Gaming. Is it good or bad? We live in a world where digital gaming starts as early as infancy and goes through adulthood. (A man recently sued a gaming company because he became addicted to the game and lost his job.) No doubt there are many positive aspects of digital gaming too. Positive or negative, this ever increasing phenomena and the access our children have to it isn’t going away soon. (Last fall Activision bought the mobile phone game Candy Crush for $5.9 billion. – Yes, billion with a “b.”) How do we as parents approach it? While there are many good resources out there with input on this question, we wanted to give you a few thoughts that are maybe outside of the normal ways to approach gaming as a parent, especially if it is becoming too much a part of your family’s life. Obviously if your teen is playing games to the exclusion of responsibilities, physical activity, good communication with others and so on, gaming is too high on the priority list. If gaming has become your go to resource to keep your teen out of trouble, off the street, or away from unwholesome friends and if you’ve come to rely on it as a babysitter of sorts, gaming may be too high on your priority list. Here are 3 ideas to help you counteract the gaming and replace it with some other activities that bring much better rewards than an extra life, a new spiro-zapper to kill the zombies or a bonus round.
The good thing is that your teen will desire to help in these ways because one of the truths about our gifts is that God has wired us to want to use them. Now, laziness may be another problem, but using our gifts is one of the best ways to beat the flaw of laziness too in our teens because they see results and are energized as they serve.
If you feel we can be of help to you or you are interested in WildHeart Adventure Camp, please contact us today. Here are the other 3 articles on Gaming that we came across recently. They aren’t all from Christian sources, but we felt you’d find them interesting.
Study Finds Video Games May Have Positive Effects on Kids Researchers at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health and colleagues at Paris Descartes University and a number of other European universities assessed the association between the amount of time spent playing video games and children’s mental health and cognitive and social skills. They found that playing video games may have positive effects… Click the link to read more. Certain Adolescent Brains Can’t Stop Gaming. That’s Good and Bad – Here’s Why researchers employed magnetic resonance imaging on 106 boys ages of 10 to 19 — all of them seeking treatment for internet gaming disorder. The researchers then compared the findings to 80 boys without the disorder to see just how their neural wiring differed. Click the link to read more. 10 Things Every Parent Should Know About Gaming A common trick young people pull is to ask extended family members and friends to give them games with higher ratings than appropriate for birthdays or as Christmas presents. If your kids have a generous grandmother or unassuming uncle from whom they typically receive gifts, make sure these folks know what your standards are and how to check ratings. Click the link to read more.
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AuthorMark Massey and WildHeart Adventure Camp Staff Archives
July 2019
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