The colonists you are given all have character traits and there is a social aspect of the game. Colonists can start relationships, start families, break up, start social fights and end up in infirmarry… Sometimes, family members of your colonists come to your colony as raiders. All these stories forming during gameplay is the real strength of the game for me.

For example, there was this one colonist woman in one of my playthroughs. She was the tough, soldier type. She started one or two relationships in the colony but ended them. Then she tried to go back to them. It started creating some complicated feelings among the colony so I sent her to scavenge a nearby abandoned base.

Before she can leave, a band of raiders popped in. One of the raiders was her teenage son! So I start getting so invested in saving the son and bringing him back to the colony. I’m not that skilled in combat or tactics so I save the game multiple times until a trap injures the boy so his mom can snatch him without fighting. She takes him into one of the intact rooms in the ruin and patches up his wound, shares her food. (She takes him prisoner and you can keep talking to prisoners and convert them into your colonists. )

Here is a scene where raiders running around outside, raiding. And a mother and son, hunkered down in a room, trying to reconnect.

While the boy is recovering in the impromptu prison room, she gets out and shoots the raiders one by one. Rest of the raiders leave the map after losing enough members.

Mother and son talk about family, son talks about some childhood memories. Eventually, he is no longer a prisoner but a newly recruited member of the colony. Woman comes back with her son. Son turns out to be a psychopath but that’s ok. At the Rim, we love psychopaths, they do gruesome task of disposing raider corpses, for example, without getting emotional strain.

Mother stopped creating drama in the colony after son joined.

…

If you read people’s stories in the steam comments (there are a lot of war crime simulator stories, too, be warned) you may get why it’s so addictive.

And modpacks…all the modpacks! All of them turn the game into a whole new game.

I was thinking of Stardew Valley and Rimworld while reading your post, sure enough SDW was mentioned at the end :D

Sorry for adding comment after comment, I’ve been in a position to talk to teenagers and experienced when they tune you out, when they’re interested in what you have to say.

I find it works best if you start with the positive. As adults, we should challenge ourselves to find the positive at times, since we tend to slide into correction mode without realizing.

Sometimes, we’ll start with positive and then talk about the part that’s problematic and why. Sometimes, we should just mention the positives, good examples, well thought out arguments, a good word choice etc. In fact, noticing and mentioning good examples will be the real game changers.

And be genuine, I cannot state the importance of this at all. Consider what your friend would think of the tone you’re about to use. If your friends would think you’re trying to preach, your kid will feel the same.

Keeping the tone casual and at their level should work better. If it sounds like an exam question or job interview, kids would find it difficult to engage. It’s a learning process for adults, too.

Thinking about our own childhood and how we would react to the critical thinking questions should help. Instead of a pop quiz sounding questions, we would prefer the adults talking to us to be genuine and not trying to lecture us, or test us.

You wouldn’t talk to your friend in a way “what’s the streamer’s motivations?” but you’d make a conversation out of it. “I was there with them right until they said this…” And you’d state your reasoning. Think of it talking to your friend, but keep it 12 yo. level.

Another option, how about just reacting to it at the moment when you hear something really jarring.

“Gosh, what a harsh thing to say/ harsh way to put it.”

“They’re dismissing this whole side of the story, that’s not a fair judgement at all”

“Behaving like the way they’re describing is the easiest way to lose friends. Friendships built upon trust and respecting the lines/boundaries of a person. Who wants a friend who does (breach of boundary example)”

"Can you believe this person is making such a big statement without a single proof? "

Or maybe something like “Language is such a funny thing. Did you notice they use X word to describe group A, but then use Y word while talking about group B. The media does that all the time, too. If you notice, you’ll find some very interesting extra stories they’re conveying” .

Bit of a gameplay, making the kids notice neutral words, judgement words.This may come back to bite the adult in the back when it turns on you, but hey, we want kids to be able to point out when we miss the spot, too.

That’s why I mentioned the “organically coming up in conversation” part. Keeping the didactic tone out of the conversation, finding a genuine interest in the topic ourselves usually important.

“I like how [internet personality] put it but I can’t help but wish they also considered this aspect.”

“I used to think like that at one point, but then I’ve come to know how it really worked in real life and that changed my view”

“Interesting point [the internet personality] made, though just last week I’ve heard of this news/story/experience of (a friend, relative, random stranger), that made me think that is only one side of the coin” etc…

I find starting a conversation with the kid when the opportunity presents itself organically and listen to what they think about the content / subject matter and bringing different perspectives to the subject can teach them critically thinking about what they’re hearing.

The same goes for young adult books with questionable relationship examples. Making it a conversation, hearing what they think about certain aspects and bringing different perspectives to the subject works better than taking a stance against something they love.

We all love flawed stuff, we love them while (hopefully) separating wrongs from rights in our minds because we have some degree of critical thinking. We just need to teach/guide the kids the same way. It’s ok to like something while still being able to point out the wrongs of that thing.