I’ve been meaning to blog about this incident. I’m sure everybody has heard of poor Brandon Crisp, the 15-year-old Ontario teen who ran away after getting in a fight with his parents over the Xbox 360 game, Call of Duty 4. He was found three weeks later, dead in the woods.
Eric was shocked when he heard this since he plays Call of Duty 4 all. the. time. I actually made a joke about it when I was home this weekend because my brother was dying (no pun intended) to go buy Call of Duty 5, and he’s 15. But now that I think about it, it’s really not funny.
In the article it talks about a researcher at SFU who studies gaming and compulsive behaviour. The fact is, more and more kids/teenagers are becoming addicted to their video games every day. Is this really a horrible thing though?
Lets face it, parents would rather have their kids playing video games than doing drugs or having sex. But a line needs to be drawn somewhere, the rise in video game addictions is leading to higher obesity rates as well as anti-social behaviour. Rather, than getting in a fight with their teenager, parents really shouldn’t let it escalate that far in the first place. There’s really no reason a 15-year-old boy should be up until 4 a.m. playing video games. Which was one of the behaviours that bothered Brandon Crisps parents.
Not that I have any kids, however, I do have a 22-year-old ‘boy’ living with me who dedicates a large part of his life to video games. Would I rather him be playing video games then out doing drugs or partying? Absolutely. But he’s 22, not 15. When a kid is only 15-years-old there needs to be limits set on how much time they spend ‘gaming’ because it can easily spiral out of control, as can be seen with the tragedy of Brandon Crisp. Hell, I wish I could set limits on my 22-year-old!
What’s your opinion on the Brandon Crisp incident and kids who are addicted to games?
