This post will be a little different then my previous ones.  This was a harder one to write as well.  This will still deal with my kids as well as advice or prevention for others that has to deal with this issue.  I apologize now for the title being misleading, but would you even read this post if it was named Game Addiction.

Game addiction is no different than any other addiction out there except it doesn’t cause death to you unless you are playing games on your phone or even text while driving which I hope you don’t do.

This is a real addiction for kids since they can go hide inside of a virtual reality and ignore the real world around them.  But virtual worlds have real world problems in them.  I have seen this on my Xbox Live account. But that is another post I can write on a later day.

The game companies are trying and they are being successful addicting kids to play their games.  A lot of the games are free to download and play but cost money inside of them.  Buying fake coins with real money to upgrade their buildings or armies or even paying for a game like Call of Duty and then get charged for additional characters or new maps throughout the year.  This can cause someone to pay a lot of money into something that has no value in the real life world.

I big reason kids do this is because they are not liked in the real world or being picked on and they think by going into a game that they can be liked and forget about the real world.  This is not the case.  You lose time of what is happening in the real world and missing a lot of good things.

I know this first hand.  I used to play games every night from the time I got home from work to the time I go to bed as well as on the weekends.  I missed some good points of being a father during this time as well as put strain on my marriage.  At the time I didn’t see this and that is what addiction does to a person.  I was doing this because I thought I had friends in the game and the game was hard to stop playing due to the completion in it.

It took me almost losing everything before I realized what was really was happening. And now I still play games but it is very limited to once a week.  There has been times were there are several weeks that go by before I play on it.  The one thing I learned from this experience is that the virtual world is worse than the real world and the virtual world is full of broken promises and dreams.

Real life is full of adventures and journeys that out-numbered any virtual world ever created.

Did you ever have to deal with game addiction or anything similar to it?  Do you know how much time your kids play online or you play online?  Feel free to leave your answer in the comments and I will respond to the questions you have.

A to Z Challenge Letter G