Assessing the parents role in a child's gaming addiction
/In our work with children and teens it is rare to encounter a young person who does not play video games. While the research varies on the percentages, a common estimate is that 90% of children play computer games while 10% of them are addicted. While many youth are able to effectively juggle the demands of school, family life, social life and technology, those who are unable to do so experience problems that often times lead to a variety of mental health issues. In this cases, it is important for the parents to become proactive in disrupting the formation of an addiction.
Internet computer games have an addictive dimension to them for which some young people are very vulnerable. Those children and teens impacted by gaming addiction often become depressed, their school work suffers, they drop other interests such as sports and the level of their social interaction decreases.
Experts suggest that video games fall into 3 motivational drives for teens:
Social: games include Minecraft and Farmville, where players can hang out with ‘friends’ and control their world.
Pleasure: games include Black Ops Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and World of Tanks; these games reward the player intermittently so they are motivated to keep playing to get the next pleasure hit. These games are often Massive Multi Player online games and are played against opponents all over the world.
Pain: games include World of Warcraft. They punish players who log off by threatening to take away any rewards or points that have been gamed so the players keep playing to secure their position and avoid loss.
How do parents know when their child needs help for a gaming addiction?
-Large amounts of time spent in Gaming: They spend more time on the computer than physically hanging out with their friends.
-Emotional Dependency on Gaming: The teen feels content when they’re online or playing games, but as soon as they have to stop, they become depressed, grouchy and irritable.
-Sleeping Problems: They go to bed very late and have trouble sleeping.
-Preoccupation with Gaming: They think about going online or playing when they are supposed to be focusing on other things, like doing school work or participating in other social activities.
Ideas for parents for helping a child overcome gaming addiction.
-Confront it: Help the child recognize they have a problem by engaging them in discussion about their struggles in school, in participation in social activities and lack of interest in other outside activities.
-Take Control: Manage their use of media and technology. You are the parent and you need to set the rules for the use of technology in your home. This may include limiting internet/computer time, taking away the use of hand held devices and rewarding good behavior and punishing bad behavior through technology privileges.
-Prioritize your child’s time: Computer games should be played in free time so help decide when free time is and what other commitments they might have (e.g. chores, homework, other activities).
-Enforce bed time rules: Train your child to go to bed at a reasonable hour. Often, someone addicted to computer games will stay up late. Get them to go to bed earlier each day, so instead of the early hours of the morning it is a reasonable time in the evening.
-Arrange recreational and social activities: Replace computer time with more productive activities. They can exercise, play sports, participate in community activities, read or do something else that stimulates and interests them.
-Encourage daily face to face interaction with peers: Encourage them to go out with their friends more. Provide opportunities for healthy peer interaction and activities ou
Teen Entitlement-Trade the smartphone for a cooking pot for the weekend!
/Some experts have labeled the youth of today as the "entitled generation". Many teens today have become accustomed to getting what they want immediately. Delaying gratification is the ability to resist the temptation for an immediate reward and wait for a later reward. Many teens today have a desire for nice things, but they don’t want to work hard for the money to obtain nice things. Too many struggle with entitlement believing that they “deserve it” or “they are owed it”.
“Compared to previous generations, recent high-school graduates are more likely to want lots of money and nice things but less likely to say they’re willing to work hard to earn them,” according to the author of a recent study on the topic of entitlement among the rising generation. “That type of ‘fantasy gap’ is consistent with other studies showing a generational increase in narcissism and entitlement.”
A prime example of this is the number of elementary aged and middle school youth who have their own smart phones, but do absolutely nothing to earn the privilege of the device. Those few kids who don’t have a smart phone, feel deprived and many attempt to convince their parents of this. The pressures in middle school only get worse in high school as kids no longer simply ask for a cell phone, but for a car, a personal laptop and spending cash at will. Teen entitlement and inability to delay gratification are major problems in today’s culture.
Parents don't do their teens any favors when they reward an entitlement mentality in the home. When parents provide their children with unwarranted reinforcement, they stagnate their children’s coping capacity for handling the future realities of what it takes to be a successful young adult. Recent studies show that this new "entitled generation" display high rates of mental health problems, loneliness, isolation and failure in their young marriages.
Family Bootcamp is the ideal intervention for assisting parents to eliminate the entitlement mentality from their teens and provide teens with a first-hand experience in delaying gratification. Upon arriving at the Family Bootcamp offices, the ceremonial “trade” happens where the teen hands over his/her smart phone and other hand held digital devices, and its place is given a stainless steel cooking pot which will be used for cooking meals on a camp fire for the next five days while the teen experiences life unplugged from technology and learning to survive in the high desert of Utah. Those five days allow the teen to explore who he/she outside of their technology, friends and other material items for which they had previously developed a sense of entitlement. Without these dependencies to hide behind, teens have to face who they really are, which sometimes can be an uncomfortable realization.