Why BAN you should GAMING in YOUR home
Today’s video games are as addictive and as damaging as cocaine. Here, one mother explains why she eradicated them from her children’s lives
PICTURE the scene: your young son is still playing a video game on his Xbox — blasting enemies with a machine gun, transfixed by the flickering images, though you’ve repeatedly told him his screen time is up.
Frustrated, you unplug the console much to the fury of your fired up boy, whose adrenaline is pumping after utter immersion in such virtual drama. Things eventually calm down — until the whole scene unfolds again the following day or weekend, depending on how often you allow him to play video games. Sound familiar? Child development expert Ollwyn Moran, 44, from Templeogue, Dublin, has found a way to break the cycle — by banning video games
completely. The mother of two boys, Matthew, 13 and Alex, 11, Ollwyn is also the founder of Cognikids — the award-winning company designing baby products, from crawl suits to bottles grippers, that aid neurological development.
Not only that, but neither child has a mobile phone either.
‘They haven’t looked at their Xbox since March or April of last year,’ says Ollwyn, who has her PhD research in Maynooth University into how devices affect children’s development.
KNOWING all the research about tech and the impact and what it does to the brain was the reason Ollwyn, a developmental psychologist, permanently unplugged the Xbox.
‘Companies use developmental psychologists to create these games and the reason they use developmental psychologists is so they know how to create addictive behaviours within the game. There are scans of brains where they gave kids Fortnite and Minecraft for half an hour,’ she says, of two extremely popular video games for children, ‘and the centres that light up in the brain are the exact same centres that light up on somebody who has taken cocaine. They are highly, highly addictive and very destructive.’
At the very least, playing video games for long periods of time makes children sedentary, which can lead to obesity and impact on posture and fitness levels. But parents also regularly express concern at the level of casual — and often graphic — violence in some video games too. But, of course, it’s big business.
Irish people spent a staggering €244m on video games in 2016. Meanwhile the ESRI and Trinity College’s Growing Up in Ireland report 2017 found boys had more screen time than girls, as 14% of boys and 10% of girls had more than three hours of screen time on a typical weekday. On a typical day at the weekend, 51% of boys and 39% of girls had more than three hours’ of screen time.
‘They only ever had Xbox at the weekend for an hour, say Saturday or Sunday,’ says Ollwyn, of her sons, before she forbade it.
‘There were a couple of days when maybe it was lashing we’d maybe give them two or three hours. Otherwise we made a decision and they had the hour. But boys, particularly, produce all those hormones while they’re playing as if they were physically doing it themselves — the adrenaline, the fight or flight. And because they’re not doing anything physical, they’re not doing anything to burn it off, so it’s still heightened after the hour.
‘And when you take them away from it they still have this heightened hormonal imbalance, almost. It has to be released somehow. So it’s generally released through aggression or physicality with each other,’ she says. ‘You can see when you’re reading research where there’s a mum or a dad saying, “They go crazy when you plug it out” — that’s the whole impact. It’s not that they’re being aggressive towards you necessarily because you unplugged it; there’s a lot going on for them in their bodies and they need a release.’
When her eldest was in First Year last year, Ollwyn, who was a biology and maths teacher for 16 years, was also concerned that video game use might get in the way of studying for his summer exams. ‘We sat down and we had a chat. I said, “Here’s the research. This is what happens in your brain when you are playing computer games.” They could recognise it themselves when they’d come off and come back down. They’d say things like, “Sorry, I don’t actually know what happened there.”’
Ollwyn says she ‘possibly explained too much to the boys but I feel that if you explain the rationale behind a decision to those that the decision is going to affect, it actually gives them buy-in. They understand that you’re not just being mean or not trying to punish them or whatever.
‘Then we chatted and I said, “If I saw you with cocaine there I wouldn’t say, that’s fine, you can have it for an hour. Playing Xbox has the same effect. When you were in my tummy I was very careful about what I ate, what I drank, what I did because my job was to create the best environment for you to grow and to grow your brain and to give you the best chance. That doesn’t stop because you’re now not in my tummy. It’s still
my job to create the best environment for you to grow and to learn and to be safe.”’
Both boys had to agree to what was initially supposed to be a temporary break from video games.
‘They were like, “Okay. Fine.” For the first week they said, “Are you sure we can’t just have one hour on Saturday?” I said, “No, no. Remember?” Within two weeks they had totally forgotten to ask about the Xbox.’
Instead the boys played outside with friends, though it wasn’t always easy to round up the posse, even in summer.
‘In fairness they got frustrated and said, “We called down for this person and that person and they’re not coming out because they’re playing Fortnite”. Then they started saying, “On this kind of a day they’re sitting in their room playing Fortnite! You get more from social interaction with your friends!” This was from them, not me. I thought, “Wow”. Whenever there would be a gang of them going off, maybe to the local astro [pitch] or something like that they’d come back in and they’d be sweaty and starving and just glowing.’
‘A teenage brain is such a complex thing. There’s absolutely no chance that you’re getting a smartphone before you’re sixteen,’ she told her boys. To ensure they have plenty of friends and outlets, Ollwyn unleashes her ‘secret weapon’, as she calls it.
‘I have a three sport rule in our house. If they want to drop one they have to find another. I’m super lucky that they both play gaelic and hurling in our local club and for the school. They went mad for golf over the summer with my parents, who are retired.’
Of course, there has been challenges when it comes to keeping the ban, Ollywn admits.
‘I hear things like, “Everyone else has Snapchat”. I just say to them, “Are we leaders or are we followers in this house?” They’re like, “We’re leaders”. “If they all stuck their hand in the fire would you do the same? Are you really missing out on anything?” “No not really.”’ Ollwyn has their friends’ mothers phone numbers if they need to get in touch and if they live nearby she encourages her sons to call over to them in person. The boys are not on social media either. ‘I’m sure they have an interest and they’d often say, “such-and-such has this” — but they’re not getting it.’
Ollwyn’s business Cognikids and now her PhD are both concerned with the effects of tech on children — from babyhood through to adulthood.
She designed a tactile gripper for babies’ bottles when she heard primary school teachers complaining at their annual conferences that children’s pincer grip is being compromised by tapping and swiping devices instead of more traditional exploration as babies and toddlers.
‘They can’t hold the pencil, they can’t turn a page of a book. Because they have been swiping and tapping instead of building, playing with plasticine, playing outdoors. Outdoors is the best thing for little ones from very early on. If they’re not doing their fine motor skills then their manual dexterity is affected as well.’
She is particularly perturbed by research saying 61% of four to five month-old babies are given iPads and mobile phones to play with. This is ‘shocking’ not only because of the ‘sensory overload’ but because babies need to be crawling and playing — not propped up with devices — to develop their potential both physically and neurologically. Her research also looks at the ‘impact of tech on eye development, on concentration, on mental health’ and on social interactions. ‘Young people now are much more comfortable talking on a screen on headphones than in a group. I find that concerning because most of us will interact with people on a daily basis and work with a team of people. You can’t just live in a bubble in your room.’
SHE mentions research that suggests our peripheral vision isn’t being developed because we are so focussed on our devices. ‘But we’ll still have sports,’ she points out, of something requiring excellent peripheral vision. ‘And people say, “Are we going to write anymore anyway?” But we’ll still use a knife and fork, you’ll still have to tie your shoelaces, so you need to have your pincer grip.’
And it’s not just kids who need to have their screen time managed. A whole area of psychology called distracted parenting looks at the example we are setting.
‘It’s just about managing your time when children are around,’ says Ollwyn. ‘So that they don’t see that you’re governed by this little rectangle.’
14% Of boys use screens more than three hours a day