More than 164 million Americans play video games with computers, smartphones, mobile devices, and gaming consoles.[4] Gamers aren’t just kids. About 21 percent of gamers in the United States are over the age of 50.[4] With a wide variety of exciting choices and easy accessibility, gaming is a common pastime. With increasing rates of digital injuries, psychologist and GKIS founder Dr. Tracy Bennett saw the need to educate tweens and teens about social media in a fun and engaging way. To help, she created the GKIS Social Media Readiness Course. She also created the GKIS Screen Safety Toolkit for parents to be able to filter, monitor, and manage their kid’s screen activity. Today’s GKIS article discusses grey matter differences found in video gamers.
The Risks of Video Gaming
Excessive use of violent video games can be harmful. Dr. Tracy Bennett’s book Screen Time in the Mean Time: A Parenting Guide to Get Kids and Teens Internet Safe, suggests young children should be allowed the opportunity to socialize in real-life school and groups first before allowing age-appropriate video games, smartphones, and social media.[8]
Video game ratings are also important to follow. Children have immature nervous systems. Exposure to violent video games has been demonstrated in psychology research to increase violence, decrease prosocial behaviors, and be over-stimulating – leading to tantrums, anxiety, and defiance.[8] Playing violent or sexualized video games can also spark child curiosity for other unsafe online activities.
improvements in visual-spatial capabilities, reaction times, attention span, the ability to process multiple target objects, and detail orientation
improved visual short-term memory, mental rotation, tracking, and toggling between tasks
helping with anxiety, relaxation, and mood
improving problem-solving, strategy building, goal setting, and cooperation with others
vocational applicability and can be customized for specific tasks, such as orienting and motivating employees, providing health care benefits like exercise or illness care, and teaching specialized skills like performing surgery or sporting ability
competition in profitable e-sport tournaments
and opportunity for increased confidence, social connection and networking, and self-esteem, especially for players isolated by geographic remoteness or physical or mental disability.[8]
Video Gaming Impact on Brain Structure
Some video gamers also demonstrate changes in brain function and structure. In a 2011 study conducted at Charité University of Medicine, researchers examined the brain volume of 14-year-old video gamers using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).[1] fMRI’s measure the small changes in blood flow that occur with brain activity.[9] fMRI’s are used to examine a brain’s functional anatomy, for example when determining which brain areas are handling critical functions.[9]
Grey matter refers to the brain tissue that makes up 40% of the brain and plays a significant role in normal human functioning.[5] Grey matter helps us retain memories, control movements, process rewards, and regulate emotions, among other functions.[5]
In the 2011 study, researchers found that frequent video game players had a larger volume of grey matter than infrequent video game players.[1] The higher grey matter volume in the ventral striatum area may have helped subjects with faster decision-making and higher brain activity during a rewarding task.[1]
The researchers cautioned that this doesn’t mean video games necessarily increase grey matter. Instead, larger grey matter volume may lead to more video gaming. For example, video gamers with higher grey matter volumes may experience gaming as more rewarding. The reward from play may make learning a habit, skill, or quality easier, leading to even more rewards from playing video games.[1] Notably, other studies by Chinese and Australian researchers have also found that gamers have more grey matter and better brain connectivity.[3]
These research study conclusions appear to be consistent with what is described as neuroplasticity (the ability of the brain to change or adapt over time by creating new neurons and building new networks).[6] Consistently, other studies have found that some games can improve the health of senior players diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.[4]
What Parents Can Do
With ever-evolving video game platforms, psychologist Dr. Tracy Bennett has seen the devastating effects of digital injuries on children and their families firsthand. To help prevent digital injury, she created several online courseslike the GKIS Screen Safety Toolkitfor parents of kids of all ages, the GKIS Connected Family Course for parents with children of elementary school age, and the GKIS Social Media Readiness Training for tweens and teens.
She also offers private personal Coachingand Workshopsto parents who have more questions or looking for additional help tailored for their unique child.
Thanks to CSUCI intern Janette Jimenez for researching Grey Matter Differences Found Among Video Gamers
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.
