Saturation
LE
Is that why your vision is impaired? Can you not see your keyboard properly?
No, he is having trouble unlacing the boxing gloves that his mother made him wear.
Is that why your vision is impaired? Can you not see your keyboard properly?
Games consoles nowadays have every parental control you could possibly want. You can set the hours they can be used to largely whatever you require. If you've left your kid on a game long enough for them to become addicted, you have your parenting skills solely to blame.
I spent my teenages yrs, alone, furiously waggling my joystick in a darkened rm....
I just missed out on the explosion of computer games in the mid-1980s. I played Gorf and Space Invaders in the local cafe during school lunch break, but at the time me and my friends were more worried about nuclear annihilation by the Soviets or getting 'the AIDS' off a toilet seat which might have been used by a 'bender'. I didn't realise at the time how lucky we were because it looks like 'Gaming Disorder' is the next ailment that the taxpayer is being asked to fund via the NHS. Last week the World Health Organisation (WHO) classified it as a mental health condition and a London hospital is set to launch a centre to treat the condition.
Naturally enough it's being launched by a fragrant someone called Henrietta Bowden-Jones, who says “Gaming disorder is finally getting the attention it deserves. The distress and harm it can cause is extreme and I feel a moral duty on behalf of the NHS to provide the evidence based treatment these young people and their families need.”
The previous week there was story in numerous papers about a nine year old girl who wet herself rather than take a break from playing the game Fortnite.
Apparently much of this addiction is being suffered by children and this leads me to ask why aren't the parents intervening in their kids' activities to make sure it's not having a negative effect on their lives, Are they incapable or just don't care?
The other thing I note that when the parents of these kids appear in the media it always seems to be the Mum and not the Dad that speaks up. The role of the father seems to disappear from the conversation on these issues.
My gut feeling is that if there is such a thing as Gaming Disorder it is a symptom of a wider malaise that has been brought about by poor parenting and family breakdown.
The real question, in my view, is why are the kids becoming addicted to something in the first place. If they're becoming addicted to video games as kids, then it's logical to assume they'll be at risk of becoming addicted as adults, or even to other substances/activities - so it's worth tackling the problem when it first rears its head, rather than just sweeping it under the carpet.
Although I would question the usefulness of a specific diagnosis for video-game addiction, certainly, but I think there is clearly merit in treating the behaviour.
Video games can be highly addictive, and don't necessarily mean you're any more likely to become addicted to something else later on. Certain types of games are more likely to cause addiction than others, especially games with a persistant world that you log into, such as Warcraft, Eve Online, and all that. They require unbelievable amounts of time investment to get anywhere, and more yet to maintain it. It's seldom someone is addicted to video games, more that they're addicted to a particular game. As such games require you to interact with other people, it becomes more difficult to notice that you've not been out in 5 days as you're still talking to your mates and continually meeting new people.
If your family are quite happy for you to spend countless hours on these types of game with no intervention, a kid can very easily get sucked into the 'must keep unlocking the best stuff' mentality and thats when it becomes a problem. Parental settings that disable games at a certain time force the kid to do something else for a few hours and generally snaps them out of it.
Games consoles nowadays have every parental control you could possibly want. You can set the hours they can be used to largely whatever you require. If you've left your kid on a game long enough for them to become addicted, you have your parenting skills solely to blame.
Has anyone told the parents?
Cool. Does this mean I can get PC games on prescription now?
You can't set up the console without actively chinning them off. If they let a nine year old go plugging things into TVs, sockets and sit there creating email addresses the parents probably have some extra issues to address!
Or maybe the parents haven't a clue about technology and consider wee Jimmy a technical wizzkid so leave him to set it up not realising the repercussions.You can't set up the console without actively chinning them off. If they let a nine year old go plugging things into TVs, sockets and sit there creating email addresses the parents probably have some extra issues to address!