Online Gaming
Is Gaming Ok For My Child?
Smartphones are getting more and more popular every day and so is mobile gaming! Nearly more than 40% of children worldwide either own a smartphone or have access to one in their home.
No doubt educational games are beneficial for every child’s learning and can help them take in new things but a lot of online games present at the moment are very violent (i.e., Fortnite, Grand Theft Auto, The Walking Dead etc.) and have sexual content present in them so your child can get addicted to it and play them all day long.
Online Gaming is a multibillion-dollar industry and it only focuses on making a profit out of their customers (Mostly children below 15) which is why most of the games nowadays have foul languages, use and abuse of drugs and alcohol, criminal behaviour, and much more so your kids can get hooked up, never go outside, and waste their time on playing video games 24/7.
Impact of online games on children is huge! Every parent should be worried about their child’s video games addiction and do something to regulate their usage of tech devices. Stopping your kid from playing videos games is not a permanent solution (Educational and strategy games are proved to enhance child’s brain activity) however banning adult video games and setting a screen time can fully convert the situation.
The Danger of Online Games
It all starts with a little bit of fun which ends up becoming video games addiction! According to a recent study, the impact of online games on children is much more than that of adults because their brain is in a learning stage and is not fully developed yet.
As many online games have inappropriate scenes, gender stereotypes, and obscene gestures present in them, your child thinks that all of this stuff is normal and start acting like their favourite video game character. This is why your kid gets violent from time to time because video games addiction reduces child empathy and compassion for others. Also, these video games can overstimulate your child’s brain which leads to less focus in studies and attention problems.
Many online games for childs are made to reduce their physical activities and get them to stay on their screens as long as possible! This can affect your kid’s physical activity very badly which is why more children are getting obese and health problem nowadays. You’ll see more kids hooked up to their mobile screens rather than playing outside and spending time in useful activities.
Many more problems caused by video games addictions are:
- Mental Health Issues
- Bad Socializing Skills
- