As a gaming parent(of three gaming kids)I can honestly say that very little of what he said rings any bells with me-and I think the strength of reaction to stopping anyone doing something they enjoy suddenly depends entirely on that individual.
My eldest kid is a straight A student of fiften years of age, she suffers with ADHD and as long as we never allowed her to game just before bed she's never had any issues with it. She's also happily left gaming to do other activities-sports, youth clubs, drama etc all her life and has had much more positives from games in her .life and education.
I'd say my two boys*(nine and twelve) have gained even more from gaming because we don't just l;et them play ALL the time and to be frank they DO NOT want to anyway. Our two both play football and cricket while the eldest has swimming club and the youngest rugby and hockey on top of their main sports. Now, most drug addicts I know let most areas of their lives take second place to their addiction-this has never been the case in our home.
If our youngest is tired then, sure, you'd get a big moan from taking the controller from him but no more than you would by calling him in prematurely from playing out or doing anything he likes and it's more to do with his age and him not being as wise and understanding about social situations and basically accepting we have to say "no" to ourselves at times. Behaving like a junkie deprived of a fix, though? Seriously, this guy's so wide of the mark it's untrue.
Gaming has helped my kids socially with MP online gaming giving them a grounding in that kind of thing and what's acceptable and what isn't as well as allowing them, in certain games, too develop teamwork skills as well-LBP does this while showing them how physics and construction and simple engineering works as well. I've always played a lot of (J)RPGs with my boys too and this has, I'm certain, helped them become great readers well ahead of the curve in school-another thing it helps with is maths(stats etc)and comprehension and problem solving and also working things out by their context. Overall that there's the usual hand/eye coordination stuff and the way it's gopt them interested in actual histories after playing certain games too.
I'm not saying my daughter wouldn't be straight A's without gaming or that my boss would be doing less well either but it' my opinion that a sensible approach to gaming has made a lot of areas of learning more easily approachable for them and made the general task of applying schoolbook know how to actual situations a LOT easier and better for them. I doubt a line of charlie befre school would do the same-apart from a half hour confidence boost perhaps?
I speak from a position of great knowledge about drug abuse as a former user with a parent who now works in rehabilitation and fail to see any similarities at all. I HAVE a very addictive personality myself, am Bipolar and given to impulse but even with my gaming I've sense nothing like this guy is scaremongering and it strikes me he may be the one with an addiction issue-to the little bits of fame he gets when he absurdly soundbites about the untested evils of gaming as a "drug. Tool.
