Why Little Cards Become Teenagers' "Social Password"
After school, Beibei, a boy who just entered the first grade of elementary school, excitedly tucked his folder under his arm and hurried to the community, waiting for the children who came home from school one after another.
Every time a child came over, he smiled and asked, "Do you want to change it?" Then he opened the folder, and it was full of "Ultraman cards" in various shapes, some of which were three-dimensional. , some are transparent and shiny, some are colorful; there are various "levels", from "R" (English word Rare, referring to rare) to "SR" (English word Super Rare, referring to ultra-rare) "SSR ” (English word Superior Super Rare, referring to super rare) and so on.
Soon, many children joined him, and everyone talked about the newly released cards, and sometimes exchanged a "same level" card.
After the winter vacation, the children's lucky money has become abundant, and there are more types of cards in their hands.
Many parents have reported that cards have even become an essential tool for children to socialize.
"At first I thought it was just an ordinary toy, but I didn't expect that children are becoming more and more addicted to it. In addition to buying cards, they also have to engage in 'battles', which cost more and more." The third-grade student of Chaoyang District Primary School in Beijing Parents Liu Xi told reporters his distress.
How popular are Ultraman cards?
The reporter found that these cards are cultural derivatives of a well-known Japanese film and television drama, and the images of heroes and monsters in this film and television drama are printed on the cards, and their force values are marked.
On February 27, a company selling cards had just attacked the city and opened its second flagship store in North China in Zhengzhou.
On the forum, a "rare" card can be called for tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of yuan, and there are even "experts" who have produced teaching videos to teach parents and students to buy high-level cards through "algorithms".
Why does a card the size of a playing card capture the hearts of so many children?
Is there a solution to this game addiction?
How to get teenagers to have a good and healthy collecting hobby?
The reporter visited the groups who bought and collected cards.
Children: keep buying, keep repeating, keep exchanging, keep throwing away
Who is buying cards?
The reporter walked into a card flagship store, and the clerk introduced that there are well-known IP cards such as Naruto, Ye Luoli, My Little Pony, Harry Potter, etc., but the most popular is the Ultraman card.
The price of these cards ranges from a few dollars to thousands of dollars.
Parents report that the lower the price of the card, the less "heroes" are drawn, and almost all of them are "villains" such as monsters.
The clerk also said that the higher the price, the greater the level of heroes, the level of cards, and the number of rare cards.
"The best suit is the New Year's limited edition that year, and it will be out of print after we release it, so it is very collectible." The clerk Xiaolei told reporters, "Now the tens of thousands of cards on the market are all our limited editions. ."
At the same time, the limited edition adopts a membership-based sales model, and there are certain purchase thresholds.
The flagship store will issue purchase coupons to members, and purchase with the coupons.
The clerk said this was to ensure the "scarcity" of the cards.
Restricting purchases evokes the children's "buy is victory" concept; at the same time, these cards are reprinted in large numbers.
A box of cards has 30 packs of 8 cards, and most parents and children buy one box at a time.
Opening the package, the reporter found that the 240 cards were full of repeated characters.
Since they could not buy the desired cards individually, many children threw away some of the cards after opening the box on the spot, resulting in a great waste.
There are waste card recycling bins in the flagship store, which are dedicated to recycling new cards discarded by children.
The clerk assured that these discarded cards will not be repackaged for sale due to epidemic prevention and hygiene considerations.
Well, the fate of these duplicate cards is that they are thrown away as soon as they are sold.
This is also the main reason why many children exchange cards with each other.
Merchants have designed some probability algorithms, but it is difficult for primary and secondary school students to accurately calculate how to buy the right cards. They can only keep buying, repeating, exchanging, and discarding.
There is another reason why cards attract young people. The clerk Xiaolei told reporters that there are two types of cards: collectible and battle.
The collectible cards mainly show the "level" of the hero characters, while the battle type is from virtual to reality. Each box of battle cards is marked with the words "Heroes Showdown". After opening, there are two packs of cards and one Composed of "War Zone Map", the map is also densely printed with battle rules.
The clerk explained: "The basic principle is 'comparison with size', which is stronger than the skills of heroes." There are more than a dozen battle tables in the flagship store. The clerk told reporters that there will be teachers on-site teaching every week, and on-site battles will be organized every month. The children are very enthusiastic.
"Mostly boys, from the age of four or five to the teens, it's almost full."
In the flagship store, advertisements endorsed by celebrity families are scrolling. There are large beams of light on the walls to form "You can trust the light", as well as life-size models of heroes, which are very attractive to children.
Parents: From "no objection" to "concerned"
How many kids are addicted to cards?
The reporter randomly made a statistic when a certain elementary school was out of school, and the boys in a certain class in the third grade were more or less playing.
"No one doesn't play, it's just that the level of immersion is different." The follower teacher told reporters.
