Great Tips on How to Protect Children from Addiction to Computer games

Lee was a student in Grade Two at a key senior high school in Wuhan. By chance, his parents found that he had no more interest in learning, and no long after that, he even ran away from home. Though his parents found and brought him home anyway, the relationship between them was still in tension. However, soon an astonishing thing happened: Lee attempted to wound his father with a knife. This is an introduction of a television program I have read recently, which makes me wonder what extent of deep hatred can lead a child to hold a knife towards his father. My doubts were gone when the program proceeded, and the culprit was the addiction to the computer games.

With the advancing of our society, children nowadays have easier approach to the computer, with which a lot of problems emerge as well. The flooding of information on the internet is mixed with good and evil, and children are likely to be led astray: the addiction to video games, the bad habit to scan porn, unwillingness to study, and so on. If correct measures haven’t been taken in time, it is detrimental to the growth of children. Here, I’d like to share some great ways to protect the children from addiction to the internet, or more specifically, computer games. Let’s take steps to perform a good parental control as follow:

1. Place the computer in the shared room.

Don’t put the computer in the children’s own room. The children should be aware that the computer is not their own property, but a shared thing for the whole family, which could, of course, cut the time consumed on the computer. Meanwhile, parents can encourage children to use it for the sake of study, share good experience with the family.

2. Make a schedule for the children using the computer.

Parents should reach a contract with children through friendly negotiation instead of simple command to make the daily schedule for the children. If they have sisters or brothers, the schedule will help them solve the dispute over the allocation of using time. Parents can also resort to related software or alarms to limit the time consumption.

3. Build their confidence in studying

There is a profound relationship between the addiction to the video game and the achievement in studying. Therefore, lack of confidence is sometimes a major reason for students plunging themselves to the game. Compared with forcing children who addict to the game to give it up, the approach of building their confidence in studying seems more effective. Parents can achieve it by giving detailed instruction on children’s study. Besides, to release the pressure of study, parents should take the children’s interest into consideration and lift their pressure by ways of reading, sports, and talking.

4. Explain the reasons for restrictions on computer games through talking

If the children have played computer games for a whole day, it will dig a gap between parents and children when the parents just reprimand them and power off the computer. Compared with imperiously tearing the children from the computer, it is feasible to talking with them about the strengths and drawbacks of computer games.

Faced with the internet, the two-edged sword, parents should attach enough importance on instructing children to take advantage of it. Only in this way, can we prevent the occurrence of the Lee’s tragedy from happening again.