MODERN FAMILY
IT was announced this week that gaming addiction is to be listed as a mental health condition for the first time by the World Health Organisation.
The 11th International Classification of Diseases is set to include the new condition which will be known as “gaming disorder”. This is a guide that contains codes for diseases, signs and symptoms and is used by doctors and researchers to track and diagnose disease.
Researchers who were involved in the process explored excessive use of the internet, computers, smartphones and similar electronic devices, but found that the biggest concern was gaming.
One boy has already been diagnosed with a gaming addiction and his mother admitted that her son had not been to school for year even though she had tried everything from locking the router away in the safe, taking the computer out of his room and removing parental controls.
It is the kind of headlines that strike fear into the heart of most parents, especially ones with young boys. Must of the talk among parents in the playground is about tips on how to keep them away from Fortnite and why you shouldn’t let them buy Vbucks (the game is free but the currency used to buy new kits soon stacks up a bill).
A lot of time and effort is spent in our house keeping the Teen Away from the Console, or as we have code-worded it, TACing. It can be exhausting making sure that he keeps up with his interests in sport, youth groups and going out with his friends.
It is often a daily battle of wills as the lure of playing games with his friends proves so strong. When I say play with his friends, it is via the console in his room as they talk to each other through headsets.
Some even bring their own TVs and consoles when they do actually visit friends in ‘person’, creating the peculiar situation whereby they can be mic’d up next to eat other, playing the same game but on separate screens. Yes. This really does happen.
Before we get carried away, though, and decide they have an illness there are other experts who have a different view.
Dr Netta Weinstein, a senior lecturer in psychology at Cardiff University, says that we just “don’t know enough yet”.
She said that their research found “very small correlations, if at all” with broader life wellbeing, adding, “it might be that something that we think of as addiction is actually just engagement and enthusiasm.”
Studies do show that gaming disorder only affects a small proportion of people, but as a concerned parent I am going to carry on TACing, making sure that time spent on games is monitored. And while I’m at it. I will continue my seemingly fruitless pursuit of trying to extract more than a grunt as a response to questions from my 13-year-old son. Good luck with that then!