In the 21st century, it is difficult to imagine life without a computer. Virtual reality has firmly established itself in our home, and every day it captures more and more people. We are attracted by incredible opportunities, fantastic prospects... When the passion for games and the Internet goes beyond reason, when a person does not eat, almost does not sleep, and what is happening on the other side of the monitor becomes more important for him than what is around, we can talk about a painful addiction. Doctors call it computer addiction, gambling addiction. It is especially alarming if a child becomes a prisoner of virtual reality.
It usually starts in one scenario. Moms and dads, hoping to get an hour and a half of free time, give the kid a tablet or phone. The offspring is busy, the house is quiet, the adults are happy. Then the grown up child masters the Internet and realizes that it is much more interesting there than in ordinary life. And after a few years, parents do not know where to look for help, what to do with the child's obsessive craving for high technology.
And their fears are not unfounded: the child is not interested in studying, does not want to walk with friends in the yard, does not dream of going to the sea in summer, does not help with the housework, and sometimes forgets to eat and does not sleep well.
Let's try to figure out together what computer addiction is in children and adolescents - a disease or just a hobby? What to do to prevent its appearance? And what if your child is already addicted to virtuality?
Diagnosis or hobby?
There is no consensus on this matter yet. The International Classification of Diseases does not contain a diagnosis of "computer addiction", although the question of including this term in the list is raised annually. But many doctors are inclined to consider computer addiction as a disease, along with alcoholism and drug addiction. An experiment was conducted in Germany, during which two dozen people were shown screenshots from their favorite computer games. The reaction of people turned out to be identical to that observed in alcoholics and drug addicts when they are shown a bottle of alcohol or a dose of drugs.
According to statistics, 12 out of every 7000 people are addicted to online computer games. 19% of the 250 million Facebook users admitted to feeling addicted to gambling.
Online games are the most addictive. In 2005, a teenage girl died of starvation in China. She played World of Warcraft for several days. A year later, in Bashkiria, a 17-year-old boy died of an epileptic seizure caused by playing for many hours at the computer. The sad statistics can be continued further, because such cases have recently occurred more and more often.
It is no secret that schoolchildren who have outplayed bloody "shooters" can arrange carnage in real life. Shootings and massacres are occasionally organized by American and Japanese schoolchildren.
Passion for computer games in itself is not dangerous. But when does it become addictive? The main signs that your child is a gambling addict or a victim of Internet addiction:
- He began to communicate less on abstract topics.... All conversations are around your favorite game.
- He is not interested in studying, he has stopped attending the sections, or is doing it extremely reluctantly.
- The child spends all his free time at the computer. Any attempts to force him to turn off the technique lead to a scandal. Parents' attempts to limit the time at the monitor cause the child to cry, rage, and hysterics.
- The child became more irritable his mood often and for no reason changes - from excitement he easily passes to a depressive blues.
- He does not know how to control his time spent at the computer. He says that he will play for two hours, but he can sit much longer.
- The child stopped taking care of himself - without a reminder, he may forget to wash, brush his teeth, change clothes.
- He has no friends left. He hardly communicates with anyone.
- Your child has "memory gaps". Short-term memory suffers, he may not remember what he said or promised a few hours ago.
If you find at least three matches on this list, this is a reason to take urgent action. There are now special tests on the Internet that allow, after filling out the questionnaire, to understand how great the risk of developing computer addiction is. They are largely subjective, and do not allow one hundred percent diagnosis, but a general idea of the problem will help to formulate.
Causes
Almost all children like to sit at the computer. But why do some develop addiction while others do not? Why is it easy for some children to do behavior correction while others find it difficult? It's all about the personal characteristics of your offspring - his temperament, level of self-esteem, type of organization of the nervous system.
If a teenager is not confident in himself, he has little communication outside the home - with a great degree of probability he can become addicted to online communication. There he will find what he lacks in life.
