screens open to all kinds of games. There’s something so nostalgic about watching screens be flooded with cartoons and pixilated characters. The game you play says a lot about who you are and who you were growing up.

Let us know what your favorite game is on Instagram @VALLEYmag!

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