Are you worried about your child’s gaming habits? Do you think they’re playing too much and/or they might be addicted? Do you think that video games have a negative impact on your child?
Video Game addiction is a disorder characterised by:
Excessive game play and is a disturbance to normal life.
People that are addicted struggle to think about activities other than playing games.
This can have a huge impact in your child’s education.
People that are addicted tend to avoid friends and family, skip meals and lie about the time spent playing video games.
If you see your child doing any of these things, it is an indicator that something is wrong. Make sure to keep watch over your child and most importantly, ask them about it. If you are sure that your child is addicted to video games, these are some of the things you can do:
Try to find activities outside of video games that you and your child can participate in. You can go cycling with your child once or twice a week, play sports with them, sign them up for a club like karate or boxing.
Whatever you do, make it a routine and make sure they stick to it. This will make them not think about their ‘urge’ to play a game.
In the Guardian, there has been an article about a mother of a child suffering from games addiction. Her son went from being socially active to a child that would spend days in his own room and being afraid to speak or meet people. According to her, this has been due to her son having a gaming disorder. She would later find that her on would spend all day playing video games and she said that the most of their arguing was about her telling him to stop playing video games. This is an example when this is a problem. When your child’s life is turned upside down because of their gaming addiction. Another extreme example would be a boy called Callum that used go to my secondary school. He would spend the entire summer holiday intensively gaming. He would not change from his dressing gown for the duration of the entire summer holiday. He would skip meals and would stay in his room all day long playing video games. These are examples of extreme scenarios were the addiction has taken over and your child cannot think about anything else. Ideally, you should try to avoid this stage, take actions quickly before the addiction escalates. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, there are several things that you can do to make your child play less video games and invest their time better.
In conclusion, if your child is addicted to video games you can make them do different things in order to take their mind off video games. Involve yourself with your child’s activities and encourage activities outside of Video Games.
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