Talking to Teens About Online Gaming

Technology moves faster every day, and the "internet" has become an indispensable part of modern life. For teenagers especially, heads bent over a phone — chatting, looking things up, or doing homework — has become an almost universal posture worldwide. Of course, quite a few people also become absorbed in the world of online gaming, and this presents parents of teens with challenges they’ve never faced before.

In recent years, whenever I lead parenting seminars in various settings, I meet many parents of teens who are at their wits' end over their children's online gaming — worried sick, not knowing what to do, sometimes almost driven to distraction. Some get so angry they smash the computer, yet still can't call their child back from the world of online games. How to communicate effectively with your child and reach an agreement together really tests a parent's wisdom.

Raising four children myself, I certainly haven't been spared this flood-like challenge. Ten years ago, when our eldest daughter was in eighth grade, competitive by nature, she stumbled into a bubble-shooter online game and often clashed with her father over computer time. Our second daughter, watching the tension between her older sister and their dad, took it as a warning and never played games at all. Our third child, an ambitious son in high school, began playing online games too. We forbade him from playing violent games like League of Legends and Call of Duty, so instead he played Disney's Toontown, where cartoon characters battle robots — though that, too, often led to unpleasant clashes with us. Seeing his older brother's situation, our youngest son took it as a lesson and didn't play online games either, channeling his interest into reading and a 3D printer instead. His thoughtfulness and maturity became our greatest comfort. Every child really is different — the same upbringing can produce entirely different results.

No Escaping the "Team Battle"

When our third child first played Toontown in fifth grade, the game was still offline. Later it became an online game. Many parents found their children playing far too long each day, unable to stop, and parents of elementary schoolers protested loudly enough that the company was once forced to shut the game down — so he stopped playing too. Who could have guessed that half a year later, the game relaunched in a revamped version, limiting each account to three hours a day, after which you had to wait until the next day or queue to get back in. He had only just broken free of the online game's snare, and now he was invited back into a group — and that's when our family's nightmare began. At dinner he was always sluggish; chores he was supposed to do kept getting put off, until his younger brother ended up doing them for him, or he'd only pick the easy ones. His temper grew short, he sometimes cursed, and little by little, things came unraveled.

One time he even complained to us, feeling wronged, saying we ought to be grateful to have such a good son — other kids played games full of fighting and killing, and he was the only one obeying his parents by not playing violent games, which was exactly why he’d chosen Toontown instead. The teens he knew were already playing that kind of game; for him, this was purely recreation. His father was so worked up he just shook his head. I held back from responding right away, and instead saved this maddening issue of online gaming for our regular weekly Family Time.

One evening after dinner, we held our usual Family Time and discussed how exactly to set rules around online gaming. Our older son said a lot of his classmates played, so naturally he wanted to as well — it was part of their teenage subculture; the higher your score, the more people admired you. If you didn’t play, you’d have nothing to talk about with your peers, and classmates would tease you for having "no life." Curious, I asked why his younger brother didn’t play online games. He said it was because his brother’s scores were so bad he just couldn’t keep going. Our younger son told me that almost the whole class spent lunch break talking about which game was fun, and that he and one classmate of Korean descent were the only ones who talked about electronic gadgets instead — which just shows how attractive online gaming really is. To keep our son from becoming addicted, we discussed together how to set new rules for computer time. We agreed on two hours a day, with the computer shut off by 11pm at the latest every night, and as little playing as possible on weekdays unless homework was finished with time to spare. Our son also agreed to keep a record of his school agenda, so we could confirm his assignments were actually done.

Talking it through with our son helped us understand that online games really are more addictive than offline ones, because they're usually played in team battles of four to eight people, each lasting at least ten minutes, sometimes half an hour or forty. If you quit partway through, everything you'd played was wasted, it hurt the team's outcome, and teammates naturally complained. In fact, to keep players hooked, game designers keep rolling out upgraded versions that give you a small reward roughly every ten minutes, shown immediately through data and visual effects — compelling you to keep playing almost against your will, chasing the sense of accomplishment when you finish, riding the emotional highs and lows of team battles, and forming tighter bonds within that virtual world. Offline games, by contrast, can be stopped anytime you choose.

There Are Ways to Prevent Internet Addiction

To help our son gradually break free from online gaming's hold on him, whenever his classmates came over I'd find a chance to chat with them, find out whether they had a habit of gaming online, and let them know they were welcome in our home — but online gaming was not allowed. This time, watching our third child slip back into online gaming struck my husband and me with just how immeasurably damaging it can be to a family and its children. To keep him from having too much unstructured free time, drifting off to daydream about that exciting, noisy game world, we tried to spend more time with him doing things he enjoyed — the two brothers playing ping-pong, or the whole family playing board games — creating more opportunities for him to connect with real people.

How can we prevent our children from becoming absorbed in online gaming?

First, we suggest parents place the computer in a common area or a study, so they can keep an eye on their child's online activity at any time.

Second, set up parental controls. Windows 7, for example, lets you set which hours of the day the computer may be used; Windows 8 can log how many hours it’s used each day; and Windows 10 lets you configure both controls online, with the ability to monitor remotely.

Third, configure devices such as laptops, tablets, and phones on your modem and router to control their internet access hours. Beyond limiting screen time, you can also block access to inappropriate gaming and pornographic sites. In short, using the open communication of Family Time to discuss computer-use rules with your children early on can lower the risk of internet addiction and guide them to be the masters of the computer rather than its slaves. Interact with your children more, bring them close to nature, and let their offline life be rich and full, so they grow into maturity rooted in truth.

Eight Warning Signs of Internet Addiction

Psychologists point out that if someone shows five or more of the following eight signs, they can be provisionally diagnosed with "internet addiction disorder." If, on top of that, their weekly time online exceeds forty hours, the diagnosis becomes even more certain, and professional treatment is needed. The eight signs are:

1. Being completely preoccupied with the internet or online activity, continuing to think about going online even after logging off.

2. Feeling the need to spend more and more time online in order to feel satisfied.

3. Making repeated efforts to control or stop using the internet, but always failing.

4. Becoming depressed, moody, or irritable when trying to cut down or stop using the internet.

5. Spending more time online than originally intended.

6. Risking damaged relationships or growing indifferent to academic performance for the sake of being online.

7. Having lied to family, friends, or others to conceal the extent of one’s involvement with the internet.

8. Going online to escape the helplessness, guilt, anxiety, or depression brought on by other problems. This condition is spreading rapidly worldwide; internet gaming addiction has already been included in the American Psychiatric Association’s research criteria, and the medical community is currently conducting related research — in the future, internet addiction may well be classified as a mental disorder.