Video Game Addiction in Teens

Over the holiday, my teenager was off school for a week and a half. Like most teens she spent her time talking on the phone with her friends, checking her MySpace account, and looking online for local updates on the WWE website (Somehow, I gave birth to a wrestling fan. Go figure.)

In any event, most of her activities were fairly normal in nature...until Christmas day when I made the mistake of getting her the one thing she wanted more than anything in the world for Christmas - Smackdown vs. RAW for the Playstation. Since that time, she has spent countless hours playing said video game...which led me to wonder, has my daughter become addicted to video games?

In this day and age, I'm sure it's a question that we parents have all asked ourselves at one point in time or another and, surely, we've tried not to worry about it. After all, it's just a video game. How harmful can it be?

Video game addiction is just like any addiction and can be just as debilitating. Like anything else, there are several degrees of video game addiction that can range from moderate to severe, but recognizing the signs early might prevent a full-blown addiction to the Playstation.

The most common symptoms for children are as follows:

n Falling asleep in school

n Not keeping up with class assignments

n Worsening grades

n Lying about video game usage

n Irritable when not playing video game

n Dropping out of social groups or clubs

n Ignoring friends or other social activities

While not every child exhibits all of these symptoms, it should be said suddenly giving up beloved activities in order to play video games or forsaking important duties such as chores or schoolwork for a few more rounds of Super Mario Brothers may be cause for concern.

This isn't to say that video games are the problem. One can no more blame the video game in this scenario any more than one could blame liquor in dealing with alcohol addiction. Some people are more prone to becoming hooked on certain things than others and while it would be convenient to say that all children love video games and therefore, all children will get addicted to them, this is simply not so.