[1]Kühn, S., Romanowski, A., Schilling, C., Lorenz, R., Mörsen, C., Seiferth, N., Banaschewski, T., Barbot, A., Barker, G. J., Büchel, C., Conrod, P. J., Dalley, J. W., Flor, H., Garavan, H., Ittermann, B., Mann, K., Martinot, J-L., Paus, T., Rietschel, M., & Smolka, M. N. (2011). The neural basis of video gaming. Translational Psychiatry. 1(11), 53–53. https://doi.org/10.1038/tp.2011.53
Like movies, video games have contributed to a massive and diverse industry. The video game market place Steam has over thirty-thousand games available for sale and only 47% of developers sell their games using steam. This article will teach you what you need to know about the diversity in the gaming market, the games that came out of home projects, and what you need to know for you young gamers. Here at GKIS we care about the internet safety of your young gamers and we want to protect them from digital injuries. Check out the GKIS Social Media Readiness Course to prepare your tweens and teens for the dangers they will face while playing games and interacting on social media.
What is an indie game?
A video game can be classified into one of two groups based on who produced the game, AAA games and Indie games. AAAgames are produced by a major company that can back the game’s production with money, personnel, and any other resources the production may need. Indie games are produced by either a small team or a single developer with minimal resources at their disposal. An indie game developer is typically a single person with a good idea and access to game developing software.
A video game is a large time investment for any developer. Large game developers have teams of experts who each work on the pieces of the game resulting in a short production time. Indie developers, on the other hand, typically have minimal resources. They often crowd-fund projects and make sacrifices to release games in a reasonable amount of time. Indie developers tend to rely on social media for brand awareness and marketing.
Well Known Indie Games
Indie games may start out as small passion projects, but well-made games can gain popularity and become just as popular as AAA games. When an Indie game becomes popular enough, AAA publishers may buy the game from the original developer. This allows the publisher to put their formidable resources behind the project and then reap the rewards of the new and improved game. Here at GKIS, we put the formidable resource of Dr. Bennett’s years of knowledge and experience as a licensed clinical psychologist to work to create the Screen Safety Essentials Course. The Screen Safety Essentials Course provides parents and children with access to a comprehensive program that will help families to create safer screen-home environments and foster open communication.
Here are some Indie games you may recognize:
Minecraft
Minecraft is an incredibly popular Indie title, having sold over 200 million copies to date, and was sold to Microsoft the company behind the Xbox game console in 2014. Microsoft has since updated Minecraft with new content, released two more games under the Minecraft title, and expanded the game into other profitable areas such as toys.
Undertale
Undertale is a game that was crowd-funded and released in 2015 with an estimated 5.8 million users. Created by a single developer, this game has reached a level of acclaim that Nintendo licensed one of the characters to appear in one of their own games. The game also has its own line of merchandise and a much-anticipated sequel currently in development.
Among Us
Among Us is a more recent success story of a small social deception game that rocketed into the public eye, and boasted 60 million active users a day at the peak of its popularity. The game was very popular amongst YouTube and Twitch creators, which acted as a very successful marketing campaign. The game has become so popular that, during Halloween, kids were running around in inflatable costumes of the Among Us space suits.
The Benefits of Indie Games
Without a big corporation behind them forcing big decisions, indie developers can make any game they want. For example, Cup Head is an extremely difficult game with an art style designed to be an homage to the early era of hand-drawn cartoons. Some games are designed off of a single weird concept or a specific labor of love based upon an obscure passion.
Most indie developers try to get the funding they need to produce a game using crowd-funding. Crowd-funding is when a designer puts out a concept of a project online and gets funding from the potential fanbase to make the game through a mixture of donations, pre-purchasing the game before development begins, and additional benefits for backers of the game. Benefits can include anything from your name in the credits of the game as a backer to having input into a part of the game or a character in the game being named for the backer. Crowd-funding allows a developer to pool money for a passion project from people who are excited about the game. Crowd-funding success helps to attract investors because it reflects customer interest.
The Dangers of Indie Games
Indie games have been a source of some of the greatest titles of the last two decades, but that doesn’t mean that every Indie game is going to be like Minecraft. Indie games can be whatever the creator wants, and that’s not always a good thing. For example, some developers push the boundary of horror games and explore themes AAA horror would never touch. For example, The Binding of Isaac is one of the most popular Indie games of all time. The game explores themes of child abuse, religious extremism, and child suicide.
Indie games can explore any theme no matter how dark or twisted and the limit to what can be made is limited only by human imagination. That doesn’t mean all Indie games are horror games. But the range of themes available is significantly more diverse than the AAA scene for games.
What does this mean for your young gamers?
Within the gaming industry, Indie games are incredibly diverse. The diversity of genres and topics can create games that range from poorly made first attempts to truly frightening horror games and all the way to amazing successes like Minecraft.
So, what can you do for your young gamers online?
Read the summary.
