Out of my parenting depth - Fortnite and friendships

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I have 8 year old twins and we live in the Middle East. They go to a British school and we live in a wonderful community where the kids (not all from his school) play outside all the time and knock on each others' doors (like in the olden days!) or jump in the swimming pool together. They are growing up in quite an innocent and old-fashioned way and it's one of the reasons we don't want to move back to the UK yet.

My boy twin has had a Nintendo Switch since his 7th birthday, and used to enjoy playing Minecraft with his friends and he was always really popular at school; he's really easy going and makes friends everywhere we go!

We have increasingly had issues with him getting left out, and many of his old friendships have fallen away at school in the last few months, and he's been telling me it's because they're all playing Fortnite instead of Minecraft after school now.

He has got maybe two friends at school left now who we regularly have over for play dates which are reciprocated, but I still feel sad that the majority of the boys at school totally ignore him now (having witnessed it myself on a couple of occasions). There are 5 classes in his year and he literally has two friends.

He's never asked to play Fortnite, but I have offered to let him a few times over the last few months, and he says he's not actually interested. I'm quite glad really, as the addictive and chat elements of it concern me (rather than the cartoon violence) and we have enough trouble with him getting grumpy over the Switch anyway.

He's just come home from a party with a small group of boys, some of whom he used to be very close friends with, and he's absolutely sobbing because he said they all ignored him the whole time. He burst into tears the minute I went to get him and he hasn't stopped since. It was at a trampoline park, so nothing to do with Fortnite, but he was actually a bit worried before he went that it would be "Fortnite themed" and apparently that's all the boys played there and talked about at the meal after.

I don't really know how to handle it. I suppose I am not opposed completely to gaming, but I don't want him on games every day after school. I feel like all the kids at school are obsessed and play it all the time, and he's being excluded because he doesn't. He gets an hour a day on his Nintendo Switch (2 hours at weekends), but to be honest I've sometimes regretted buying him the damn thing due to the arguments and grumpiness it causes. I'm reluctant to encourage anything else and I'd rather he was outside being physical, but it seems like I am swimming against the tide.

How do I handle this? Do I just leave things as they are, or do I need to intervene somehow?

(I should also add that we have had similar issues with his twin sister, except all her girl friends are being allowed to use TikTok and they all practice TikTok dances at school, which is why she is being left out).

Help them make plans that are age appropriate and that bowing down to peer pressure isn't your choice of parenting... And mean it. Last year my dd dumped her friends when they began bullying her for not drinking alcohol.. The girls were all 12 /13!! Dd knows my stance on underage drinking and it became her moral code also!! Your dc need you to make the decision on their behalf.. Plenty to do at 7 apart from fortnite!! And Tiktok!!

God Tiktok for 8 year olds?!

Not any particular advice as my son is six and his year isn’t (yet) all about switches and games. Are there any of his old best friends you can encourage him to reconnect with and maybe take them out on a special trip like to the cinema or something to avoid the lack of fortnite options at home? What about activities outside of school where he can make new friends eg Cubs? Have the community children stopped calling for him to go to the pool etc?

Ps I was a British expatriate child growing up in the Middle East (few decades ago tho!), remember the lovely communities and freedom very well.

Your poor kid, that sounds heartbreaking. What horrible kids.

What horrible children. Can you speak to the school about the exclusion? Honestly i have both Fortnite and Tik Tok and Fortnite is by far the lesser of two evils (my kids play it a lot).

To put your mind at rest - it’s quite easy to set Fortnite up so kids can only converse with added friends and not strangers. Of course this is moot point if your son isn’t interested.

Thanks for the lovely and thoughtful replies. I don’t really know whether to speak to school or not - do you think I should? They’re not very proactive about stuff like this - I’ve noticed a form deposited in our parent website thing about internet safety, but nobody has mentioned it or asked us to sign it.

I’ve been generally quite disappointed with a lot of the attitudes to online safety over here; eg even at age 6 he was asked to bring an iPad to a sleepover! I wasn’t really very happy with the idea of them having unfettered internet access all night and he doesn’t have one of his own anyway.

I’m not sure whether to raise his friendship problems with the parents in his class. I’d quite like to get the other side of the story, eg has he been doing anything that’s upset the other kids or have they found him hard to get on with? But I don’t want to make life even harder for him.

I am definitely going to try and help him make more friends out of school. He goes to football, but it’s not really the sort of thing that’s leading to friendships. Cubs seems to have died a death since Covid killed off the meetings, unfortunately. He’s interested in starting go karting, which might be good - I think a really immersive hobby could help a lot, especially if he finds his niche (which he hasn’t so far - he’s dabbled in lots of things but never stuck with them).

I don’t know if things might be better in England - I’m seriously considering taking him back for secondary school (I’d like him to try for grammars) and maybe even before then. But it might be out of the frying pan into the fire!

We had a very Big Chat this evening about how the internet can be a dangerous, but also very useful and good place - a bit like cars. I explained my worries but also said that if there was stuff they wanted to do online, I would help them find a way to do it safely and there would be ways we could find to do things that they wanted to do to avoid being left out at school. But he was still pretty adamant that he finds all the Fortnite chat boring and isn’t interested in getting involved. I said that one or two good friends were infinitely better than lots of fickle friends.

It does break my heart that he’s struggling though. I really struggled through secondary, but my primary school time was idyllic and we all seemed to just get on really well. I wish my two could have the same experience.

If you want to track the fortnite playtime of your kids, check out playtimetracker.com