Comments on: What My Video Game Obsessed Child Taught Me

By: gloria

gloria — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 20:38:32 +0000

My eleven year old son is obsessed with video games. He seems to have his Nintendo DS Lite attached to his arm. I thought it would be a great Christmas present for him because it was portable, but I didn’t know how quickly my son would become addicted to it. Recently, I started to regulate how long he spent on his game everyday. His tears and arguments came flying at me. Our household is struggling with this on a daily basis.

By: Anup

Anup — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 17:58:17 +0000

I am 14 yrs old .i live in india. i am fat. unsucsesful at school and adicted to internet and gaming please help me remove the unsucsesfulness addiction from my life

my parent’s cat see that & if they can they are not doing anything about it i ha8 them for that they are so ignorent i know that because i can con them into doing/buying me anything like i bought a ps3 & a x360 and they did not even know about it & i bought a new pc by telling them that the old pc was not workin & cannot be fixed …… & i did not see any sort postives in me .. all i see is the negetives idk what to do? or who to ask? . i just started playing batminton & uninstalled all the games that i had & this is the good part no one force me to do that i made that decision on my own se what i have to do i have to take desisions on my own or my life is scrued !!

By: kalan

kalan — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 23:53:03 +0000

Aloha Steve,

Making the hard decisions is a parents job. My 13 year old hates me today because I won’t let him ride on the streets piggy back on his 14 year old friends new motor bike, go figure?

I am a serious gamer, have beta tested quite a few over the years, and sometimes I wish My Dad or Mom said enough already, the new boss will still be around tomorrow, take a frigging shower already, LOL!

By: Drakoniis

Drakoniis — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 07:07:53 +0000

I understand how he feels, as I was quite addicted to games when I was younger. However, I do not feel that simply putting away the Playstation was necessarily the best decision. I myself play video games for hours on end (for the Summer I am a game tester for Nintendo of America), and in spite of it I lead a relatively normal life. Although this may because I am older and somewhat immune to the adverse effects, I feel it has more to do with my other pursuits far outweighing my love of playing games. When I was 7 or 8, I started writing pen and paper games. When I was 9, I took it a step further and began programming them. I now am taking an intensive course at the DigiPen Institute of Technology covering Math, Physics, Computer Science, Mythology, and Game Design.

If your son truly loves games, perhaps you should encourage him to learn about what goes into their creation and implementation. Regardless of whether he ends up doing something games-related, if it would spark an interest in the sciences and disciplines involved, it would be beneficial to his education. Furthermore, if he is motivated to pursue any of these sciences, he will gain discipline through his learning.

By: Sknight

Sknight — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 12:51:04 +0000

i don’t really get it. i myself don’t understand how people get addicted to games myself. I am a gamer and all the people i know will admit it but they will certainly tell you I am not addicted to games because its after all just that a game. it can be as you did turned off and removed by yourself. I understand why a friend of mine is addicted kind of. he was an avid drug user and has no life so the video games are the only thing he is good at now so it takes the place of drugs and his lousy life. But my opinion is this on games recreational use only when they are taken serious or used for things more than entertainment you need to totally stop all together. but i applaud you most parents now a days i seem to find would just let their kid keep on playing to avoid a tantrum and a fight.

By: Armand

Armand — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 06:12:26 +0000

The negative effects may outweight the possitive ones, but they can be “cured” (the negative ones). The positive effects are definately worth the short period of “desintoxication”, because they are lasting, and they’re valuable.

By: SpiKe

SpiKe — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 09:37:55 +0000

Very interesting post. Have you given much thought about what age/set of circumstances where you would consider giving him the choice over his gaming time?

By: Cory

Cory — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 06:21:15 +0000

Haha dave :)

I think that it is true to a point. I am a younger person who was/is a gamer. I used to play them for 5+ hours a day and when I wasn’t playing them, I was thinking about them. Now, my parents regulated it a little bit but not much. Since then I have realized that I want to have more in my life than some people I don’t REALLY know in some other state.

There are a lot of good things that come from video games, but they don’t need to be played in excess. While helping your child to understand that is important, the person playing the games really needs to decide for themselves that they want to be doing something else.

I still play games and love ‘em, but I’m no longer addicted and I have many other interests, including the Navy.

By: Pat

Pat — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 00:45:53 +0000

Thanks for sharing your observations regarding the effects of video games. Although negative results are more prevailing than positive ones, I still think that it’s worth trying. It can’t be negative all the time.

By: dave

dave — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 22:32:35 +0000

wait till you have to cut off his porn …