Why are changes showing in Visual Studio Code for files such as storage.json, state.vscdb, and data_1?

My son is using Visual Studio Code for a Udemy JavaScript Course, and he is encountering a problem I have never had when I've used VS Code. He keeps getting changes listed in Source Control for files such as storage.json (~/.config/Code), the-real-index (~/.config/Code/Cache/index-dir), data_1 (~/.config/Code/GPUCache), and state.vscdb (~/.config/Code/User/globalStorage). There have been others as well, including Git logs.

I created a .gitignore file and tried the following entries:

/config/.config~/.config

I also ran the following after each .gitignore edit:

git rm -r --cached

I then re-added, committed and pushed files. We are still getting changes popping up in Source Control for files in the ~/.config/ chain. How do we stop this?

EDIT: If it matters, we are running Visual Studio Code on a Chromebook using the Linux Beta that the Chromebook offers.