Children with a high level of anxiety and fears often "get hooked" on heroic computer epics. They like to identify themselves as the omnipotent character of the game, who kills hordes of monsters with one left. In this case, the child, as it were, compensates for the lack of courage and decisiveness in reality.
Game developers know all this very well, and every year they are improving their product more and more - high-quality sound, 3D graphics, the effect of presence ... Everything is created to make a person feel “for real” inside the game. Children's psyche is more labile, it is easier to captivate them than adults, they more quickly believe in what is happening. That is why for every adult suffering from computer addiction in our country there are now more than 20 children with the same problem.
What's really going on? The child ceases to perceive the world as before. As computer addiction develops, he loses his best human qualities - empathy, love, honesty.
Most of all addiction to gadgets are subject to:
- Attention deficit children. Parents devote little time to them, and then their peers ignore them. The best prevention in this case is love and participation in the child's life.
- Children are choleric and children are melancholic. Their worldview is special even without computers. Guys with such temperaments are easier than others to "get used" in the proposed circumstances.
- Children from “problem” families. We are talking about families where domestic violence is practiced - scandals, beatings, coercion into something. And even if another family member is the victim of violence, the child will psychologically seek to escape from this uncomfortable reality to another. Why not virtual? The same partly applies to families where the parents have recently divorced, and it is still difficult for the child to accept the changes.
- Children who are not accustomed to save time. If a child has not been taught how to manage his time rationally since childhood, then by the age of 10-12 he has too many free minutes and hours. He sincerely believes that the responsibility to clean the room or take out the trash can be postponed for later. It's much more interesting to spend time in virtuality. Without parental control, such children will not hit the housework, but they will sit down at the computer with great pleasure.
- Children with complexes. A girl who does not like her own appearance has a chance to become a beautiful warrior in a computer game. A shy and timid boy manages to be a hero - a winner. The game fills the voids in the child's soul, and gradually he ceases to be himself, but becomes a character in the game.
Effects
Computer addiction can lead to very dire consequences:
- Social isolation, lack of the child's ability to communicate and negotiate.
- Nervous and mental personality disorders - psychosis, clinical depression, hysteria, schizophrenia.
- Difficulty learning, lack of motivation.
- Associal behavior, lack of understanding of the boundaries of what is permitted, including the law. As a result, the child can become a criminal.
- Diseases: gastritis, impaired posture, hemorrhoids, chronic fatigue syndrome, exhaustion of the whole organism, gastric ulcer and duodenal ulcer, myopia, glaucoma, dry eye syndrome, hyperopia, display syndrome.
Help
There are several ways to help your child get rid of computer addiction. But the degree of addiction should be considered. In some cases, parents can help their child on their own, and in some they need the help of specialists.
Educational conversation
A great way at the very beginning of addiction. It is important to understand the causes of addiction. Why is the child on the other side of the monitor better off than with you? The most common mistake is to start lecturing about the dangers of a computer, to scandalize and appeal to the child's conscience. This will only annoy him. Try to become a "companion".
Spend the evening with your child in his favorite game. Play with him, chat. Let him tell you about all the characters and their capabilities. In the course of the virtual adventure, gently elicit from the child why he likes to be this hero and not another? Why does he need so many weapons? Who is he fighting with? Contact will be established, perhaps not the first time. But when you understand for yourself what attracts your son or daughter in the game, you will be able to plan his leisure time a little differently, including in it the missing one.
Psychoanalysis
Today, it is the most common way to combat computer addiction in both children and adults. An experienced psychoanalyst will help reveal the true deep reasons for leaving for another, virtual world. Sometimes, after just one session, the specialist will unmistakably determine which family problems, personal complexes, and moral traumas push the child into another space and dimension. Parents are encouraged to participate in therapy.
If you take the whole family with a sincere desire to change something in your life, then the result will be positive. The main condition is that parents must be ready to make changes in their own way of life, in their habits and character. Psychoanalytic services are not cheap. But this method is effective when the addiction has long passed the initial stage.
