Kids Addicted to Video Games at Risk of Depression and Anxiety?

Kids who play video games for at least 30 hours a week tend to develop psychological disorders like depression and anxiety, according to more than 3,000 children living in Singapore who were surveyed annually from 2007 to 2009.  The study is led by researchers from Iowa State University in Ames.

Spending time and resources playing games, at the expense of school and social relationships, is termed as pathological video gaming. Kids with such behavior often have trouble interacting with others of same age that aren’t hooked to games. They are also more impulsive. These factors have significant impact to their relationships with their family and friends.

The mental health of kids is apparently affected when their gaming habits become destructive to their life at school and home, and in addition, they experience episodes of depression and anxiety. If not treated these symptoms may become either become full-blown and/or affect their development as they grow into adults.

However, researchers noted that pathological gaming behavior can result from being an outcast in school or at home. In an effort to keep themselves busy withdrawn kids try games and becomes lost in it, said the researchers. Because they don’t develop social skills, game-addicted kids tend to have social phobias.

How gaming contributes to depression and anxiety is unexplained in the study, but such symptoms become reduced once the kids stop gaming. This indicates that if depression were already present before pathological behavior ensued, games can make it worse.

But spending a lot of time playing games does not always constitute and addiction, said by the researchers. But still, the effect of playing games should not to be underestimated\ because if kids are so attracted to games that they talk about it and nothing else, there may also be a problem. Still, parents should be wary when the child doesn’t have the same friends anymore, spend most of the day playing video games and suffers from poor school performance. As much as possible, children should not have more than two hours a day facing media screens from computers, TV and phones, in lieu with American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines.

The results of the study are available online at the journal Pediatrics and will be published in February 2012.

 

Here is a link for more info: