Hello, everyone. I am Jinhee Lee at Korea Institute of
Psycho-education. Many teenagers spend too much time playing computer games or
browsing the internet. When their behavior of playing games is accompanied with
obsession, it can be called addiction. They cannot stand without playing
computer games once they develop obsession. They feel relieved only when they
play computer games and they repeat the process.
Your child may promise not to play the
game for too long or play it only on the weekends, but he or she plays the game
for too long or everyday again and again. This may or may not be the condition
of addiction since you cannot tell whether it is accompanied by obsession and
anxiety or not. Some may play the game
too much without obsession and anxiety.
Playing computer games
or browsing on the internet itself is not a problem. It provides fun and
entertainment and we can learn a lot through the internet. However, when the
behavior is in excess or fixated during teenage years, it may cause
psychological problems such as addiction even in adulthoods.
What type of children would be
susceptible to developing addiction to playing games and browsing the internet?
It could more easily occur in children whose family structure is weak
psychologically. Their parents are likely to have psychological problems or
cannot provide safe and healthy environment for children for different reasons.
Then, children have to satisfy their needs through some other things such as
playing computer games all the time. They replace parent’s
healthy attention and nurturing with playing computer games. When children get
addicted to playing computer games or browsing the internet, they cannot
maintain healthy relationships with family, friends, and other people and
cannot enjoy other daily activities as normal children do.
What
can we do to help children not develop addiction to games or internet? The best
way is to help them build the ability to control themselves and the most
important thing is to help them stabilize their psychology. They can be
achieved through parents stabilizing their own psychology for transferring the
stability to children. Then, children can control themselves based on healthy
psychology and right judgment.
Most parents don’t
understand why they keep playing computer games or browsing the internet and
they just try to stop children from continuing such behaviors. This kind of
approach will only make children find other things to get addicted to. Parents
need to stabilize their own psychology and provide children with healthy
environment where they can find what they like through trials and errors.
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