If your child wants to get an Indie game it will often come from a website that allows developers to post and sell their games. There is a store page on Steam associated with a game that will give you a description of the plot, gameplay, pictures of the game, and reviews from people who have played the game. This will allow you to make an informed decision if this game is right for your child.
Our family course is designed to bring your family closer and get your kids working with you to stay safe on the internet. Our connected family course is outcome-based and will help you close screen risk gaps and increase family closeness and cooperation.
YouTube
You can often find YouTube creators that have recorded gameplay of popular new Indie games. If your child wants to play the new game their favorite YouTuber is playing, watch one of their videos with them. It’ll show you what kind of game your child is looking at, and you’ll get to hang out with your kid while you do it.
Thanks to CSUCI intern, Jason T. Stewart for researching advances in the video game industry and co-authoring this article.
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.
Coble, V. (2021, September 30). 10 most disturbing psychological horror indie games. CBR. Retrieved November 20, 2021, from https://www.cbr.com/indie-games-disturbing-psychological-horror/.
Curry, D. (2021, November 11). Among us revenue and usage statistics (2021). Business of Apps. Retrieved December 4, 2021, from https://www.businessofapps.com/data/among-us-statistics/.
Curry, D. (2021, November 11). Minecraft revenue and Usage Statistics (2021). Business of Apps. Retrieved December 4, 2021, from https://www.businessofapps.com/data/minecraft-statistics/.
Donnellan, J. (2021, June 8). 50 best indie games of all time. Cultured Vultures. Retrieved November 20, 2021, from https://culturedvultures.com/best-indie-games-all-time/.
G., D. (2021, November 1). 45+ video games industry statistics, facts, and trends for 2021. TechJury. Retrieved December 4, 2021, from https://techjury.net/blog/video-games-industry-statistics/.
Lowry, B. (2017, November 29). This is what sets ‘indie’ and ‘AAA’ video games apart. Windows Central. Retrieved November 20, 2021, from https://www.windowscentral.com/indie-vs-aaa-which-type-game-you.
Mikolić, M. (n.d.). Undertale stats by Playtracker Insight. stats by Playtracker Insight. Retrieved December 4, 2021, from https://playtracker.net/insight/game/1122.
Oddo, M. V. (2021, August 2). What’s an indie game anyway? Collider. Retrieved November 20, 2021, from https://collider.com/what-makes-an-indie-game/.
Video games have come a long way since Pong was first released in the 1970’s. Advances in gaming technology can enhance the experience for adults, but for children more realistic games are harder to distinguish from reality. At GKIS, our Social Media Readiness Course is designed to prepare your tweens and teens for the unexpected dangers of video games and social media sites. Our course is backed by Dr. Bennett’s years of experience helping tweens and teens who have already suffered digital injury from the unforeseen dangers found online. In this GKIS article we will cover the evolution of graphics and the steps gaming companies take to make games seem more real.
Video games Are Evolving
Video games are based in technology, and since players got their hands on Pong there has been a push to
advance that technology. Originally, video games were played using bulky arcade cabinets. The first home consoles were very restricted by their hardware. Games were flat and involved a character moving around the screen like a piece on a board. This all changed with the introduction of 3D graphics in the early 2000s. For the first time, video games had physical depth and the characters on screen moved more like a real person would.
Video games are striving every year to create a more realistic virtual environment. Games now have wind that moves individual leaves on tree branches, light that dances across the surface of the water, and characters that look real from a distance. Modern video games have advanced technology to foster a sense of extreme realism and maximize immersion. With such engaging digital experiences, it is important that children are provided with boundaries so as to prevent screen-time overload and digital injury. Our Screen Safety Essentials Course grants you access to weekly videos with parenting tips and coaching from Dr. Bennett that will help you pull your child out of their digital world and back into ours.
Motion Capture
It can be difficult to program a character to move in a realistic way. The awkward way early 3D characters moved unfortunately hampered immersion. Recently, the gaming industry began to use motion capture technology to solve this issue. Motion capture is a technique whereby a real human being is recorded in a studio as a program captures their motion and applies it to the game character to make the movement look as real as possible.
In a game called LA Noir, you are a 1940’s detective. One of the major objectives of the game is to interrogate suspects and solve crimes. For authenticity, developers created the characters with real facial expressions. The game used an advanced motion capture system to record the real facial expressions of the voice actors portraying the game characters. Players can tell what a character is feeling or if they’re lying based on facial expressions alone. The game uses very real human empathy and natural social cues as a part of the game, offering deeper immersion and better quality overall.
