Dealing with children addicted to video games - EDITORIAL

Parents are at a loss these days when deciding on whether to curtail the time and data given to kids for online education. This is largely because their children as students are misusing the smart phones and laptops given to them for education by engaging in video games. 

What’s alarming is that children have mixed up their priorities and sacrifice study time to play video games. 
Children are aggressive these days and confront their parents who question the time they spend on playing video games. It’s best for parents to update themselves on what this behaviour disorder is about before they begin to put the lives of children in order. According to how it’s defined in the 11th Revision of the International Classification of Disease (ICD-11) it is a pattern of gaming behavior characterised by impared control over gaming despite facing negativities. 

Psychology experts state that such habits must exist and must be monitored by parents for a period of 12 months before the label ‘addiction’ can be pinned. Also smartphone users playing such games must choose games at the expense of time spent on other educational activities. 

Before you punish your child and grab the phone from him/her keep an open mind and also study how game designers operate. These game designers are on the lookout to make these games fascinating; not necessarily addictive. 

The ages 15 and 16 are so vulnerable and teens in this group fall prey to something with a negative influence. Just recently we heard of a 15-year-old male committing suicide because his mother denied him of the opportunity to play video games by taking away the mobile phone. 

It’s interesting to note that the English paper at the GCE O’ Level Examination touched on this subject of computer addiction by children and presented questions on the subject. Such questions appeared in the 2008 and 2015 English papers; probably sending a subtle message to children, parents and teachers about what could be expected in the future.

If the game designers can make these products irresistible so can teachers with the lessons taught via zoom. Teachers are living during a time where they’ll be in trouble if a student yawns in the class. Teachers have to be innovative and keep the interest going during the lesson. Parents and guardians of children must be aware that teenagers are earning money by playing video games via live streaming. Parents must close the gap between the knowledge kids and they have of video games. 

Maybe parents can offer little rewards like a tasty meal or snack if the child can stay away from video games for a whole week. In the good old days parents told their children to drop a bad habit if they really loved them (Parents). And this always worked because love, they say, on most occasions works better compared to most medicines and even punishment. 

There is a school of thought that game addiction is better than drug addiction. This is because after a long period of playing games a child will lose interest and move to something else. It’s not that simple to distance drugs from a user. 

However psychologists in general are advising parents to take the smart phone away from children the moment the online class concludes. There needs to be some kind of parental control involved in distancing the child from video game addiction. But WHO has underscored a vital point in this regard by stating ‘people who participate in such games should be alert to the amount of time they spend on gaming activities at the exclusion of other daily activities’. Parents must make their children alert to ‘real time’ again because the time spent in the world of video games blunts your consciousness.