Last night on the TV show “Boston Legal,” one of the storylines involved a single mother who sued a video game manufacturer because her teenage son died while playing one of their games. Apparently the boy played it to the exclusion of things like eating, drinking and sleeping and died of a heart attack.
The mother’s attorney claimed that the game was purposely designed by the manufacturer to be addictive. Unfortunately for her, her attorney wasn’t one of the partners at the “Boston Legal” firm of Crane, Poole and Schmidt. That attorney convinced the jury that it was wrong to equate being hooked on a video game to being addicted to drugs or alcohol.
Along the way, there was a very uncomfortable scene in which the hotshot “Boston Legal” attorney suggested that the boy’s mother might have prevented her son’s death if she had checked in on him when she got home in the middle of the night from her second job. Instead, she’d fallen, fully clothed and exhausted, into bed. The next morning, she’d found her son dead in front of his game.
The implication, of course, was that this overworked, worn out single Mom was not as good a parent as she claimed to be. I found it painful to watch the look on her face as she absorbed the lawyer’s suggestion that her son might still be alive if only she’d been a better mother. (He wanted her to blame herself instead of the game manufacturer.)
But the portrayal of the single mother isn’t actually what I wanted to focus on. What troubled me even more was the suggestion that the games our teens love – the ones with the life-and-death battles with their fantasy enemies – may be, if not actually physically addictive, harmful to them in some way.
So I went to the Internet to see what I could find out.
Apparently little valid scientific research has been done on this subject. The prevailing opinion, however, seems to be that if your gaming is interfering with your life, then it’s a bad thing. If it’s not, then it’s not.
I read that people use gaming as an escape, as a way to relieve stress, the same way we use smoking, eating, drugs or gambling. Gaming also gives players a sense of control over things, a control they may not have in their real lives.
Joseph Tecce, a psychology professor at Boston College, was quoted in one article I found as follows:
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“’In the short-term, (gaming) is great,’ he said. ‘You’re not smoking anything, you’re not putting anything in your body. It’s an effective short-term reduction in stress, and you are learning to focus your attention in a sustained way, and people forget that.’
He said that he even recommends an hour or two per day of video games or computer activities such as e-mail as treatment for children with Attention Deficit Disorder or Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.
He said the difference between stress relief and obsession hinges on one element: time.
‘As with anything, moderation is the name of the game – no pun intended,’ he said.”
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While adults should be able to set their own limits, Dr. Tecce recommends in the article that parents create contracts with their kids that specify the amount of time the games may be played each day.
Then I also read about a 28-year-old South Korean man who died of heart failure after playing these games for 50 hours straight, during which time he rarely took a break to eat or sleep. (Maybe the “Boston Legal” episode was based on this actual event.)
And did you know that there’s an organization called “On-Line Gamers Anonymous,” a support group for on-line gaming “addicts” and their friends and family? And a web site called gamerwidows.com, for people married to people who play these games excessively?
I even found an article by an ex-gamer who said that he gave up gaming entirely when he realized that, “…outside of the exceptional occurrences like meeting someone you become good friends with in real life, most of the time you spend playing will be spent doing nothing of long-term value for yourself.” (By “meeting someone,” he’s referring to the interactive online games where you can actually communicate with, and even team up with, other online players.) (I gave a copy of this article to my teenage gamer/son.)
To me it’s clear that, whether or not gaming equates in a physical sense to drug or alcohol addiction, it can definitely become an obsession, to the detriment of everything and everyone else in the gamer’s life.
Since young people may not have the ability to limit themselves, it’s our responsibility as parents to help them set these limits, while encouraging them to broaden their range of interests and activities.