100 Family Media Literacy Activities, Ages Pre-School through Teen Years

Are You a “High Hopes” Parent?

Attending to Our Children’s Attention Span

Building the Foundation for Resiliency Skills

Live and Play in Your World: Stimulus Addiction and the Growing Brain

Looking for Meaning in All the Right Places

Parenting Today: The World Has Changed, Have We?

Parenting as a Living System

Reading the Screen

Screen Time and Obesity

Screen Violence: Impact on Self as Relational Being

Teaching Children Gratefulness

Live and Play in Your World: Stimulus Addiction and the Growing Brain

by Gloria DeGaetano, CEO and Founder, The Parent Coaching Institute and author of Parenting Well in a Media Age, winner of the 2007 Best Products i-Parenting Award

Video games have become the number one choice for screen entertainment, surpassing TV/DVD viewing and movie-going. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 99% of boys, ages 12-17 and 94% of girls in the same age range play video games. Eighty percent play five or more different genres, with racing, puzzles, sports, and action being the most common. (1)

What they play, of course, determines whether the game is harmful or helpful to their developing minds and spirits. Violent video games focus kids on murder and mayhem—very different from playing a puzzle game like Tetris that supports spatial thinking. However, even a few hours a day of Tetris limits the time a child or teen will spend in other activities. Like too much television time, too much video game time limits other experiences absolutely necessary for normal development.

When kids play action-packed, fast paced, or violent video games, in particular, they increasingly need more powerful images in order to respond emotionally to the game. This is called stimulus addiction. The term "stimulus addiction" describes the habit that is formed as kids seek out more and more stimulating games to hold their interest. Instead of playing in their natural world, kids are spending more and more time playing in the artificially constructed world of video games.

Often kids start out with simple non-violent video games and move into increasingly violent games because violent games are the most stimulating. They require the part of our brain that reacts, rather than reasons. Violent video games focus on the constant need to destroy in order to stay in the game. Violent images increase arousal levels of neurotransmitters (brain chemicals) that excite and entice kids to keep playing. Video games today display more horrific violence, with sharp images and realistic graphics. Words, ideas, and images of brutality not ever imagined to be “entertainment” ten years ago currently fill up much of our kids’ leisure time, habituating them to hyped stimulation in the process.

Although the fast pace and emotionally vivid images of manufactured horror are definitely habit-forming, even nonviolent games can become addictive.

Gamer addiction is real and not easy for moms and dads to deal with. Recently two of my coaching clients expressed major concerns over too much time spent with video games:

A dad of a fourth grader overheard his nine-year old in conversation with a friend:

“I’ll finish her off by ripping out her heart.”
“No, cut off her head instead.”
“But I want to rip her heart out.”
“I want to see her head fly off.”
“Oh, all right, let’s see her head roll. There! Look at all that blood. Cool.”

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Copyright © Gloria DeGaetano, 2009. All rights reserved. No reprinting rights granted without the author’s permission.

For information on receiving permission to reprint this article by obtaining your own PDF version, please click here or contact Gloria DeGaetano by phone at 425-753-0955 or by e-mail at info@GloriaDeGaetano.com