This article is part of Concentrate's Voices of Youth series, which features content created by Washtenaw County youth in partnership with Concentrate staff mentors. This story was created as part of Voices of Youth's partnership with Washtenaw My Brother's Keeper and the Washtenaw Intermediate School District's summer Freedom School program. In this installment, student writer Aya Ibarisha and student photographer Josiah Meads examine the issue of video game addiction among children.

During the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, when remaining indoors was encouraged, if not outright mandated, many youth turned to video games as a creative outlet in lieu of outdoor play. Years later, some have noticed that youth are spending just as much time – or more – on games, even as pandemic-era restrictions have lifted.

The Voices of Youth journalism project spoke to a social worker and a parent in the Washtenaw Intermediate School District about their observations on whether children are at risk for video-game addiction – and how they spot early signs.

We interviewed a social worker by the name of Justin Harper. Harper is also an English and math teacher at Slauson Middle School in Ann Arbor, where he teaches 7th and 8th graders. 

When it comes to kids and video games, Harper thinks there are pros and cons. He thinks there is no problem with children using their free time to play video games, but when played too long there can be negative impacts like lack of attention and sleep deprivation. 

“What I see is that sometimes kids get too focused on those games, and they're staying up real late at night and then also coming to school very tired, which is actually having an impact on how they do academically," he says.

Harper says that video game addiction can have a very negative impact on other areas of children's lives. He feels that addiction to video games can impact children eating properly. He thinks that when kids display signs of being addicted to something, that’s where kids direct all of their focus, and their energy for other activities is deprived. 

“I've seen some examples in the classroom where kids are staying up late at night, and you'll hear stories from the parents … [that] as soon as they have an opportunity where they think their parents are asleep or parents are actually asleep, they're getting right back on the games,” Harper says. “Some of them are not even going to sleep. I've actually seen this personally and, yeah, it's a negative impact ... and it's just not healthy.”

Harper’s solution to video game addiction is to advise parents to take more control on the amount of video games their child takes in. 

“Even if you have to do it vigorously, monitor what's going on at home with the kids and make sure that they're not playing these games too often,” he says. “It shouldn't be impacting the daily things that are important throughout the day that are necessary. Ultimately, our society is technology. It's always going to be around, so I think monitoring and managing to the best of our ability is a step forward.”

From the parent perspective, Greg Myers, who has four children in Washtenaw County schools, says it can be difficult to find the line between simply playing too many games and full-on dependency. Some of this is because of how technology and children's interactions with it have changed over time – which means parents have to not only build trust with their children, but trust that they can sense their own limits.

“My 7-year-old, she's on her phone; she was born into a world that had phones,” Myers says. “I wasn't. So I think she will have the wherewithal to know and understand how to interact with her phone and not become addicted to it. I think adults sometimes kind of get panicked about things that we don't necessarily know the answers to.”

“But,” he adds, “I would say with my kids, it can become a little overwhelming. Like, they can play maybe too long. And that's why we had to decide to take the games away from them during the school year.” 

Josiah MeadsStudent writer Aya Ibarisha interviews Greg Myers for this story.
Myers says that when he was younger, he played a lot of video games for long periods of time as well – hence why it can be challenging to know when to allow time for long gameplay, and when it does and doesn’t interfere with schoolwork.

“I think it's hard as a parent to know exactly when it becomes an addiction and when it's just playing the game,” he says, noting that it hasn’t reached an alarming level with his children. “... I think if you take it away from them [and] they're very emotional about it, that could be a sign of being addicted. I think that it could be addictive if it's causing negative impacts in their schools or causing them not to have relationships with their friends."

“As a parent, I would start thinking about therapy if it was getting to that point,” he adds. “And give them different avenues so that they're not so emotionally connected to the video game.”

Harper reiterates there are both pros and cons to engaging with video games, and cautions adults to not dwell in the negative.
 
“There are positive things with being [up-to-date] on technology," he says. "[But] there's also a balance to actually getting out there in three-dimensional learning. When you're inside, you might be getting all this information, but a lot of times when you're young, your mind is still developing. So as you're getting this information, are you really learning to use it properly?"

“As a parent, I think that community is important," Harper adds. "I think even if your kids are outside, do you have the community around you that can support and look after the kids? You know, when I was younger, we families were connected to make sure that kids were safe again. I would never be the person to tell a parent what to do because that's their lives and they're going to raise their kids the way that they want. So I think it's just a balance on both sides. But ultimately, some of the critical thinking [and] creative thoughts come mostly from actually being social and getting out there and engaging in real-life experiences.”

Concentrate staffers Aaron Foley and Jaishree Drepaul served as Aya's mentors on this story.

To learn more about Concentrate's Voices of Youth project and read other installments in the series, click here.