Gaming addiction is something we gamers hear about every day. Most of us are aware of the problem, but we’re also aware that is doesn’t happen to the majority of us, not to the degree where our lives start to degrade as a result.
However, the problem is becoming more common as computer game popularity grows. In today’s current climate, where parents or carers are perhaps more reluctant to let their children out to play on the streets where anything could happen to them, having them stay in to play their consoles or PC games might seem the safer option. So what are they to do when the gaming becomes the center of their child’s world?
A parent in just this situation wrote into thereporter.com to ask advice on what to do about their 17 year old son who plays WoW every moment of his spare time. Having lost all his friends, his grades failing, the parent asks how to go about helping the teen. Up until this point the parents have let him make his own choices, and let him deal with the consequences, but the situation isn’t improving.
Should they take his PC away, bearing in mind he’s 17? Should they have let it get this far? Is this what happens if children are allowed to play games fairly unrestricted?
Another report over the weekend tells of someone who knows several people who have been “addicted” to WoW, including a woman who apparently went into labor while in a raid, but wouldn’t go to the hospital until they’d finished.
Stories of this type must strike horror into any parent who recently treated their child to a computer game, but it’s important to remember that this only happens to a few select people. The vast majority of gamers treat games as a hobby, something to do when there’s nothing better around. We don’t all lose friends, stop washing and become unemployed ya know! But it’s important to remember that everything must be taken in moderation - “Even World of Warcraft”.
Only 1 word to those parents, L2P. That’s Learn To Parent, for starters, instead of cutting them off cold turkey, set up a play schedule as a mutual agreement? IMO, if general education includes more food science and parenting class instead of Shakespearean and lord of the flies, our society would be a lot better off.