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I've always been addicted to gaming. When I was younger, my parents wisely chose not to purchase a PC, so I would usually play at friends/relatives' place. I assumed it was just how I was.

Now that I am an OK adult with decent life: my playstation just lies there, and its really hard for me to start playing any new game.

I figured that when I was younger, the video games provided an effective escape from the reality of being a child, with never having anything of consequence to contribute (I blame my parents for making me feel this way; even though they were perhaps just ignorant). Games had a structured environment, with rewards for specific actions, rewards that I did not find in my real life with doing anything. The fake medals/trophies were so much better than what I had in real life (which was nothing). It gave me a sense of belonging to a group, or to many groups, something which I did not in real life.

Perhaps this applies only to kids without siblings. But video games were the one place where I could really be happy. When that changed and my real life became more amazing, I stopped playing them. Perhaps thats all that kids want.

I should note that video games were not the only form of escapism, I enjoyed reading Harry Potter for that very reason too.

> Games had a structured environment, with rewards for specific actions, rewards that I did not find in my real life with doing anything

Which is something reality can't provide: short-term rewards disproportionate to the effort made.

I think this is it for a lot of people.

I played insane amounts of video games as a kid. Getting up at 5am before school just to play more Age of Empires. But once as an adult I had other stuff to do that fulfilled my need to build and accomplish things, I stopped playing more or less naturally, except the occasional social game with a far away friend.

Kids have almost zero avenues to build or accomplish things. Their parents don't care or give them meaningful stuff to work on or tools to build stuff with. They might as well be under house arrest.

They have no way of seeing their friends except in-game because they must get their parents to drive them everywhere. Even if they drove to their friends house, they have nothing to do with them except play games.

We fail children everywhere by disallowing them from having meaningful stuff to do.

What kinds of meaningful stuff are kids even capable of doing?

What kinds of meaningful stuff are adults even capable of doing?

What kinds of meaningful stuff are you even capable of doing?

I don't know. What makes something meaningful?

Not meaningful to you, meaningful to them. Mine are currently building weird contraptions out of Meccano, take off on their bikes every chance they get, and playing their instruments without being asked (most of the time). They often actively turn down the option to play video games.

I take the parenting approach of throwing tons of stuff at them, and let them pursue what they find interesting. It seems to be they find meaning in exploring the limits of what their minds and bodies can do, which I reckon is fine for 8 and 10 year olds.

Do you ever restrict them from doing one thing, such as video games, too much?

There was a period when they were 5-7 years old where they did want to play a lot more, and we had to limit it and cut them off. One notable experience: we make them watch their own time limits, and there was a time where they went 20 minutes over, so we banned gaming for 2 weeks, and it hasn't happened again.

It arises sometimes during school holidays, but more often than not, they themselves decide it's time to finish up and go get some outdoors time.

I acknowledge that this dynamic is likely to change significantly when they get a bit older and particularly getting into teenage years, but I don't think we could have done this initial groundwork any better, IMHO. (And another key component is that all screens are in shared family spaces, not in bedrooms.)

Making games instead of playing them, for one. That's what got me into computer science when I was a kid.

"Kids have almost zero avenues to build or accomplish things. Their parents don't care or give them meaningful stuff to work on or tools to build stuff with. They might as well be under house arrest."

I just want to point up how accurate this comment is. I liked PC gaming quite a bit as a child, both building new games (in QBASIC) and conquering professionally designed games. I would find friends against whom to spar via BBS, Usenet, and the web.

Sometime around high school, I found a real-world activity that permitted building. In my case it was a bit odd. I realized that many of my schoolmates were very musically talented, but (at our somewhat dreary public school) had little chance to show off. I built a recording studio and designed reverberation algorithms to make them recordings that sounded as though they were playing in famous cathedrals. Many of them submitted their conservatory applications using these recordings. It was great fun, and taught me the most important rule of business, which is that if you aren't solving someone else's problem, you aren't doing the right thing.

Later, I did programming for the Palm OS and built a company out of that. Then I went to college and indulged in the humanities for four years.

The observation above, viz., that kids (esp. boys) need ways to feel that they've built something valuable, is exactly right.

"They have no way of seeing their friends except in-game because they must get their parents to drive them everywhere. Even if they drove to their friends house, they have nothing to do with them except play games."

