By: Lia Contesso
Submitted: 2010-04-12 07:40:39 | Word Count: 507
While some times ago children hoped in a sunny day to be able to play outside, nowadays children are not as interested in the meteorological situation: many games of theirs, in fact, are in the computer.
Instead of the various games with the ball, hide-and-seek and the other classical games, there are star wars, car races and any other kind of games, easy to find in an enormous variety of internet sites: buying videogames, in fact, is no longer necessary: a few clicks are enough to find a huge quantity if free games.
There are studies on the videogames addiction, but prevention, after all, is not impossible: parents need to check the use of the computer on their children’s part; a responsible use can avoid problems of various kind to rise that, if are left to their natural course, can create disturbs that go from the psychological to the physical and practical sphere, such as a-sociality, a fall in the progress at school, sleepiness, headache, etc.
It’s not necessary, though, to get worried if children get annoyed if, while they are playing a particularly involving game, parents call them away: after all, if this is the only “symptom” of addiction, it can be compared to being called while reading an interesting book or watching a good movie. You should get worried, instead, if they get nervous every time they stop playing, if they prefer playing a videogame instead of playing with their friends, if you find them playing by stealth, if you notice reddened eyes or if all their conversations converge on the topic “videogames”.
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Hence, it would be enough for parents to check the usage of the computer on their children part, maybe giving them a time limit: among the thousands of motorcycle, adventure, cooking and other games they can find in internet it’s easy for a child (but, sometimes, even for an adult) to get lost and spend whole afternoons in front of the monitor. With the right limits, on the contrary, games can result useful: in small doses, they can even turn out to be a help to stimulate fantasy, improve reflexes, to relax from small problems in a world outside the reality.
The variety of games you can find in internet gives a wide choice of games for children, suitable for them in terms of graphics and topics; on the parents’ side, the online games are particularly convenient because they are free, avoiding expenses for games that sometimes are used for some hours and then forgot.
Thus, the online game is not to be completely condemned; it is to be limited, but excluding it completely from the possibilities of a child, it becomes even more desirable: one thing in common between nowadays children and the children of some times ago is that the more you forbid a thing, the more they desire it...
