A growing number of parents are attending support groups to help them cope with their teenagers’ addiction to video games.
The NHS National Centre for Gaming Disorders has seen a surge in enquiries since lockdown as families try to manage their child’s compulsive gaming.
Psychologists say mostly boys aged 13 to 19 are failing exams, stopping sports and closing their bedroom doors for long matches across time zones as a result of their addiction to multiplayer titles.
The Earls Court-based clinic is seeing 80 young patients for sessions of cognitive behavioural therapy, with 20 parents attending support groups amid a “constant flow” of calls in recent months.
Therapy sessions work to control behaviour gradually by encouraging children to take control of their lives and reduce gaming time.
Consultant clinical psychologist Dr Rebecca Lockwood said: “A majority of our young people would wake up and start gaming through the day.
“We started a support group for parents during the beginning of Covid, to help them understand the emotional and neurological effects of this.”
One mother described how she struggled to handle her teenage son’s 18-hour binges playing the online game League Of Legends.
She said: “My son stopped contact with people he’d known from the age of four… he’d become a very unhappy boy.” Riot Games, which makes League Of Legends, did not respond to requests for comment.
The centre’s director, Professor Henrietta Bowden-Jones, said: “These young people, who don’t present with significantly aggressive personalities, become so when the means of gaming is taken away from them.”
For more information, email: ncba.cnwl@nhs.net.