Wait, how common is this in States (I assume)? Here in Finland, kids from 6 or so up go around neighborhood on their own, and have yards&parks to play in. We take them there from the start. Moms/dads circles in parks are a thing, here, with the kids playing around them.

Very common. The way post-WWII suburban sprawl has been built in the US, there is almost no place that a child can walk to, in a lot of areas.

Very insightful post, thanks for sharing! I too cannot pick up a controller as an adult despite a childhood filled with gaming. I think my reward system has acquired the concept of 'opportunity cost' and trading time for $$ or spending my (finite) time with friends and family makes gaming as a adult seem less rewarding than when I had nothing better to do as a hyperactive kid. My parents didn't provide any creative outlets growing up and alcoholism made them unavailable to me as it was their own source of escapism.

I wish they took me to museums etc :'( some day when I have kids I promise I will pay it forward and take them to science and history/art museums etc and indulge in what I missed out on as a kid :)

I think the intense focus and obsession over something is only undesirable if it interferes with normal functioning; if you were sleeping regularly, your addiction probably would have been normal. If your addiction had instead been to hacking sites together with php, maybe you would be a multi-millionaire now.

My parents taught me moderation and economics at the same time with computer time cards that were tradable for chores and other things they wanted to incentivize. Then when I got old and rich enough to just buy my own computer I understood the idea of a durable investment paying dividends :D

> If your addiction had instead been to hacking sites together with php, maybe you would be a multi-millionaire now.

That's me. Except for the multi-millionaire part :/

You're hopefully at least employable.

Ehh, I also was addicted to computing in ways that have paid off by allowing me to drop out of college and get an extremely lucrative job. I still regret the years of staring at a computer instead of socializing or garnering an interest in sports. It didn’t ruin my life, but its effect wasn’t straightforwardly positive either.

I'm with you, I can't complain with how my hobbies turned out- I've made a career of it- but I've been playing serious catch-up in fitness & health. I wish I had been exposed to the concept of mens sana in corpore sano earlier.

I've been addicted to games and now addicted to playing soccer, albeit less so probably due to being older with more responsibilities. And I see lots of similarities between the two very different kinds of games and the "addictions" to them. Even health-wise, it's hard to say if playing games all day is worse than getting tackled into hospital. I've met many people who were going for pro-sports when they were younger that destroyed their health and/or hurt their career prospects and had to re-invent themselves.

How do we distinguish what is a healthy hobby/persuasion, and what is an addiction?

> and now addicted to playing soccer

Reminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NwHNHNXsg0

That's hilarious! And it is exactly how I feel sometimes about people ostracizing certain obsessions.

I've thought about this too, and came to the conclusion that being addicted to playing soccer is an order of magnitude healthier than being addicted to playing starcraft.

First, there's the exercise aspect. Playing soccer during the day allows your hormones to be much more balanced and your mind healthier than being cooped up in your room through the night to play video games.

Then there's the social aspect as well. Playing soccer allows you to have real, physical interactions with others and have a sense of community, whereas virtual interactions provide cheap knockoffs to temporarily meet your social needs. Yes, gaming has become more social than ever before, but the lifestyle and culture that form around gaming make it rather difficult to form lasting, meaningful relationships with people that don't just fade away after giving you dopamine rushes.

I just don't think it's easy to have a healthy life when you're addicted to games. It's too easy to say "one more game" until the sun rises.

In my experience addiction is less about the thing you're addicted to, and more about some negative experience / emotions that you're using the addiction to escape.

This. Addiction is a temporary escape from reality, and anything that offers such escape can become addictive: games, Netflix, drugs, training, hiking, social networks, books, etc.

You are correct-most clinicians agree with you. The usual measuring tool is, "does it affect your family, work, or romantic life negatively?" and GP does not show any such signs.

Too true. I really liked the experiments they did with rat park to argue against the skinner model of addiction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park

What about cigarettes?

Escape from not looking really freakin' cool.

Joking, but kind of not. Of course, there's a physical aspect that takes over. But most people start smoking as a teenager, to rebel against, you know, everything like teenagers do, because they're trying to figure themselves out. And the act of going out for a smoke gives you a pleasant little break from whatever you were doing before, which was probably not as much fun as smoking.

