Locked in their bedrooms, playing video games into the small hours, children as young as 10 years old are now addicted to their consoles. Tim Lewis hears how the compulsive games can be impossible to resist – and meets the experts tackling the issue
I live in a city outside of the US, it’s not particularly safe for kids to play outside as there is crazy traffic and nowhere to really go.
There are just a few small parks in the city and they are not easily accessible.
When I lived in the states, I played outside with friends in the suburbs, but stopped around high school, as there were very few kids in my neighborhood and previous friends moved away/outgrew playing as they were older than me.
We closed all the youth centers, made it illegal to loiter, banned them from places like coffee shops and malls, made parks miles away from residential home, prevented them from any mobility until they're 16.... It's those damn video games!
I mean god forbid we let them go outside and have unstructured time. They might get addicted to something.
I am 51 years old. I distinctly remember "articles" with headlines like this about arcades and the Atari 2600 when I was a kid. This bullshit never ends.
Not to mention the younger generation with no work ethic, unlike in my day.. 5am start 6 days a week.. builds character.. then school.. uphill.. both ways.. respected our elders.. bought first house with 22.. kids now.. no respect.. video games.. no work ethic.. living with parents at 30.. avocado on toast.. no house.. AVOCADO ON TOAST.
IDK, I certainly would've if I could as a kid, because NES and Atari were tons of fun. I probably did actually do that on occasion when doing a sleepover with friends (we loved the Olympics game for NES with the pad).
I wouldn't say I was addicted though, I excelled in school and made sure to finish my school work on time. But I really did like games, and I still do.
"And now our next story. Despite record heat waves, funneling money from public programs, ipad kids, crowed and underfunded schools, book bans, increasing everything so parents can afford less, increasing political unrest and an ever present threat of violence due to lacking gun control, kids seem to only want to play video games!"
Outside: record heat waves; strip malls; endless, soulless commodification of human experience; hostile adults; constant, overprotective ties to the rest of the world via invasive tech; hostile capitalism…
Those things are absolutely contributing factors. But don't be so dismissive of the allure of video games. I grew up in paradise compared to what you describe, and we did play outside pretty much all the time. Then the NES came out. Our parents had to pry our asses from the TVs and throw us outside after that and threaten us with punishment if we didn't go outside to play. All we ever wanted to do was play Nintendo from there on out. Then some friends got computers... Yeah not much time was spent outside in paradise after that. And these days many games are designed to be addictive, to make you spend more time in them. We didn't have that and we were still hooked.
I'm not saying that to bash games or anything, I still love games and have been a computer nerd since back then, I'm just saying.
Yes the decline of "third spaces" which are not work or home is a huge factor. Even in adults who in theory could meet at their local pub (assuming they can afford a £7 pint and it hasn't shut down).
I have kids that age, my kids have consoles, and they don't play into the wee hours of the morning. Why? Because I don't let them. I don't have draconian parental controls or whatever, I just tell them they're not allowed and put consequences in place if they disobey. As they get older, the allowed playtime goes up, provided they're meeting their obligations.
It's not rocket surgery, just don't suck at being a parent.
That said, I imagine there are cases where even a good parent can not notice deviant behavior like this. But for the vast majority, a few rules and regular checking in should cover it.
I know when I was a kid I always wanted to sneak out (to the other room) and play more games after bed. A couple times Many times I did. And I got caught, and got in trouble.
I learned far more about setting reasonable limits by getting caught than I ever would with software blocks. I was very curious about computers, so I probably could've gotten around software blocks if I tried, but the guilt of my parents catching me and explaining why I need limits was much more effective.
It takes more effort, but hopefully the lessons learned are more lasting.
I refuse to use parental controls, because I know my kids will find a way around it (I would). I instead set firm rules with relatively severe consequences if they're not followed. Once I login to the PC, there's no time limit, content filters, etc.
That said, my youngest kept getting into the Switch and messing up peoples' saves, so I put a parental lock on it, but I told my older kids the code and told them I trust them with it. If they abuse their time with it, they lose the console privilege.
