In 2018 the WHO classified gaming as a new mental health condition. This classification was based on the American Psychiatric Association’s finding that gaming prompts neurological responses in the brain which promote reward and pleasure. The APA was essentially saying that gaming, in the extreme, is addictive.
That’s not to say every child who games will be addicted but it was a warning not to leave your child unsupervised with these games. Anyone working with teenagers over the last number of years would have noticed the impact gaming was having on family dynamics. I have met so many families struggling to understand how to parent this new feature of modern family life.
These games are problematic because of how immersive they are. In my conversation with parents, they all described a common feature of their child’s gaming habit, they delineated how they struggled to get their children away from the games, how their child’s behaviour dramatical changed while playing the games, and how they lost interest in once-loved real-life activities. There was such a common thread among all the families coming into my clinic seeking advice about how to parent their child’s online activity. There was a real sense of sadness in the room as parents often described a real feeling of losing their children to the game.
All of this motivated me to carry out a piece of research on what was happening in families with these games. I went around to 25 schools all over Ireland speaking to all classes and parents about gaming. I was struck by how remarkably similar the stories I heard were. It was clear, gaming was disrupting family life.
Parents didn’t understand the games and therefore felt outpaced and at a loss as to what to do about their child’s habit. There was often a huge incongruence between moms’ experience of the games and what dads felt about the games. But lockdown changed that. The more dad was at home the more he became aligned with mom’s earlier concerns. The impact of lockdown on children’s gaming has not been revealed yet but I think we all know it has had a significant deleterious impact on healthy gaming habits because of the amount of time they were allowed on them. Of course, that was understandable, it was their only way to stay connected during the chaos of this pandemic. Gaming in many ways , kept them sane. So, it’s not about bashing the games and sensationalising them by saying they are a complete evil, but they need to be parented.
Modern gaming is remarkably different from games of ten years ago, not to mind the games of 25 years ago when today’s parents were playing them.
Today’s children are literally plugin into a global community of gamers. The games are powerful, because they are developed by very intelligent people, who know how to get your children into playing their game for free and then how to monetise the content. It’s all about money. And it is big business. Gaming made something like 160 billion in revenue last year. The majority of that money is generated from what they call micro-transactions.
Loot boxes are something that parents should be very aware of. These are sealed mystery boxes that are paid for by the player to help them gain new weapons to progress through the levels quicker or skins to make their avatar appear more appealing. They are games of chance that normalise gambling for children. They are there, colourfully bouncing around in the game, enticing children to purchase them, often using a psychological nudge to push a child into buying them. The fact that they don’t know what is inside is very problematic, because children are then taking a gamble on purchasing something that might or might not be advantageous for them.
Therein lies the problem. These loot boxes are bringing children into the lived psychological experience of a gambler. Children playing these games and buying these boxes are now experiencing the ups and downs of placing a bet on an unknown outcome. If they are successful, they will do it again to get that thrill. If they are unsuccessful chances increase that they will keep going until they attain what they are searching for. In gambling terms, they are ‘chasing it’.
When your child asks to buy something on their game, make sure you are with them to observe that purchase. Never hand over your card without supervising what it is they want to purchase. Again, it is not about sensationalising these games, but we have to be real about them. They are very powerful and they generate vast sums of money because of how they are designed. We must be vigilant as parents and never allow the games to outpace us. We control our children’s gaming experience not the other way around. A family should never fall into an inverted hierarchy, children crave boundaries and they need the parents to be in control. Games are challenging, there is no doubt about that. But we must rise to that challenge.