Real Game with Real Fear
Realistic graphics are fascinating when they’re used to make a character blink and breathe like a real person. Immersion is the goal, especially in horror games. Early horror games were limited in what they could create by the consoles of the time. However, as modern technology has evolved, new possibilities have opened for the horror genre.
Games can include motion-captured characters with realistic looks of fear and pain on their face. Horror games originally wanted to compete with the horror movie industry, but horror games now have the ability to do more than movies ever could.
For example, a game called Dead Space takes the classic zombie movie genre and sets it in a futuristic space station. An alien artifact mutates humans into nearly unkillable monsters. The game makes great use of body horror to drive home the alien nature of these dead humans. Body horror is a type of horror derived from twisting the human body into unnatural shapes creating nightmarish monsters. Our mind still sees that the monster is technically human, but is terrified by how wrong it has become. For example, in Dead Space, the zombie you are tasked to fight is a human with an open chest cavity and arms twisted in unnatural positions with sharpened bone where hands used to be. The key feature is that they still have a human face attached to the monstrous form to remind you that they used to be like you.
Immersion in horror games
The main thing horror games have over movies is the personal nature of the narrative and fear within. A zombie movie may be scary to watch as your favorite character fights for their life. However, an immersive game like Dead Space can make you feel like you’re the one fighting for your life. The immersive narrative attempts to draw you into the character’s shoes and, for the time you play, you can believe that you’re really in danger. The narrative takes on a whole new depth as suddenly you’re the one backed into a corner with only a handful of ammo and your wits.
Another dimension is that a game doesn’t guarantee a happy ending. When you run out of ammo, you know that you’re the one who’s going to die. Often when a gamer talks about an experience with a horror game, they speak in the first person. When I first played Dead Space, I remember the adrenaline rush I got when I had no ammo, because I knew I was going to have to fight my way out with my bare hands. The memory of playing a game differs from a movie because it stores itself as if the player had physically been there.
What does immersion mean for kids?
Realistic video games can be frightening and exciting to play. But at the end of the day, a player can still distinguish the game from reality. The same can’t be said for children exposed to the same things. Children have a harder time separating fantasy from reality.
As video games strive to be as close to reality as possible the task only gets harder. An adult who plays a particularly realistic horror game may have trouble sleeping for a night, but a child will suffer far worse than any adult.
Even outside of horror, we have shooter games that strive for realistic blood and death. Sniper Elite is a game that will follow the bullet fired from a sniper rifle through an enemy to show bones break and organs rupture as the bullet penetrates their body. These advances in immersion are great for taking a player into the world of a game, but only as long as that player has developed enough to pull themselves back out.
What can you do for your young gamer?
ESRB Ratings
Most video games come with an ESRB rating on the box to let players and parents know what type of audience the game is suitable for. If a game is rated for an audience older than your child, the game contains content inappropriate for their age group.
Our Connected Family Course is designed to help keep your family connected in a world separated by screens. Backed by years of psychological research our course is designed to keep your family connected and working together to prevent digital injury.
Play games with your kids
Make sure the game your child is playing is appropriate and get some fun bonding time in. You can learn what the game your kids are playing is really like by just spending time with them while they play. If a game is inappropriate, it’ll be hard to hide for long.
Thanks to CSUCI intern, Jason T. Stewart for researching advances in the video game industry and co-authoring this article.
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.
Walker, C. (2010, December 22). Video games and realism. Wake Forest News. Retrieved November 3, 2021, from https://news.wfu.edu/2010/12/22/video-games-and-realism/.
Discord is an app that allows groups of people to communicate with each other at any time. It has branded itself as being a messaging app built for gamers. If you would like to teach your gamer the brain hacks and marketing ploys built into games, check out our GKIS Screen Safety Essentials Course. This program offers powerful teaching tools through weekly coaching videos designed for parents and the entire family. The Screen Safety Essentials Course encompasses a variety of valuable resources for keeping families informed about the various pitfalls of the digital world in addition to providing tools for fostering open communication and family connectedness.
How long has Discord been around, and how popular is it?
Discord was launched in May of 2015 by Jason Citron and Stanislav Vishnevskiy. In 2020, Discord earned $130 million, with over 100 million active monthly users. Most of the revenue comes from a service called Nitro, which allows users to pay for upgrades to their servers. About 850 million messages are sent every day on Discord.[1]
Getting Started with Discord
Discord requires users to be over the age of 13 before they are allowed to create an account. This is a simple birthdate check and can be easily faked by children under the age of 13. Discord can be downloaded on the App or Google Play stores on mobile or by going to the Discord website and installing the application on a computer. Discord can also be used on any internet browser.
