Staff
A presentation on video game addiction, designed to educate parents on its potential harm, has been planned by the mental health leader for the local public school board.
Tracey Idle is scheduled to make the presentation on Thursday, March 28 at 7 p.m. in the Conference room ‘A’ at the Rainy River District School Board office on Second Street East.
During her presentation, Idle hopes to educate parents on which video games are potentially the most addictive, as well as the causes of video game addiction.
“It will also look at how to identify if your child or youth may be showing signs of an addiction to video games,” she noted.
“And it will give parents strategies for dealing with the potential addiction.”
Although there isn’t much research around the problem of video game addiction, it was identified as a disease by the World Health Organization last June.
For some, video game addiction is a real problem and there are many negative consequence associated with it.
“Similar to any other mental health or addiction issue for students, in particular, it makes it difficult to sometimes even get to school because they’re tired,” Idle explained.
“It interferes with their time for doing school work.”
As well, Idle said it can limit a student’s ability to be mentally present while they are in the classroom.
“It can also have negative impacts on relationships because they’re focused on online relationships rather than true relationships [in the real world],” she stressed.
Physical health can be put at risk, too, when youth are spending several hours of their day in front of a screen.
“It can have negative effects on your sleep and your physical activity levels,” Idle warned.
She is encouraging parents to attend the presentation and learn little bit more about video game addiction, as well as how it can affect their children.
