Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Screens and attention
For a child who finds face to face conversation frightening, a game where they talk to friends while doing something else may be the only place they socialise at all. Worth noticing before you count the hours.
Talking through a headset takes out most of what makes conversation hard: no eye contact to hold, no faces to read in real time, no silence to fill. It can work as a first step rather than a hiding place, and plenty of children do move on from it. It turns into a problem when it becomes the permanent version of friendship instead of a way in, which is why limits still stand even while you are glad they have somewhere to talk.
Qur’an and Sunnah
The life of this world is only a game, a pastime, though the same passage says He does not ask you to give up all your possessions (Quran 47:36). Clear about the diversion, and still not demanding that everything enjoyable be taken away.
إِنَّمَا ٱلۡحَيَوٰةُ ٱلدُّنۡيَا لَعِبࣱ وَلَهۡوࣱۚ وَإِن تُؤۡمِنُواْ وَتَتَّقُواْ يُؤۡتِكُمۡ أُجُورَكُمۡ وَلَا يَسۡـَٔلۡكُمۡ أَمۡوَٰلَكُمۡ
the life of this world is only a game, a pastime, but if you believe and are mindful of God, He will recompense you. He does not ask you to give up [all] your posses-sions
Qur’an 47:36read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Nothing in the evidence behind this library tests gaming as a route into friendship for anxious children, so treat that part as clinical observation rather than a finding. What has been studied is the far end of it: a systematic review and meta-analysis has assessed cognitive behavioural therapy for internet gaming disorder, the first line psychological treatment, which exists because for some people gaming stops being a bridge to anything.
Stevens MWR, King DL, Dorstyn D, Delfabbro PH. (2019). Cognitive-behavioral therapy for Internet gaming disorder: A systematic review and meta-analysis.. Clinical psychology & psychotherapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Playing alongside people strips out the parts of socialising that frighten an anxious child, so contact can happen at all.
When not to
If gaming has replaced sleep, school and every other friendship rather than sitting alongside them, that is a point to get help rather than to keep waiting for it to pass.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
Taking the phone away leaves a hole the exact size of the phone. Something has to go into it, or the evening just becomes an argument you both lose.
Among teenagers, saying they want to die has become something you say when the bus is late. You can no longer read intent off the phrase, in either direction.
A whole evening can go into recording an evening. It is worth asking, with no scolding in it, whether you were there for the thing you now have a photograph of.