Dealing With Teen Gaming Addiction

[BGH122]

Best comment so far and will be hard to best. Not like the usual stuff you find around a comment´s section. It realy has only one shortcoming: Could you please name the studies you are talking about so everyone interested here can look them up?

Thanks! I would have done so at the time, but whenever I do I always get responses like "lol this isent a uneversety essy lolololol" so I didn't bother. I'll start doing that again in future. If I can actually find my psych textbook (which has mysteriously gone missing) I'll quote those studies for you.

It is around that time (sometimes earlier sometimes a bit later I am generalizing here but you all surely get the idea about what time in your life I am talking about) that parents have to consider the goals and decisions of their children seriously as those of an autonomous person who decides for him- or herself. Parents have to respect those decisions (not agree with them necesserily) because their child has now responsibility and acountability over his or her own actions.

Precisely. Parents should, of course, attempt to help guide their child through life, but this guidance should be supportive of the child's basic decisions and life goals. Back when I took my brief foray into studying medicine (I quit almost instantly because it was so incredibly boring), I was amazed by how many people were only studying medicine because their parents were forcing them to. These students were seriously depressed and burnt out and yet kept going at it because they felt they had no choice but to do so. If you are forcing your child to pursue a career path that will lead to chronic stress then you are literally killing your child (Kuper et al (2002a) found in their meta-analysis of 9 studies in which samples were initially healthy that high stress was linked to a moderate to strong increase in coronary heart disease prevalence in two thirds of the studies analysed).

Low parental support is linked to self-esteem issues (Felson (1989) showed that high parental support, defined as behaviour that "makes the child feel basically accepted and approved of as a person", was positively linked to high self-esteem) which in turn is linked to low assertiveness (Kurosawa (1993) found that those with higher self-esteem showed higher independence and were less susceptible to group influence) which in turn is linked to low career success (White (1993) showed that, using the Adult Self Expression Scale and the Mach V Scale, high assertiveness was linked with higher success at mock screening interviews for promotions and job applications).

In short, it boils down to this: If you continue make your child feel like your respect for him/her is conditional then you are being a bad parent and are fostering negative traits in your child.

 

[omega 616]

I would say one of two things to him...

1) what do you want to be when you grow up? .... Well, playing runescape won't help you do that.

2) beat the kid to a bloody pulp then say do you want to do homework

Level with the kid, explain that he is not going to want to live forever with the folks, he will want to own a car, buy his own stuff but he can't do that without a job and you can't get a job with no qualifications.

Hell, I would even show him what bills I had to pay (if this was my kid) just to show how expensive it is to just live by yourself

Kids can be mature and realize things when they need to.

No use constantly saying "do your homework", he doesn't understand why that needs to be done as there are no immediate effects to doing well in school, which is what kids like.

(to be honest I still don't see the point in home work, I go to school to learn. Learning should remain in school and not be brought home!)

 

[spartan231490]

snip

Video games aren't a god damn addiction, they're an entertainment medium. If you want your kid to play fewer video games, give him something more entertaining to do. Find him/her a girl/boyfriend. Have him sign up for sports. there is no greater intervention needed than that. Hell, why not just let him play video games. heaven forbid the poor kid could be entertained in his free time.

Well, sorry to burst your bubble, but this is bull. I don't think anyone is saying that video games are themselves, addictive, you're correct in saying that they are inherently entertaining diversions. But you can become addicted to them, there's no chemical dependance, but the need remains the same (if you want to prove me wrong, then you go totally without video games for a month). I have seen people (myself included) go a process remarkably similar to withdrawal when deprived of video games for an extended period of time.

And the problem isn't that he's being entertained in his free time, it's that he's being entertained ALL the time.

I have gone without video games for a month. Close to two as a matter of fact. I didn't go into withdrawal, I found other ways to entertain myself. Like reading, watching tv, coming on the escapist far more times a day than I have any reason to. Watching anime. It wasn't even hard. And I have one hell of an addictive personality. My xbox hasn't played anything over than a movie in 2 solid months, and I had maybe 4 or 5 gaming sessions in the entire 2 months before that. I always play a very small amount of video games in the summer. My friend Lee hasn't played video games in 2 months either. He also hasn't suffered any withdrawal symptoms.

 

[mkline]

Thanks to all of you who shared your thoughts on this piece--I read all the comments and find them fascinating, even if you take issue with what I have said. I see that some of you found the idea of medicine repulsive. I don't think I was suggesting that meds are the first choice in a situation like this or even the best choice. I think I brought them up in the context of something that could be considered in an intensive outpatient treatment program and I noted that meds, like counseling, tend not to be helpful if the person is not motivated to take or try them.

When someone ends up in a totally entrenched situation like this and really can't control themselves, you have to consider extraordinary measures sometimes. To me, removing someone from their family is even more extraordinary than meds. Some habitual gamers actually find school dull and difficult to focus on, so ADD meds can help. Others may be depressed or anxious and use gaming to escape how bad that feels. Medication can also help with this. I never suggest meds as the first solution to any of these problems, but after trying other things, I have seen them to be useful for some people. I'm a psychologist, not a psychiatrist, I don't prescribe medications and prefer to avoid recommending them unless absolutely necessary.

 

[Jfswift]

There's a lot of factors going in here. I think American schools anyway are a mess and need to be overhauled. The environment wasn't conductive to learning when I went through and it isn't any better now. Also, this person needs to put the man/woman pants on and take charge. Dont let that kid leave the house. Do they not understand the concept of grounding a kid?

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Same as any other addiction, right?

People start calling the addiction on you, you rebuff them in denial, they stage an intervention, you admit that you have a problem and through sheer force of will and moral support you go cold turkey for as long as it takes. And then, ideally, you go on a quest to fill that big void within with more constructive things than a sickly addiction. Care for your emotional and social needs rather than covering them up. Notice all of this becomes so much easier when you have people backing you up...