Hypnosis
Psychotherapists began to treat computer addiction using hypnosis about ten years ago. Sufficient experience has been gained. The hypnologist puts the child into a trance (with the consent of the parents) and gently gives him psycho-attitudes towards indifference to computer games and communication on the Internet. Something like this is coded for alcoholics.
but don't think hypnosis is a panacea. Firstly, not all people succumb to hypnosis, and secondly, the symptoms of addiction may disappear, but their hidden causes will remain. And then the child, from whose life computer games have gone, will begin to fill the voids with something else. Not the fact that something good and useful. Computer addiction can be replaced by other pathological conditions - from theft to drugs.
Medication
Often, drug treatment is used to get rid of computer addiction (especially in the "advanced" stages). Prescription drugs are prescribed by a doctor. Usually, this happens when a child is diagnosed with personality disorders, depression, anxiety. The specialist prescribes antidepressants, sedatives.
It must be said right away that pills and injections alone cannot get rid of computer addiction, since they again treat the consequences, not the cause. Whatever one may say, one cannot do without psychological help and rehabilitation. And the use of psychotropic drugs has never brought much benefit to the child's body.
Psychologist's advice
- If you find a computer addiction in your child, don't panic. You can scare him with your reaction and drive him even deeper into a detached state. Analyze the situation and make a plan for getting out of it.
- Don't scream, don't blame your child. It's not his fault. In the end, didn't we ourselves, once gave him a gadget to keep him busy for a while? Take responsibility and be patient. Computer addiction does not recede quickly.
- Find a good time to chat with your son or daughter. Look for the reason for his voluntary departure to virtuality.
- Offer your child interesting ways to spend their leisure time. Remember, they must be in tune with the cause of the addiction. If a timid child is carried away by games to feel omnipotent, send him to the boxing section, karate, organize a parachute jump. If a teenager lacks thrills in everyday life, offer to go and play paintball together on the weekend or take part in an interactive quest in reality. They are now common. There, the child will be able to feel like the same hero, but for real. If your son or daughter has problems with communication, enroll the child in a theater studio, dance classes, anywhere where the principle "we are a team" applies.
- Set goals for the addicted child. And gradually teach him to set goals on his own and go towards them.
- You should not forbid him to sit down at the computer or take away the gadget from him, trying to wean him off the tablet by force. This will cause aggression and resentment. And these feelings are not conducive to establishing contact.
- Outline your child's responsibilities... Lessons, cleaning, dog walking, garbage removal. Don't be afraid to overload it. No one has ever died from household chores. Reward for what you have done, but not extra time at the computer. Install the incentive system yourself. What could it be? A little money that a child can save up for their dream sneakers or whatever they want.
- Computer addiction is rapidly growing younger. If 10 years ago 14-16-year-olds suffered from it, now you can meet mothers who complain that they cannot kick out their 4-5 year old baby because of the monitor. If the child is not yet 10 years old, try to strictly dose the time spent in the game. Desirable, no more than half an hour a day. And the best thing is to find an alternative activity, the computer is not the best toy for young children.
- Be prepared to change yourself. Together with your child, you will jump with a parachute, learn roller skating, go fishing or dance. Remember that he cannot cope with addiction alone.
- Don't relax. As in the treatment of alcoholism or drug addiction, the patient may experience relapses, breakdowns. Just about, it would seem, it was possible to distract the child from the "tanks" and "war", but you quarreled, and he again moves away, trying to hide in the game.
You need to know the enemy by sight
Parents whose children are overly addicted to the Internet and games need to know which games are the most addictive and crippling.
In this list, according to experts, The Sims, horror Five Nights at Freddy’s, Second Life, Prototype, Left 4 Dead 2, Fallout 3, Splatterhouse and World of Warcraft. Recently, children and adolescents are heading into "World of Tanks».
