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I Can’t Play Fortnite Because I Know I’m Being Destroyed By 10-Year-Olds

The case for being supportive of your kids’ gaming habit

Ryan Fan
6 min readAug 16, 2022
Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash

My fiancee and I visited my soon-to-be brother-in-law en route to vacation. We spent a good amount of time with his kids. As a teacher, I’m usually not bad at bonding with kids and connecting with them, and I chatted with the 9-year-old and 10-year-old boys about their favorite game.

It was Fortnite, the most popular game in the world in 2021. The basic premise of Fortnite is like the Hunger Games — you are on an island with 100 other people, and you have to survive, build structures to defend yourself, kill others, and be the last man standing.

I offered to play Fortnite with them. There was an option to be on a team, and the kids were ecstatic to play Fortnite with their soon-to-be uncle.

However, the first game in, it was clear I was a huge liability. I died very quickly. I didn’t know how to build. So I quickly handed off the controller to one of the two brothers and observed them playing.

Their coordination and reaction skills were on a level I’d never seen before. They could quickly dodge, evade, and shoot all within a one-second span. I watched the two obliterate the opposition and kill almost one-fifth of the opponents…

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Ryan Fan
Ryan Fan

Written by Ryan Fan

Believer, Baltimore City IEP Chair, and 2:35 marathon runner. Diehard fan of “The Wire.”

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