While I'm not a gamer myself in the technical sense of the word, I do enjoy playing certain video games on occasion. Growing up, my first video game system was a Sega Genesis that was given to my family by a neighbor when he upgraded to a Sony Playstation system. This was a big step for my parents, to allow us to have a video game system. They understood the potentially addicting nature of video game playing, so they set and enforced strict boundaries for me and my siblings. Call is quirky, nerdy, or horribly archane, but my parents (thankfully) limited our combined video game, internet use, and television watching to one hour per day.
They monitered our usage of these electronics constantly, setting timers to alert us and them when we had used up all of our allotted time. After that timer dinged, my siblings and I knew that it was either time to go outside and run around or find another inside hobby, such as reading or building a LEGO castle. The limits that my parents places on our media usage helped establish in our minds that there is much of life to be enjoyed outside the electronic world. Currently, there are at least three additional media forms that are vying for the attention (time) of teenagers than were at my disposal in the late 80's and early 90's. The cell phone, the portable gaming system, and the digital music player (which are no longer used for just playing music) are now virtually ubiquitous, and each places demands on the daily schedule of teens.
I say all that not to condemn those who play for more than an hour per day (although I do believe this could be an appropriate limit set by parents). I do believe that boundaries should be set regarding the time spent with various electronic media, and I mention all this to preface this story:
When a 13-year-old Buffalo, N.Y., girl decided to exact revenge on the grandmother who took away her cell phone, authorities say she planned carefully.
Jermea Simmons allegedly waited a week, then packed her clothes, doused her house with lighter fluid and set it ablaze while 10 members of her family slept inside, including her 8-year-old sister who suffers from cerebral palsy. Her step-grandfather didn't make it out alive.
Notice especially these two sentences: "...experts say a small subset of young people are ill-equipped to balance their electronic life with the real world. When their whole world is wrapped up in text messaging or video games, being cut off leaves them frantic."
I know that it sounds ridiculous to many of you that teens could possibly be reduced to a mentally frenzied state by the removal of their phone/ipod et al, but this is a real and dangerous trend, and one that can be avoided if appropriate steps are taken to monitor and limit teenager's use of electronic media.
Lastly, please don't misunderstand my point: I'm not suggesting that if your teenager is a gamer or is constantly texting his/her friends, that you should sleep with one eye open and remove all lighters from their reach if you take away their devices. I'm bringing up the fact that maybe it's time to ask some questions about how much time we allow our teenager's to spend using electronic media.
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