Children Addicted to Gaming - News Report - Your thoughts?

[videogamelover11]

I don't understand all the hate against video games. You can be addicted to anything and it can lead to destructive behaviors. As long as you play in moderation there will be no ill effects. In fact, there are benefits, better hand eye coordination being one.

 

[Heath_Hindman]

I don't understand all the hate against video games. You can be addicted to anything and it can lead to destructive behaviors. As long as you play in moderation there will be no ill effects. In fact, there are benefits, better hand eye coordination being one.

What you said is true, though it should be noted that with very, very young children -- like, toddlers and infants -- the use of touchscreen tablets and shit actually alters their brains. Like, it changes the shape and shit, making it more likely to develop an addiction than a teen or adult brain.

Experiments on this have been limited because these tablets and smartphones are relatively new and getting volunteers to see how bad of a parent they are can be difficult.

 

[used44]

^what a crock of shit

 

[Master_Craig]

I'm no parent, but I think if I had a kid (or kids) I would try and avoid them using tablets and stuff... still, easier said than done, I'd have no idea what I would actually do if I had children.

 

[Bretimus_v2]

...have less opinions about what raising a child entails.

 

[Master_Craig]

I do have less opinions.

Unrelated to thread but - epic signature by the way, Bretimus.

 

[WickedLiquid]

I don't understand all the hate against video games. You can be addicted to anything and it can lead to destructive behaviors. As long as you play in moderation there will be no ill effects. In fact, there are benefits, better hand eye coordination being one.

What you said is true, though it should be noted that with very, very young children -- like, toddlers and infants -- the use of touchscreen tablets and shit actually alters their brains. Like, it changes the shape and shit, making it more likely to develop an addiction than a teen or adult brain.

Experiments on this have been limited because these tablets and smartphones are relatively new and getting volunteers to see how bad of a parent they are can be difficult.

And don't forget a new study reveals we can get you to believe anything if we start our sentence with "a new study reveals".

 

[Master_Craig]

I'm sure some studies are valid to a degree but I won't lie, I do honestly get a bit iffy sometimes when I read an article or listen to a report and hear "a new study reveals" or "studies show" or something. I guess it's because of the numbers, and they don't really reveal how many people were involved in said study or/and they don't reveal how they conducted the study.

Sometimes they reveal both, don't get me wrong, but even then when they do the numbers seem too low and it makes me wonder how they're able to draw a conclusion with such a number.

I also find it funny how studies can contradict one another,

"Studies show that video games can increase hand and eye coordination."

"Studies show video games are really bad for you and are really addictive."

One study is good, the other study is bad and often reported in a fear mongering kinda way. Maybe that's a poor way to describe it on my behalf but it's how I feel about it.

 

[WickedLiquid]

A new study reveals rubbing an onion on your balls twice a day may reduce the risk of testicular cancer by 35%.

 

[Master_Craig]

Science.

 

[Bretimus_v2]

Just giving you a hard time, Craig.


And thank you.

 

[C_nate]

I think what Bret is trying to say is that a lot of people have wildly varying ideas of how to raise children (and it seems some of the most opinionated of the bunch have no children) and the worst thing you can do is to tell someone how to raise their own children.

Children don't come with an owners manual or instruction guide. There is no walkthrough book from Prima, no FAQ on gamefaq's.

There has been lots of talk lately about how much your child should be exposed to screens, any screen, per day. But at this point it's all just talk.

PA actually had a funny comic about it earler:

As a parent I found it particularly funny because it reminded me one time when my parents were telling me about how a friend of my sisters had their kids in bed, lights out, at 9:00 pm sharp every night. Whereas I am a lot more flexible with my kids bedtime. They were gently trying to suggest to me that maybe I was doing harm by not having a strict bedtime and I basically told them flat out that my kids=my way and I couldn't give less than a shit about what someone else does with their own kids.

All this stuff about mobile games changing kids brains is complete bullshit though. I don't even own a smartphone and I think it's garbage. The human brain doesn't work like that. If it did, every family in North Korea would be given a smart phone at birth that made them love their government so they wouldn't have to waste so many resources on all their other propaganda.

The worst things those kind of games are guilty of is trying to tempt your impulse control by keeping your goal just out of reach unless you click the "buy now" and judging by how a horseshit game like candy crush that is free can make a billion dollars like that, I'd say these things are far more damaging to adults than they are to children.

 

[Sourdeez]

I come from a broken family. I lived on one side with a extremely strict parent that wanted to control and restrict everything, and then I moved in with my father who took a much more personal responsibility, libertarian approach.

I'll give you an idea which one I was happier, prospered more, grew as an individual, and became a better more open person.

 

[Sightless]

What you said is true, though it should be noted that with very, very young children -- like, toddlers and infants -- the use of touchscreen tablets and shit actually alters their brains. Like, it changes the shape and shit, making it more likely to develop an addiction than a teen or adult brain.

Experiments on this have been limited because these tablets and smartphones are relatively new and getting volunteers to see how bad of a parent they are can be difficult.

All this stuff about mobile games changing kids brains is complete bullshit though. I don't even own a smartphone and I think it's garbage. The human brain doesn't work like that. If it did, every family in North Korea would be given a smart phone at birth that made them love their government so they wouldn't have to waste so many resources on all their other propaganda.

Plasticity. Human brains begin as extremely malleable things, and slowly grow to lose this characteristic as connections strengthen and become more reinforced. It's harder to learn things when you're older, to integrate new ideas in the same way as you could when you were a child. It's absolutely true that the younger you are, the more your brain is going to change in response to new stimuli; I fully expect experiments to show that children's brains soak everything up.

However, I don't believe there is anything inherent in the use of these devices that changes a child's brain any more than any other activity in which they would be participating. The problem that most of these experiments have is that results are terribly difficult to interpret when there are countless variables, and having a control group is a bit of an arbitrary selection of constraints that may or may not be relevant to the study.

Like any good blanket statement, this issue should at least be broken down into more precise questions. For what exactly are these devices being used? Why are they being used? When you say these things have negative effects, are they universally bad across all uses?

The second part of your argument, Heath, is that of addiction. It seems like you haven't responded to the issues raised earlier in this thread regarding addiction and what that actually means. It's particularly difficult to assess addiction in this case because children do not have the same context of life that adolescents and adults do. How do you tell if a child is giving up greater responsibilities in favour of using a touch device? What are their daily obligations? Moreover, are they aware of any adverse consequences for their actions?

Even if we were to assume the label of addiction, we ought to ask -- as with all instances of labelling a particular behaviour -- is this necessarily a bad thing? Why? This is where I start shaking my stick at all of you who think you can cling to your ideals about normalcy.

North Korea doesn't need smartphones to influence the masses, although I daresay it would work well. There's a certain amount of continuous propaganda machines that have to keep going, to keep up with the world that generally pushes for change.

 

[Longo_2_guns]

All I know is that if I have kids I won't let them play with a smartphone.

Mostly because I don't want to put something easily broken and expensive in their hands. They're going to get their body weight in Duplo and they are going to like it!

 

[Master_Craig]

Regarding C_Nate's response and the Penny Arcade comic, it actually reminds me of when I was at PAX AUS 2013, at one of the Penny Arcade Q & A panels with Mike "Gabe" Krahulik and Jerry "Tycho" Holkins.

Someone had asked Mike what he thinks about kids and gaming and what should you do/how you should go about it. I thought Mike's answer was pretty good.

Mike explained that he doesn't believe in a time limit for his kids and gaming. If they're happy to play games, he's not going to take it away from them, as long as they've done their homework and whatnot - to a degree, they're not going to say, stay up until midnight on a school night. However, he explained it would also depend on the content of the game. If his kids are playing something like Minecraft, where it involves being creative and making things, he would let them play for as long as they'd like. However if it were another more mainstream game, perhaps a violent video game, he wouldn't let them play it. He would also avoid playing these sorts of games around his kids. He mentioned the age rating on games exists for a reason and he follows that.

He went on saying that he doesn't like the idea of games being used as a means of baby sitting, and he tries to monitor what his kids are playing or at the very least he tries to be aware of what they're playing. Since he's a gamer himself, usually he'll sit down and watch his kids play their games or he might play with them, depending on the game.

I think it's a pretty good way to go about it. What do you all think?

 

[Heath_Hindman]

What you said is true, though it should be noted that with very, very young children -- like, toddlers and infants -- the use of touchscreen tablets and shit actually alters their brains. Like, it changes the shape and shit, making it more likely to develop an addiction than a teen or adult brain.

Experiments on this have been limited because these tablets and smartphones are relatively new and getting volunteers to see how bad of a parent they are can be difficult.

All this stuff about mobile games changing kids brains is complete bullshit though. I don't even own a smartphone and I think it's garbage. The human brain doesn't work like that. If it did, every family in North Korea would be given a smart phone at birth that made them love their government so they wouldn't have to waste so many resources on all their other propaganda.