However, today's parents of primary and secondary school students, when they were primary and secondary school students, also collected cards of various sizes, including a "Water Margin Card" of a certain crisp noodles, a "Three Kingdoms Card" of a certain brand, and even some movie stars' cards. Peripheral cards.
They have also exchanged with each other, and they have also cherished and collected them carefully.
Therefore, when today's primary school students are addicted to cards, many parents have a "somewhat contradictory" mentality.
"I understand it in my heart, but I'm also a little worried. Back then, I bought a lot of plain noodles for the 'Water Margin' card, and racked my brains to collect a 'Song Jiang'. But today, when the child is tightly bound by the card At the time, I felt something was wrong. We were just trying to collect a whole set of cards. Today's children collect cards when they are young, and they will participate in battles when they are older. When they grow up, there will be activities such as cosplay (role-playing), such 'users' The stickiness makes me very worried about this," Li Yuanxia, a second-grade parent of a primary school in Haidian District, Beijing, told reporters.
Li Yuanxia's contradiction comes from two aspects. On the one hand, she is worried that the child is over-indulged, and on the other hand, she is worried that this is a "subculture" among the children, and it is their "communication password". Once "cut off", it may be detrimental to the child's mental health.
The reporter learned in the interview that Li Yuanxia's experience represents the mood of most parents.
Due to their own childhood experiences, at the beginning, parents' attitude towards their children's collection of cards was "no objection" or even "happy to see it happen", and only regarded cards as an ordinary toy or an ordinary collection.
Like children, they "dipped in" without doing in-depth research, and only woke up from a dream when they found that the child's "stickiness" was getting stronger and stronger.
Li Yuanxia introduced that some of the parents around her would cut up their children's cards and confiscate their children's cards in a fit of anger, but after their children got good grades in the test, they couldn't help buying their children's favorite cards as a reward.
"Every box of cards has the words 'reasonable consumption, do not indulge', but each of their rules accurately hits the hearts of children, whether it is social or combat attributes, they are so addicting, children How can we not be addicted?" Li Yuanxia told reporters.
Teacher: It should be sparse and not blocked
Guo Feng, a full-time psychological teacher at Qingdao Qiyuan School, told reporters that there are many reasons why children are addicted to card games.
"First of all, the targeted commercial sales behavior of merchants meets the psychological development needs of children, which makes them unable to guard against card games. Second, parents lack understanding and understanding of the 'media' content watched by their children or the game tools they use. Screening leads to blind 'entering the pit'. Thirdly, some parents do not pay attention to the high-quality companionship of their children in the early stage, and fail to establish a healthy parent-child relationship. Finally, when parents find that the adverse effects of card games on their children are difficult to control, they often Taking a 'one-size-fits-all' approach to 'abstain' from children can easily lead to parent-child conflict and children's rebellious psychology." Guo Feng said.
Li Xiao, the head teacher of a middle school in Beijing's Haidian District, also believes that there are many reasons for the popularity of this kind of card game.
"The parent-child relationship will affect whether a child is addicted to a certain game to a certain extent, but the addiction is the result of a combination of factors, and it has something to do with the children's age group, class and school atmosphere." Li Xiao tell reporters.
How to avoid card addiction, let children develop healthy hobbies, and have the ability to identify some bad hobbies?
Guo Feng believes: "From the early stage of children's growth, parents should pay attention to screening the content and toy games they watch. Data shows that children under the age of 5 like animation works with bright colors and simple and straightforward plots. Parents should Do a good job of screening, and avoid some simple and rough plots to become the children's early "spiritual food". At the same time, pay attention to the quality of the parent-child relationship. In the spiritual world, let them feel the company and attention of their parents. In addition, it is necessary to establish a sense of rules for children's consumption behavior. Some children's parents do not let them play cards, so they secretly let their grandparents buy cards. Parents It is possible to let every family member talk about their views on consumption through family meetings. In this way, over time, the children's concept will change, and a healthy consumption concept will also be established. For the repeated and wasteful part of the card rules Doubt arises. Of course, once parents find that there is an obvious conflict with their children’s concept of games, they must stop and repair them in time.
Li Xiao believes that in the process of dealing with "addiction or not", contradictions will inevitably arise. The principle of parents is to "deal with flexibility" rather than "rigidly deal with it".
"Parents should use cleverness, not brute force, in the process of educating and cultivating children, otherwise they will be hasty. With the increase of children's age and independence, parents will have more and more Powerlessness and frustration."
The reporter learned in the interview that both parents and teachers hope to set up a corresponding access system for such games in relevant laws and regulations.
Wang Jing, the legal counsel of a "Chaowan" company, told reporters that there are currently no more relevant regulations on market access other than purchasing the production copyrights of corresponding film and television works.
Some teachers suggested that they hope that such games can be implemented with reference to the relevant regulations for children in online games.
(Reporter Yao Xiaodan of this newspaper)