End Video Game Addiction Day – Parents Advocacy Day

It would be an interesting day, to say the very least, if “someone” organized a nation wide “rebellion” of concerned parents, against videogames in the lives of our kids (and spouses I guess.) 

What that would look like: 

A date would be set to basically walk into our kids’ lives with a published, vetted, set of parameters and boundaries to the video game to which they are bona fide addicted. 

(And they are) 

ONE PREMISE IS:

Parents won’t stand for the insult of “You’re letting your kid pass out in his room with a videogame needle in his arm.” Even while it’s a full-on addiction complete with obsession, health-sacrifice, negotiating, lying, social detriment, constant time-investment, hiding the behavior, engagement at other’s expense, and anger including self-harm and histrionics around separation from the behavior. 

BUT IT IS AN ADDICTION: 

Addiction. Pure bred. Ending up with “kids living in the basement” til they’re thirty because they never cultivated the personal skills to find or keep a partner, developed a practical work-ethic nor honed the ability to forge through anything resembling adversity. 

Why is this happening? 

FUNDAMENTALLY Parents only see the videogame as a “toy” 

Not as a developmental threat.

Would “they” let the kids play with a toy that could ruin their development? YES. 

Parents can’t conceive the idea that the videogame is engineered FULL ON to be addictive using every known psychological manipulation-technique. Even if chimps didn’t understand the game they would be addicted by the “kill-reward-level-up-get-armor” reinforcement strategy. ‘ 

The MAIN reasons for parents “Not fixing this” are TWO.

#1 POPULARITY CONTEST

More than fifty percent of parents facing this are divorced with supposedly fragile kids with one parent. And the custodial parent doesn’t want to blow up the kid’s world – it’s kind of a Popularity Contest after divorce. Sometimes even when still married, a parent doesn’t have the support of the other parent because the other parent has that SAME needle in their arm. Never should have married that one. Or at least, should never have conceived a child WITH a man with the maturity-of-a-child. 

#2 LACK OF INFORMATION

Not many Therapists and Counselors advise on a child’s toy like Videogames as a bona fide ADDICTION. They may share the parents viewpoint that it’s just one of the kid’s toys. 

So, the parent is sometimes at a loss to know what to do besides withdraw the game. 

But the FACTS support that because the child is addicted to the videogame, parents can exact the same control over their kids as you can manipulate a crack whore with crack-cocaine or an alcoholic with Bourbon. 

Kids will do ANYTHING, and AGREE to anything in order to play the video game. 

True, they certainly won’t follow through with their assertions, negotiations, promises and begging, but then: You simply don’t let them have the videogame until they DO. 

YES many of the addicts will threaten to kill themselves if they can’t play their video game. (And you still want to say it’s NOT a bonafide addiction??) 

So a system could be implemented for the Videogame Revolution that spells out the new terms for videogames in American Households. These would be the same boundaries for all families participating, so that it’s harder for a ‘limited kid’ to say “Tommy gets to play anytime he wants” and have it carry any weight.

To wit: Standards for: 

• Earning Time
• Losing Time
• Eliminating Addictive Content
• Limiting Time 
• Off Limits During Family Times. 

You can earn videogame time with the following behaviors. Such as spend an hour in the yard playing = earn an hour on the Game. Join the family at mealtime five times and earn an hour. Come out of your room for an hour and earn an hour. Extinguish your sibling if he was on fire or speak to another person at least daily and earn an hour. Take a shower or eat a sit down meal and earn an hour. 

You lose videogame time by forgetting your household responsibilities. 

Didn’t handle the kitchen trash, didn’t take care of the dog, didn’t keep your bathroom or bedroom up, didn’t attend other chores, scored under a minimum  at school: Lose privileges. Summarily or incrementally. 

Certain videogames, (the ones BEST written for addiction like Fortnight and Call of Duty) are simply out. Off limits. Not in this household. It is well known what videogames are breaking up marriages and ruining kids. 

Videogame time is limited per day. No more than 10% of a day, or 2.4 hours can be inested in videogames even for a helpful, chore-doing polite and relatable kid. 

Videogames will not be endeavored during the following events: (Anything the family is doing together.) 

So you might as well go to the birthday party, funeral, appointment, vacation, or outbound family trip because you won’t be playing your videogame while everyone else is doing something. 

Keep in mind, videogames are a true addiction. When you are faced with a furious-then-crying teenager who tries to steal videogame time by lying, and then leaves home to go live at the Non-Custodial Parent’s House, or suddenly is going over to a friend’s house for hours on end – –  they’re scoring their ‘hit’. 

The problem with “full-on addiction” during the formative years:  It’s JUST like alcohol too early: ANY addiction suspends the development of the pre-frontal cortex when the addiction takes hold. And that process can’t be restarted. So the kid is just coping with developmental defects and behavioral atrophy for life. And probably? Lives in your basement, spouseless, and after your basement: Practically homeless forever.