How? Teen collapses after 4 days on Xbox

Sigh!

Some 'rents want to be their child's friend instead of acting responsibly and be the heavy as a good parent should, as was the case here.

jeepers crimy - my daughter is on too long in ONE day and we tell her to go outside and play or to read a book.

I can't imagine allowing a child - granted this kid is 15 and probably should have enough sense at that age to get up and sleep/get a drink/have a life - but at 15 the parent still should have control and common sense enough to stop the behavior - certainly after one day much less 4 days.

Dumb, just plain old dumb.

Nodding.
Gawd knows what they're doing themselves during those 4 days.

The parents were probably playing games too.

On a parenting forum I visit there are a lot of posts by parents complaining about not getting enough time to play since their kids were born, or having to set the alarm to get up early if they want time to play. There are sometimes posts by kids asking how they might get their parents to quit gaming so that they'll pay some attention to them.

Mo has some friends whose parents are serious gamers. When a new game comes out they'll devote days to it.

As someone who enjoys playing video games I speak from experience when I say that they can really mess with your sense of time. Luckily I haven't found a game that grabs me in a long time so I haven't played much. Also, I'm not very good at games so I don't have a hard time putting it aside.

As I understand it, a lot of parents spend hours and hours on Facebook chatting and playing games.

I can't imagine anything that would keep a parent from noticing something like this other than their dealing with some time wasting addiction of their own.

That is sick.

I know I've played wii with my kids, I've never actually played without them.

I think they love seeing me trying to dance with those Just Dance games - they laugh their butts off at me.

They got me to play this other game - some Disney one with all the characters from the Disney channel. They were laughing their a$$es off until I beat their butts on it. Just dumb luck = I kept pressing buttons and moving the remote thingy around without knowing what the heck I was doing.

But that is about what I do with gaming - except here and there tri-peaks.

I've read that video games and gambling involve the same part of the brain.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2061983/Teenage-video-game-players-brains-like-gambling-addicts.html

I'm not much of a gambler. Maybe I just don't have the right kind of brain for it and that helps me to avoid going overboard on video games but I have caught myself saying "just one more try..... okay, one more try.... okay one more try" before so I know how easy it could be to fall into the trap.

There was a news story not long ago about a couple whose baby died from starvation (?) because the parents were so involved in a Sims style online game that they just forgot about their baby.

Found it: http://abcnews.go.com/International/TheLaw/baby-death-alleged-result-parents-online-games-addiction/story?id=10007040#.UCPGuaOrEuc

I agree it's sick.

My daughter has a My Sims game on her ds.

I honestly cannot understand how you could forget caring for your child over a game or pretty much anything - much less than a game.

I too have on a couple of games - they are more like cards or scrabble type word games where I think the same. But never to any where that extent.

I too am not much a gambler. I think it is fun and have played some games - like roulette or slot machines or poker slot machines. But after an hour I get bored.

So maybe I just don't have that sort of brain.

lol yeah I was addicted to mmo gaming in high school, had carpel tunnel so bad I couldn't sleep. You actually get such an adrenaline rush and don't feel like eating/drinking.

In some ways it was better than getting in trouble, and there would be 30+ teammates in your vent/skype channel any time of day from dozens of countries. You get to know each other and there's some community.

It's bad, but so is being beat down and bullied by real people coming at you on a personal level. I think that's worse, if school shooters were addicted to games they'd be too busy to fester that level of hate.

Gaming is what got me into programming, specifically. Which has been the most rewarding aspect of my life. Actually, most game developers start as gamers.

Linkat, I came across this today and thought of this thread:

Brilliant PSA ad campaign! Hopefully its pretty effective.