Plasticity. Human brains begin as extremely malleable things, and slowly grow to lose this characteristic as connections strengthen and become more reinforced. It's harder to learn things when you're older, to integrate new ideas in the same way as you could when you were a child. It's absolutely true that the younger you are, the more your brain is going to change in response to new stimuli; I fully expect experiments to show that children's brains soak everything up.

Yeah, re-reading my own post it sounds a lot more doomsday than it should have. I should clarify that I didn't mean "change" as in an inherently bad change, just a change in the way that nearly everything can change a kid's brain. Could lead to an addiction to the change that caused the re-shaping, but it could lead to colonizing the moon for all we know.

The second part of your argument, Heath, is that of addiction. It seems like you haven't responded to the issues raised earlier in this thread regarding addiction and what that actually means.

Yeah I wasn't like...trying to make an argument. I was tossing in thought, not responding to issues raised earlier in the thread.

 

[C_nate]

The second part of your argument, Heath, is that of addiction. It seems like you haven't responded to the issues raised earlier in this thread regarding addiction and what that actually means. It's particularly difficult to assess addiction in this case because children do not have the same context of life that adolescents and adults do. How do you tell if a child is giving up greater responsibilities in favour of using a touch device? What are their daily obligations? Moreover, are they aware of any adverse consequences for their actions?

I think that is the real issue is that there really isn't a general consensus on what addiction even is. Is it a disease? A chemical imbalance in the brain? Can it be treated with drugs then? Is it a pattern of learned behavior? Is it just poor impulse control? How does it happen? Why does it happen? Why do some people get addicted to some things and other people who do the same things don't?

 

[C_nate]

All I know is that if I have kids I won't let them play with a smartphone.

Mostly because I don't want to put something easily broken and expensive in their hands. They're going to get their body weight in Duplo and they are going to like it!

This....this is sound advice.

That time when my then toddler took my expensive glasses off my face. "Aww, look at you with daddies glasses." The way she then nonchalantly and effortlessly snapped the stem....Yes, I learned a valuable lesson that day.

 

[C_nate]

Regarding C_Nate's response and the Penny Arcade comic, it actually reminds me of when I was at PAX AUS 2013, at one of the Penny Arcade Q & A panels with Mike "Gabe" Krahulik and Jerry "Tycho" Holkins.

Someone had asked Mike what he thinks about kids and gaming and what should you do/how you should go about it. I thought Mike's answer was pretty good.

Mike explained that he doesn't believe in a time limit for his kids and gaming. If they're happy to play games, he's not going to take it away from them, as long as they've done their homework and whatnot - to a degree, they're not going to say, stay up until midnight on a school night. However, he explained it would also depend on the content of the game. If his kids are playing something like Minecraft, where it involves being creative and making things, he would let them play for as long as they'd like. However if it were another more mainstream game, perhaps a violent video game, he wouldn't let them play it. He would also avoid playing these sorts of games around his kids. He mentioned the age rating on games exists for a reason and he follows that.

He went on saying that he doesn't like the idea of games being used as a means of baby sitting, and he tries to monitor what his kids are playing or at the very least he tries to be aware of what they're playing. Since he's a gamer himself, usually he'll sit down and watch his kids play their games or he might play with them, depending on the game.

I think it's a pretty good way to go about it. What do you all think?

I'm more or less the same way. After all the essentials are done for the day, sometimes they want to watch cartoons, sometimes we play games, sometimes we go to the park. There is no hard and fast rule.

I try to limit their exposure to adult things, but it's impossible to raise a kid in a figurative bubble and shield them from everything. Sometimes mom is watching The Walking Dead and they walk in the room and see a zombie munching on someone or sometimes dad is watching South Park in his man cave and the kids come down and they hear some adult language. Same if I'm playing a video game with killing or stuff like that. We explain how these things are for adults and not for them. And they know and understand. My son was watching someone on youtube playing a mario game when they started swearing my son exited the video and told me that one wasn't for kids.

They are pretty smart about those kinds of things. So when he uses grandpa's phone to play angry birds or some other game and I tell him not to buy anything because it costs grandpa money, he understands.

As for infants, they are amused by rattlers and plastic keys, so I don't know why the hell you'd want to give them a smartphone to play with.

And people have been using technology for babysitting long before mobile games were a thing as seen by Jim Carrey's character from The Cable Guy whose mom sat him in front of the tv when she went out for the night.