Before letting your child use any sort of messaging app, we recommend our Connected Family Course to help teach your child about the potential dangers of the internet and how to avoid falling victim to them.
Features of Discord
Basics
When a new user opens Discord, they won’t have a lot of options. To get connected with peers, Discord servers have a link that can be sent out that works as an invite. When an individual clicks that link, Discord will open, and they will be prompted to join the server.
In each server, there can be multiple text and voice channels. These different channels can be used to keep larger servers on topic. For example, creating a specific voice channel for gaming is a common occurrence.
Users often have screen names instead of their actual names displayed. This can make it hard to keep track of who you are talking to, especially if other users change their display names frequently.
Nitro
Discord allows users to ‘boost’ a server with Nitro. This gives various benefits to the server and its members, including higher quality audio chat, exclusive and customizable emojis, and higher quality video sharing.
This costs a user $9.99 a month to boost a server. Servers may be boosted by multiple users for improved benefits.
Private Servers vs Public servers
Private servers require users to be approved by a moderator or be given a password to access the server.
Public servers are joinable by anyone.
Many game companies, such as Sims, Call of Duty, Among Us, and Fortnite have public Discord servers for their fans to join.
Private Chats
Discord allows users to individually message others based on their privacy settings. Explicit content can be filtered out at the user’s discretion.
Messages from complete strangers can be prevented completely by changing one’s privacy settings.
Controversies
During its relatively short lifespan, Discord has found itself at the center of several different controversies. Most recently and famously, it was discovered that several members of the 2021 Washington D.C. occupation used Discord to discuss and organize the Capitol Hill incident. Their server was subsequently deleted.[2]
In addition, numerous Discord servers are solely dedicated to the sharing of various types of pornography. Those servers are often easy to find and join, with little age verification required. So long as the user’s account says they are over 18, they are able to join these servers with no issue.
Benefits of Discord
Discord allows individuals to communicate with their friends easily. Discord does not inherently cost anything, so it is appealing to those with a limited budget. It helps the individual feel connected to their friends and gives them a place to chat how and when they desire. If you like a certain game, joining a public discord to talk with similar-minded people can be exciting and fun. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of servers dedicated to discussing video games, movies, books, or even mythology. Discord provides a broad range of groups.
Discord also offers features to protect privacy. Specifically, it provides settings to prevent instances of bullying, spam, or harassment from strangers. Users just need to know to turn them on.
Risks of Discord
Discord presents some apparent risks. The anonymity of users allows for cyberbullying to be very easy to get away with. Children are often targeted by older members of gaming communities. Users may block other users once they feel threatened, but this does little to prevent cyberbullying from happening. It simply prevents it from happening again.
In addition, the ease of access to pornographic content is a big issue. If a child wanted to look up pornography but didn’t want it to show up on their internet history, Discord can provide it discretely. If you are worried about what websites your child is visiting, consider browsing our article on red-light websites.
GKIS rates Discord as a red-light app. This means that children under the age of 18 are not recommended to use this app. We came to this conclusion based almost solely on the ease of access to explicit content. Perhaps with careful parent supervision, it could be considered a yellow-light app. So long as parents are able to monitor what servers their children are in and who they are talking to, Discord has no more risk than texting or Facebook messaging. GKIS encourages parents to talk to their children and make an informed decision on whether or not Discord is appropriate. For help choosing and programming parental controls and management programs, our Screen Safety Toolkit is a comprehensive research guide with GKIS recommendations and special offers and discounts.
Thanks to CSUCI intern Dakota Byrne for researching Among Us and co-authoring this article.
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.
Screen addiction is officially a thing. As a mom and clinical psychologist for over 25 years, I recognized and identified it in 2014 when I founded GetKidsInternetSafe from treating hundreds of families in my private practice. Teaching addiction studies at CSUCI also highlighted the similarities between drugs and screen behaviors for me. Like everybody else, I too was having a hard time chasing my kids off our screens. Honestly, even I was getting lost in my research and on Facebook, losing the ability to chill and read a novel. I started to worry about my family. From there, I wrote my book Screen Time in the Mean Time, offered keynotes and presentations, consulted with tech companies, coached families, built and tested my online courses, and created a weekly blog. And, after all that, the World Health Organization finally confirmed what I’ve been screaming from the rooftops. Big tech creates screen products that are manipulatively designed to trigger the pleasure centers of our brains, and we are, in fact, clinically addicted.
