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

Live and Play in Your World: Stimulus Addiction and the Growing Brain (cont.)

They were excitedly playing a video game they had just downloaded. This father felt lucky to overhear his son, disturbing as it was. He was able to steer the boys to non-violent games, more appropriate for their age and more in alignment with the family’s values.

A mom of a fifteen year-old felt hopeless about what to do about her daughter staying up until two in the morning playing video games and not being prepared for school the next day. By coaching this mom to take the appropriate steps her daughter got back on track—with better grades and a much better attitude. It was a process that took a lot of will power on this mom’s part. She stayed with it, despite difficulties, learning through the PCI Coaching Model (highlight and link to http://www.thepci.org/about/training/coachingmodel.htm ) to reinforce positive behaviors and open up more appropriate possibilities for her daughter.

Gaming, in the lives of too many high school and college students, takes precedent over academics, sports, hobbies, art, dance, and other forms of self-expression. Tournemillie noted that a survey of 1500 teenagers indicated 25% were compulsive video gamers. Fifty per cent of those surveyed used the word "addiction" to describe a friend's gaming behaviors. (2) Because excitement becomes the reward for playing and because the games are set up to reinforce behavior intermittently, they are extremely habit-forming, and even potentially addicting.

It’s easy to get lost in the fantasy world of video game play. Now with hand-held video games children as young as four years old are playing video games—despite experts warning that this could be a very detrimental habit.

Dr. Don Schifrin, a pediatrician with a Seattle area practice and the American Academy of Pediatrics representative on the National Television Violence Study describes video game play as “a definite drug response. When youngsters get into video games the object is excitement. The child, after playing for a while, builds a tolerance for that level of excitement. Now the child mimics drug-seeking behavior…initially there’s experimentation, behavior to seek the drug for increasing levels of excitement, and then there is habituation, when more and more of the drug is actually necessary for these feelings of excitement. There is no need to have a video game system in the house, especially for young children. There is no middle ground for me on this. I view it as a black-and-white issue like helmets for bike safety. If parents want, rent a video game for a day and then return it. Everyone goes to Disneyland for a day. No one goes there daily.” (3)

It’s sobering to realize that such a strong stand against exciting video game play by a respected doctor is not more well known to the general public. With the video game industry dominating the entertainment of children and youth, parental access to accurate information isn’t likely. But it is likely that video game play will “hook” kids into a conditioned stimulus-response.

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