Your favorite chess website says: Stop interrupting class with chess

Kids are always carrying a cell phone to school. It’s a distraction from pesky lectures, a way to talk to friends — and these days, an unstoppable vessel of playing online chess. The obsession with chess among teens has been noticed by high school teachers, who have even lamented the trend. To that end, Chess.com, a popular site where millions of people play online chess, has released a PSA on YouTube titled “Chess Is Taking Over Schools,” meant to discourage teens from illicitly playing chess during classtime.

This PSA is amazing! It’s giving “don’t smoke cigarettes.” It’s giving “don’t do the marijuanas, kids,” like D.A.R.E. campaigns that kicked off in the 1980s — and largely failed on a national (and personal, lol) scale. Chess is the real culprit this time. It’s the most strategic of all strategy games. The brain-teaser forbidden. I don’t know whether this PSA will succeed, but I commend Chess.com for trying. “This is terrible I remember when kids just did drugs,” one YouTube commenter wrote.

It is very funny, unlike past campaigns that told students to refrain from engaging in school-time prohibited activities.

“Recently, more kids have been playing chess than ever at school, but sadly we’ve learned that they may not always be playing chess at the most appropriate times,” says the PSA’s voiceover, accompanied by dramatic B-roll of kids at school playing chess on their iMacs, laptops, and phones. “Chess should never come between you taking your studies seriously, and cooperating with your fellow students and teachers.”

Image: YouTube/Chess.com

There is also a lot of cute footage showing teens rolling their heads while they put away their cell phones. It also features an adult dressed up as a gigantic, green chess board, showing how distracting the game can be. He does this by pushing his face against windows and doors in classrooms. It looks like he is enjoying a normal game of chess.

Don’t play chess on your phone, or you may grow into an adult who LARPs as a chess piece. Or maybe that’s a goal? Each to their own. Plus, if you’re talented enough, you might even become an adult who is — mostly jokingly — accused of using anal beads to cheat at chess!