> Now, with a son of my own - I am constantly thinking about how in the world do I expose my son to technology but also teach him moderation.

Do you and your partner do anything other than use computers all day?

I work with four 26" screens, and am fairly well glued to my phone when I'm not sitting in front of my work PC.

But I also: run / walk / walk with my dogs; train my dogs; go to the gym; do pole dance / pole fitness classes; am learning to play guitar; am a metal fabricator by trade; ski; rock climb; play kayak polo; garden; cook; (slowly) renovating the house; read / research / write.

I started rock climbing when I was 33, started pole classes when I was 34! I learned to ski last year when I was 36!

Obviously I don't do all of these things all of the time.

Perhaps there are things you can do with your kids other than sit at home staring at a screen?

Also, I think perhaps maybe vlogging would be a cool thing to do with your kids. Public or not, maybe just to friends and family, but I reckon it'd be cool to help kids learn how to record and edit video.

Oh, my. Are you sure you're not addicted to doing things?

Could be, but that list doesn't seem too excessive to me. Normally addiction is defined as doing something to the point where it causes harm.

What's being sacrificed to have the time to do all those things? If it's relationships, that's bad, if it is time that would otherwise be spent on watching TV or refreshing a social media feed, then it's good.

Your worry seems misplaced. Addiction is usually co-incident with some other kind of pathology. In your case, it sounds like your home life was falling apart around you and coupled with a teenager's fairly normal apathy towards school, you just checked out completely, were probably depressed, and began using Starcraft as a coping mechanism.

I went through a really rough break-up in my twenties and got addicted to World of Warcraft. I also started drinking a lot. Once my heart got better, both of those habits went back to normal levels. I still do both in moderation to this day.

I guess maybe there are two lessons here: 1.)Treat the disease not the symptoms and 2.) Blizzard is evil.

>Your worry seems misplaced.

I wish I could agree with you, but I cannot. Industries are hiring psychologists in order to increase the addiction of software (especially videogames) -- perfecting just the right amount of time before a reward is given, tuning the sounds to be "just so", etc. It's hard enough for an adult to resist, with years of defense mechanisms established, in places like Casinos or video games. But now that same degree of subterfuge is being employed for iPad games targeted at toddlers. What can an unprepared child do to resist? A: very little.

It is parent vs. corporation, now, in a battle for the child's mind.

Unsolicited advice: consistently enforced rules tend to minimize fights. Not to zero, but still. It does not really matter whether you limit gaming to an hour a day, only weekends, 10 hours a week, whatever except "never" and except "always". What matters is that you enforce them consistently so that kids learns them and can anticipate them and is not shocked that game is taken away right now.

Agree. My kids are 7 & 9 and love Minecraft. 24 minutes per session, 2 sessions per weekend day is the limit and they abide it without complaint or anxiety. When we first set the limit, it was a holy war, I was the “worst dad ever”, etc.

Now, it’s just the rules. (24 minutes was approximately “one TV show” and we do time it, but if they run a minute or two over, no one flips out...)

The problem with this approach might be that it's not really teaching them to control their own urges. My parents used to limit my gaming to 2 hours a week, and I abided by that rule faithfully until I got old enough. Then I started playing games when they're not home. Then I got to college and became severely addicted to video games to escape my academic anxieties.

Agreed in part, but it’s a process. Still plenty of other ways we teach them to exercise their own judgment and self-control.

I knew people who had nearly no limits and had the same problem later on.

I think that this one can be solved only by teaching kids to do positive/needed things. By that I mean not just limit gaming, but more of teaching importance doing chores, homework, sleep, socialization and other such things. So it is not "stop gaming so you stare at ceiling" but "I did not done homework damm have to can't game yet" sort of thing.

>Now, with a son of my own - I am constantly thinking about how in the world do I expose my son to technology but also teach him moderation.

Same boat here, same-ish history as you. My theory is that having kids use technology is as essential as setting limits and discussing with them the lessons we've learned as adults. I largely gave up video games just a few weeks ago and understanding the effect of those thousands of hours if committed to better things like physical recreation, reading, programming, or something else has given me the perspective to handle it effectively (not getting angry or condescending) when my kids push back on going out or getting off the computer.

>how in the world do I expose my son to technology but also teach him moderation

I have a daughter that just turned one and the anxiety is already starting to set in for me.