It seems to be working. I'll probably give them a PC soon since they're doing a decent job stopping when their timer goes off (they set the timer according to our rules). We have limits (2hr max per day, must be done with homework, they earn time by reading), but again, I don't enforce them with software, I enforce them with the threat of loss of privileges.
Idk, same reason older generations liked TV so much. Keep in mind they had to air the "It's X o'clock, do you know where your kids are" commercial because they literally were glued to the TV. So when an older person says some shit about video games, remind them of this.
Serious boomer shit that somehow managed to completely miss the question of why the kid was that heavily into games in the first place. The very idea was mentioned once, in the whole article. As an aside. Blegh.
Hey! Those poorly translated east Asian novels that all seem waaaaay to similar to be anything other than one persons fever dream replayed 47 times are just interesting enough to keep me going back.
I'm 29, started gaming at 7yo on the game boy color. Just did my resume and cited videogames for a bunch of skills they gave me. This article is 20years too old
So many comments on this thread are very dismissive and just wave it off as "bad parenting" or "escapism". While both of those arguments are valid and probably a very big part of the problem, should we leave everything on the parents?
We don't allow businesses to sell alcohol towards children because we know it's extremely harmful and addictive. Should we simply let it free for all and then blame parents for not teaching their children that alcohol is bad and for allowing them to go out to the local shop and buy alcohol? Same goes for multiple other restrictions. Not all parents are responsible and educated enough to know how to parent. Articles like this at least show unaware parents this is a real threat and they could at least keep an eye out or educate themselves on the parental control available.
Parents need to accept responsibility for their children's behaviour. Obviously a separate example from this article but the recent suggestion that we should ban sales of mobile phones to under 16 year olds was entirely driven by pearl clutching parents who are unable to say "no" to their offspring - or at least spend 5 mins setting up parental controls.
Banning phones is an extreme measure. No restrictions whatsoever is an extreme measure. Articles like these simply start the conversation for the society at large to find a solution and, as I was saying in my initial comment some parents are simply unaware of how addictive video games can be. For many older generation (and even some of the younger parents out there that had no contact with video games) video games are often attributed to children's toys. The truth however is not that simple - some games are for children and some are engineered from the ground up to be as addictive as possible. Even if the final responsibility lies with the parents, we need to have those parents informed and articles like this do that.
Often times, things are not black or white but multiple shades of grey. Should we demonize video games? Absolutely not, they're not only fun but they can be a great tool to develop social skills, critical thinking and other adult skill. Should we inherently trust all video games and all parents to "do what's right"? No again. There is a balance in everything and dismissing unbiased articles like this one isn't helping anyone.
Have a SIL that is convinced the exposure to tech is a good thing, and doesn't believe in 'time and place' moderation. Guess what, her kid is addicted to his cellphone at every family gathering. Lol.
Parents not being good at setting boundaries. Not setting times to go to bed, not limiting time spent playing games or on electronics, and not checking in on how they are doing with school work. They are the ones controlling the finances of what can be bought and used in the household, but they just become pushovers.
Dee had read a newspaper article about a new NHS National Centre for Gaming Disorders that was being set up; she made contact, but the service wasn’t taking on patients yet.
The story of Dee – and Jake, who agreed to be featured in this article, but preferred not to be interviewed – is depressingly familiar to Professor Henrietta Bowden-Jones OBE, the founder and director of the National Centre for Gaming Disorders.
In 2008, she founded the first National Problem Gambling clinic: the NHS now has the capacity to treat up to 3,000 patients a year in 15 centres across the UK based on Bowden-Jones’s methodology.
We sat in a grand, high-ceilinged room in Earl’s Court, which is also the current base for the gambling clinic, and discussed what form an article might take.
The centre, which had been set up with a plan to see all patients face-to-face in London, pivoted swiftly to video calls, which remains the format its therapy sessions still take.
Bowden-Jones has been pushing for urgent extra funding and the clinic has taken the difficult decision to pause family work: this has brought the assessment waiting time down from over a year to three months.
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