Games

What Kids Buy and Play on Steam

Steam is where most computer gaming happens, and it's a store, a chat app and a social network all at the same time, so the parts worth checking usually aren't the ones you'd expect.

It's a social network as much as a store

Steam has friend lists, profile comments, group chats and direct messages, so your kid can get a message from somebody they played one match with. Most of us thought hard about which games to allow and never thought about the messaging running underneath all of them.

Community content doesn't get checked like games do

Next to the official games there's stuff players made themselves, like mods and community pages, and none of that goes through the same checks. A game that's completely fine for a twelve year old can be sitting right next to community stuff that isn't.

What Steam Families actually does

Steam Families lets you decide whether your kid's account can get into the store, the community pages and friends chat, while the games you picked still work. It's really useful, and almost nobody sets it up, mostly because it's buried a couple of menus deep.

The Sunday Script

Get one script every Sunday

The words for one hard conversation, in your inbox every Sunday, and a short note once a month. You can stop anytime.