When a soccer game is just a game

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Is this really what David Beckham would do?

We can tell kids to eat healthy food and exercise, we can even set a good example by doing so ourselves. But what will truly motivate them is ... a hand-held video game! So seems to be the premise of an interactive soccer game from MatchMaster, which comes with the imprimatur of the David Beckham Academy.

A couple of the new games landed on my desk this week, with marketing material boldly announcing the introduction of ‘an interactive game that combines fun with fitness.’ Fitness? About time.

But ‘fitness,’ it turns out, is used in more of a theoretical sense. The hand-held game stresses the importance of training, eating right and rest by ... making it important for the virtual player. Great! The imaginary players in kids’ backpacks or pockets will be fit as a fiddle.

Your kids? Well, perhaps one more repeat of the ‘eat right and exercise’ mantra is just what they need. This time, they’ll take it to heart.

Want kids to get off the couch and figure out that moving around can be, I don’t know, kind of fun? That junk food might not enhance their performance? That practice makes them better? That they won’t play very well if they didn’t sleep well the night before? Sign them up for the real thing. Start with the American Youth Soccer Organization (honestly, it seems to be everywhere anyway) or your own rec league or school.

I’ve nothing against video games, but let’s not kid ourselves that they’ll make kids healthier.

-- Tami Dennis