"Tanks" are not as bloody as "Splatterhouse", where severed limbs, skin stripped from enemies is the norm, not fanaticism, but they have their own nuances. The game of "Tanks" requires financial investments - after all, the technique needs to be improved ("pumped")... Where will the child get the money? That's right, the parents. And if they do not give it, then it can steal from outsiders, since the desire to have the coolest tank at this moment is stronger than common sense. I saw adult men who "invest" most of their income in tanks, not thinking that they have families, children, obligations. What about teenagers? Take the time, ask what your child is playing, try to play it yourself, get to know the enemy as much as possible.
If your child has an Internet addiction, you need to be on the lookout every day. Fraudsters, pedophiles, perverts of all stripes have lately been waiting for children not in the alley at home, but on the Internet. See which social media groups your child is in. Did he fall into the so-called death group? These are communities where teenagers are trained to commit suicide. Are there any adults you don't know among his contacts?
For the code of safety on the social network, see Dr. Komarovskoy's School.
It would be unfair to write down all computer games without exception as malicious. Of course, there are educational games that develop logic, thinking, memory.
So, my eldest son once studied the English alphabet. Winnie the Pooh from the game marked 3+ helped him with this. When I noticed that my son in grade 3, instead of lessons, was concentrating on destroying another batch of bloody zombies in Left 4 Dead with a shotgun, and when asked where we would go on the weekend, he answered: “Can I stay at home?”, The question was posed bluntly - either now or never. By that time, the son, by the way, weighed under 70 kilos, was obese in the first stage, and did not want to go to any sections in principle. As soon as he turned away, he grabbed his dinner plate and went to eat at the computer. As a gift for the holidays, I asked for a new game or another disc with the continuation of the game ...
So I brought him to a cadet school, where he put on a military uniform, learned to run and pull himself up, jump with a parachute and disassemble a Kalashnikov assault rifle. At first, he was capricious, of course, incredibly, suffered and complained. When in the fifth grade he announced that he would be a military man, we were hardly surprised. Now he is 17. He graduated with honors from the Stavropol Presidential Cadet School. She studies three foreign languages. This summer he intends to enter a higher military school. His dream is to become a scout.
Peers who spend their free time playing computer games, calls them a not very printed word and wonders how he himself could sit at the computer for so long. Now I am grateful to fate that I was able to discern the symptoms of the onset of addiction in time, and quickly block it. Now I'm looking at my middle son. So far, there is no talk of addiction, but I am always ready.
Other extremes
Once an old friend called me and burst out with a long and detailed text on the topic "How to live further?" Like, "this fool" will not achieve anything in life, because apart from the "computer" he does not need anything. He spends all his free time there and does not want to hear anything. It was about her 13-year-old son. My imagination immediately drew the darkest images, and I promised to drop by the other day and talk to the teenager.
Misha greeted me with a dull semblance of a smile. It was evident how exhausted he was by the constant reproaches and even tantrums from his mother. I went to the table and, to my surprise, found books on programming and graphic design on it. A few questions were enough to understand that the child does not play at the computer. He works for him. With great difficulty, I was able to convince him to at least slightly reduce the time spent in front of the monitor, and my friend - to leave the teenager alone. Now Misha is studying at the university and will soon become a programmer. He is already a recipient of a presidential scholarship and a frequent visitor of all kinds of IT events and gatherings of an all-Russian scale.
Conclusion - do not rush to label the child with the labels “gambling addict”, “addicted”, “sick” ... Understand, understand what your child wants and dreams about... Whether he is addicted or not, you will understand pretty quickly, and spoiled relationships and broken contact with a teenager will still cause a lot of trouble. The main thing is to love the child, to accept him with all his oddities and hobbies. But at the same time, love does not go blind and in time to discern the symptoms of impending disaster. If computers have already begun to "consume" the identity of your son or daughter, do not hesitate to ask specialists for help.
Communicate with the parents of other children who have fallen into tenacious virtual paws, share your experience. It is possible and necessary to overcome this dependence. But this can be done only by all together, by joining efforts.
Watch the following videos from GuberniaTV and Channel One about computer addiction in children.
