LOL @ "Gaming Addiction".
"We never imagined when our son started playing video games that he would become so addicted that his education would severely suffer, he would lose all interest in spending time with his friends, and his physical and mental health would be at risk."
OK, so I started on 2600 then went to C64. I certainly understand the grades part, as playing games is more fun than doing homework. But my screen time was usually restricted until homework got done (and in some cases Mom would come in and just take the C64 away until I could prove I did everything I was supposed to). I don't get less interest in friends part, as we always wanted to talk about games and one-upping each other.
OTOH maybe it isn't fair to compare Oregon Trail / Ultima 3-4 / etc types of games to the murder simulators like CoD...... but if those had been out when I was a kid I probably would want to play them.
My mom, who was the one who got me into video games (starting with Atari 2600 and the arcade machines of the time), never believed in rubbish like "video game addiction" or "playing violent video games makes kids violent". She was also pretty strict, and wouldn't let me play video games Mon-Thurs (even though the ONE time she let me play video games whenever I wanted (so long as I finished my homework) was the ONLY time in my life I got straight As, which was when I was in 9th grade). As long as I kept my grades up, my parents didn't have a problem buying me video games and computer sh1t.
Video games helped me make a sh1tload of friends throughout my grade school (and college) years. In the schools that I went to, most of the guys in those schools played video games, regardless of what social cliques they belonged to. So I had friends spread out among multiple groups. Video games were like a universal language, and no one loved video games more than me. Everyone knew I was THE video game guy. So I got along with a f*ckton of homeys. I was always talking video games with someone, and games/demo discs/consoles/gaming magazines/PC hardware were always being traded/lent out/sold/copied among most of the guys in school. So if anything, video games improved my social skills and interactions. Shiat, video games are what got me to have social interactions to begin with. Video games didn't make me ignore my friends, it got me friends to begin with, and I was always excited to talk about awesome gaming shiznit with them.
My mom, like Professor Dr. Henry Jenkings at MIT, believed in all the mental, physical, psychological, emotional, etc. benefits that video games could provide to a person, and encouraged our use. My siblings and I were A and B students. What my mom believed is that a parent should be a f*cking parent, and be mindful of what activities their kids are getting into. My mom was always asking us about the games we were playing, and would watch us play (and before arthritis and 3D games, she also used to play
with us). If she had any objections (she almost never did) then she wouldn't allow us to play, simple as that. If video games actually
were addicting, there was no chance of that happening at my house, not under my mom's watchful eye. Know what your children are up to, and discipline them when necessary. I had friends whose parents took their consoles away and hid them. I had one friend whose dad tried everything from taking his mouse and/or keyboard to taking his monitor to removing parts from his PC. My question is, how did the mom in the article let her son get to the point where she wants to sue the game companies for getting her kid hooked some kind of "digital drug"? It sounds to me like the kid has issues that have nothing to do with video games.
