Internet addiction is real, harmful and needs to be halted. We can’t sit by and watch a
15-year-old boy could be diagnosed with internet gaming addiction in, what would be, the first case of its kind in the NHS.
It was inevitable that this would come. When are parents going to wake up and realise that letting their children stare at screens for hours on end is not healthy – and it could be downright harmful?
The boy concerned became so addicted to gaming that he lost his confidence about facing the “real world”. He missed a year of school.
His mum Kendal Parmar says she sought help from the NHS for three years. She fought to have his condition recognised and to get treatment for him.
He’s gone from being the most sociable child in a family of five, to a virtual recluse. His mum hid the router – the device which connects computers to the internet – in a safe.
But, like many children, the boy is technically savvy. Like all addicts, he became ingenious at finding ways to feed his habit. He just logged on to a school’s internet network without even having to leave his room.
This case may sound extreme, but I firmly believe internet and gaming addiction is real – and that if we don’t take action, more children will find it harder to function in the real world. It’s a weird one, because people sign up for internet games, or social media, to be part of an online community. Everyone wants to belong to something.
In most of these online games, you create your own persona. You can be whoever you want to be.
But if they get too caught up in their online lives, they are at risk of becoming isolated in real life.
This story of the boy’s addiction is one of many. A nine-year-old girl has just been diagnosed as addicted to gaming, too. How scary is that?
Last week, one NHS boss warned that social media is damaging children’s mental health – and our already-stretched NHS is being left to “pick up the pieces”.
It’s time for parents to get tough. It’s fine for children to be on the internet for a couple of hours a night but then it should be disconnected.
Maybe part of the problem is that some parents would find it equally difficult to switch off. Or is it just lazy parenting?
I’d like to see schools do more, too. Start by banning phones. Children do not need phones at school. Back in our day, we were completely disconnected when we went to school. We coped.
It would mean children were not glued to screens at playtime. They’d socialise with each other and make conversations. It would get them playing actively rather than digitally.
We can’t sit by and allow this. We owe it to our children not to let online addiction happen to them.