If you have children of primary school age and you own a tablet or laptop, it's a safe bet that a) you've encountered computer game Minecraft; b) you've had arguments with your offspring about how much time they spend playing it; and c) you treat their claims for its educational benefits with extreme scepticism.
Or is that just me? No it isn't, as the ever-reliable Jolyon Jenkins demonstrated in Minecraft: More Than A Game (BBC Radio 4, Monday, 11am). Note the lack of question mark in the title.
For a snapshot of a typical young Minecraft user, Jenkins headed to a Somerset primary school to speak to a few. Did they think they were addicted? Yes. Did they think about Minecraft when they weren't playing it? Yes. Jenkins even interviewed his own son, 13-year-old Joe, who took him on a tour of his own online Minecraft world and introduced him to terms like "griefing" (it's when you trash someone else's online creation).
He also met women like mother-of-three Gabby. "For my children it has become a way of life," she said. "When my eldest isn't playing it, he's thinking about it or talking about it. It's hard to manage because when they come off it they're usually pretty agitated." Another mum with Minecraft-obsessed kids had a similar story. "Their behaviour becomes... horrible, to be honest," she said.
When it gets bad - and clearly it can get bad - desperate parents might call someone like psychiatrist Dr Richard Graham. He runs a technology addiction unit at a private hospital in London and, yes, he does treat Minecraft-addicted children. He worries about the effect on brain development, fine motor skills, even eye movement.
But there are two sides to every story. Jenkins also met those on Minecraft's evangelical wing - educationalist Derek Robertson of Dundee University, for example, and Amanda Osborne, whose autistic son has to be home schooled and for whom Minecraft has proved a real benefit.
"It keeps him calm," she said. "It keeps him in a place where he's happy. He can't socialise in real life, but he can socialise in the game. So he's talking to other children, he's learning to communicate properly and how to act around people." She has now started her own server specifically for children with autistic spectrum disorders to play Minecraft safely. No "griefing" there at least, then.
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