Addiction to Electronic Games

This article is based on a true story. The young man's name was changed.

Dwain's parents thought it was really cute when little 4 years old Dwain could master all those video games. "Mom, Dad!" he would exclaim "I'm at level 10." Or he would yell from his room. "I beat the whole game!" On his birthdays or at Christmas, the top things on his list would be a new game system and two or threegames. Mom or dad would buy them for him. He was so good at it and it wasn't interfering with his grades at school. He had friends, however, they were all interested in video games or Dwain would introduce them to it.

It soon advanced to the stage where Dwain would get up in the middle of the night, after everyone was asleep, to play video games. His parents would make him turn off the system and go back to bed. However, that didn't stop him from getting up in the middle of the night to play the video games. He just figured out ways how not to get caught. He would turn the volume down really low and close his bedroom door so the lights would not shine into the hallway. Boundaries were set for Dwain. If he was caught playing the video games late at night. He would not be able to play for one week.

As Dwain got older, he did his home work and got good grades in school. He was getting student of the week and student of the month quite often. He was, also, becoming more and more involved with video games. He would rather be in his room playing video games than to be outside playing with the other children. He would sometimes go outside to skate board for an hour or so, however, once inside he would return to his video games.

Electronic games were becoming a huge problem in family's life. Dwain's parent encouraged Dwain to join the school band. He liked the idea. He played the trumpet. Since band practice was during school hours. This did not help very much. The parents had to go to plan B. Dwain loved watching karate on T. V.
His parents enrolled him in a local neighborhood karate studio. Turned out Dwain was very good at karate. He was a very fast learner. The Sensei(s) were very impressed with him. He entered most of the competitions and won lots of trophies. He went to class on a regular basic and even practiced at home. He was always the first in class to learn the Katas. Meanwhile he was still on the school band. His school grades were still good. His family believed things were really under control. But they were wrong. They didn't know that Dwain was still getting up late at night playing the video games. This was in addition to the one hour that he was allowed to play during the day.

When Dwain reached High School, he dropped out of band, because High School band required so much of his time. He couldn't do both band and karate. They were both time consuming. After Dwain dropped out of band he used that extra time to on the video games. After he got his black belt in karate, he spent less time at the studio and more time on the games. He discovered an online game. One of those games where you played with live people from different States. He was up late hours at night until early morning playing the games and typing messages to the other players. In this new found game he could communicate with people and play against real people. This was more of a challenge for him.

Dwain was now getting bad grades in school because he was not doing his homework. His parents would take away his video games and systems for one or two weeks at a time. A week or so after he got the system back he would fall back into his old habit of playing too much video. The games would be taken away again. When the game was taken away from him, he would play video games at his friend's house. Sometimes he would play his little brother's system when his parents were not at home. He soon dropped out of karate because he convinced himself that it was karate, not the video games that were interfering with his school grades.

His parents used the bad judgment to keep giving him back the game systems because they told themselves that at least they knew where he was. He wasn't out late at night. He never even tried drugs or alcohol. He wasn't into wild parties. He and his friends were good kids. They were just too hung up on playing video games. The parents kept telling themselves that at least they knew where he was nights. When he spent the night with his friends, His parents knew they were playing video games and not out getting into trouble. They would go to a movie, or out to eat, or play basketball or something like that. His friends didn't drink or do drugs. Therefore the parents didn't want to make such a big fuss out of the video game playing.

Dwain graduated High School. That fall he enrolled in City College. He did well in college for a short period of time. Actually, his parents thought he was doing very well in college. He went to school every day. He joined a club. Naturally, it involved computer and animation and computer games. Dwain began to spend extra time on campus. He was there all day. His parents believed he was spending extra time in the lab or studying in the student lounge or at his club meeting. Little did they know that, Dwain was failing all off his classes. There were video games set up in the student room. He was spending all of his time in the student room, on the video games. He flunked out of school.

He tried another Junior College the next fall, with the intention of doing well in school. However, Dwain could not break his old habits. He was still up late nights playing the online games. He dropped out of school and could not hold his job. Dwain was good at his job teaching karate. However, his online games came first. He would fall asleep after being all night and wouldn't get up to go to work. He finally quit his job.

Dwain is now twenty years old. He tries to attend school and work. However, online games and video games are still his first priority. He still plays online games and video games all night until 4 and 5 a.m. Then he falls asleep and can't or won't get up to go to school or to get a job.

Dwain seriously need help; only he doesn't believe that de does. He is addicted to video and online games. No one can do anything about it because Dwain refuses to believe that he is in trouble. Would kicking Dwain out of the house help him face reality? This is the question his family ask themselves. Even though the parents feel they are partly to blame, they can't help Dwain. It's too late. Only Dwain can help Dwain at this point. He has to realize that he has a serious problem. And work with his family to get that help. For some people, like Dwain, video and online games may become as much as an addiction as alcohol or drugs.