A new Pew Research Center study finds that 85% of teens ages 13 to 17 they say they play video games.
However, while you can help children make them, Develop creativity with friendsin games, especially online games like “Fortnite” and “Roblox.” destroy sleep habits Or even promote addiction.
“The challenge with video games is that when you play one game, you don’t just enjoy it,” says psychiatrist Alok Kanojia. “Our brains want more, so kids are playing the second game, the third game, the fourth game, but they don’t actually want to put it away. .”
Kanojia is the author of a new book.How to raise healthy gamers: End power struggles, break bad screen habits, and transform your relationships with your kids.”
This topic is very familiar to me. Before becoming a medical resident at Harvard University, Kanojia almost failed out of the university due to excessive gaming.
“I was stuck in this cycle of playing until I was completely exhausted, so when I hit my head on the pillow I passed out, but I was so full of guilt and shame and feeling that I had messed up my life. I’ve never had to deal with the realization that I’m in life,” says Kanojia. “The only escape was to play games.”
So Kanojia’s parents took drastic action. They sent him to an ashram in India, where he learned spiritual practices and meditation.
“What I learned in India was how my mind works, because I didn’t understand the rules of the game,” he says. “By understanding how the mind works and why we become addicted to video games, we can create alternatives that satisfy our minds in healthier ways.”
Kanojia returned determined to help people with behavioral addictions like him. But he doesn’t recommend giving up the game completely. Rather, he advises his parents and children to “build a life that satisfies your neuroscience, satisfies your brain, and satisfies your psychological needs.”
Kanojia feels that through discipline and self-awareness, these obsessions will eventually disappear. That’s how it happened in his case.
“I still play games, but I don’t play them addictively because my life is full,” he says. “That’s what we really advocate for: creating a life worth living.”
3 questions to Alok Kanojia
Why are video games dangerous for the developing brain?
“The developing mind is like soft concrete, right? So it’s still wet. It hasn’t really formed yet. So if there are any changes in the dopaminergic circuitry of the developing brain, We actually know that it increases your vulnerability to addiction later in life, which is why this is really difficult because it’s not just video games that make you more susceptible to other kinds of problem behaviors later in life. That’s it.”
You say parents shouldn’t be too quick to take gaming away from kids who may be having problems with it. why?
“So if you look at the core of the problem with video game addiction and kids and parents, the problem is that you two are not on the same team. We see all kinds of cases where kids go to their friends’ houses and play there, and a lot of the frustration that parents encounter is that the parent is pushing in one direction, but the child is. is pushing in the opposite direction and doing a lot of addiction psychiatry work.
“What I sadly realized is that there is no way you can be sober for someone else. So our approach is for parents to build a partnership with their child and for both of them to have a common It’s about helping them have goals. It may sound impossible, but there are actually evidence-based techniques for how parents should interact with their children.”
Parents also said that asking open-ended questions to understand the game helps them understand it better, and in some cases allows them to sit and watch or play together. Can you model these open-ended questions?
“So the question that a lot of parents don’t ask is, ‘What do you like about gaming?’ What’s going on in your life? How do you feel about school? With your friends? “What do you enjoy doing?” That’s why we often ask “what” questions. Because there is no directional judgment in those questions. right. So when you ask, “Why do you play games?” it sounds kind of judgmental. “What do you like about games?” So we take this open-ended approach. And what ultimately happens is that we also model generosity to our children. ”
James Perkins Mastromarino produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Todd Mundt. Perkins Mastromarino adapted it for the web.
This segment was broadcast on May 14, 2024.