Gaming Addiction
Nearly 60% of parents think their teens are addicted to their mobile devices. In 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) classified gaming addiction (IGD)as a mental health disorder. In the last twenty years, the tech revolution has affected every aspect of our lives. Studies have shown that, for some subjects, compulsive screen use impacts the reward and pleasure areas of the brain in the same ways that alcohol, drugs, and other behavioral addictions do. Screen addiction treatment centers have been popping up in Asia for the last decade and are starting to be in the United States as well. Do you worry your child may be showing signs of screen addiction?
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“Remember, when Betty Ford first admitted she was an alcoholic, we didn’t have people believing it was actually a problem until she came around and talked about her own problems with it. This is a place for people to go for help, and that we hope will help everyone around them stop taking Internet addiction so lightly.”
Kimberly Young (founder of The Center for Internet Addiction in 1995)
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Who is to blame?
Parents
Of course, we have some accountability for what happens under our roofs. Pester power breaks us down, and we allow too much screen use even though we know better. We need a break in our overtasked, screen-saturated lives. We can’t entertain our rug rats 24-7.
Kids
They are so persistent! They CRAVE screen use and are master manipulators. Children are vulnerable to screen addiction because their brains are not fully developed, particularly in the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for impulse control and decision-making. Children who suffer from trauma like bullying, divorce, and abuse, as well as from psychological vulnerabilities like ADHD, anxiety and mood disorders, and autism are particularly vulnerable.
Schools
Schools are increasingly adopting curriculums that require screen use and Internet access during classroom and homework time. Without digital literacy, our kids academically falter. If you are reading this as part of your Social Media Readiness Course, then either your parents or your school are doing an awesome job prepping you to avoid addiction issues down the line.
Big Tech
Screens are programmed to addict us. Big tech, like Google, Amazon, and Facebook, are experts in how to keep us coming back for more. Using secret computer algorithms, our online behavior is studied, collected, and aggregated. This data is used to create and deliver content in the ways our brains will effortlessly absorb it. That translates to targeted ads for clicks and money leaving our bank accounts. Big profit indeed.
The Gaming Industry
The gaming industry made 183 billion dollars last year. Multi-level, high-sensory games, like Fortnite, are intentionally programmed for addictive use. Players are rewarded for staying on and punished for getting off. This keeps kids on-screen, vulnerable to hours of autonomic overarousal. That means they burn too much brain fuel and are left fatigued and in mental brown-out.
The Government
Where is the regulation to protect kids? Are civil liberties really that strong that legislators can’t step in to help parents protect their kids against known harm like online pornography? Or is it that research and treatment organizations can’t compete with rich lobbyists who get direct access to our legislators? Did you know that the advertising budget for Budweiser alone exceeds the entire budget for research on alcoholism and all drugs of addiction?
How common is Internet Gaming Addiction?
Recent studies claim that around 1 – 5% of the US population could be classified as Internet game addicts. It is most common among single young males. Male Internet addiction most typically involves video gaming, cyber-pornography, and online gambling. Women are more likely to show addictive use patterns with social media, texting, and online shopping. IGD commonly cooccurs with depression, anxiety, AD/HD, self-harm, obsessive-compulsive disorder, oppositionality, suicidality, and personality disorders.
Other risk factors include living in the city, not living with a biological parent, low parent involvement, parent unemployment, and not having a reliable friend.
Consequences of IGD include skipping school, lower grades, family conflicts, lack of offline sociality, sleep problems, and unresolved developmental problems. These factors, along with emotional problems, often result in the addict lacking the very resources necessary to break out of the addictive cycle.
What do brain studies say?
Brain imaging studies have found brain changes like those seen in subjects with drug addictions. In other words, the more we play video games, the more our brains change and adapt.
Activation pattern changes that result in brain tissue changes are called adaptive neuroplasticity.
More specifically, subjects with video game addiction show a reduction in gray and white brain matter and reduced cortical thickness in various areas of the brain. The more the gamer plays, the more brain changes. Studies have also found evidence of dopamine release and higher activity in the brain’s pleasure center when playing video games. Heavy gamers have significantly more difficulty calming their emotions and making sound decisions than nongamers.
Thank you to CSUCI Intern, Katherine Bryan for contributing to this article. Screen addiction is real and now universally recognized. If you worry you are seeing red flags in your home, remember that screen addiction is preventable!
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.
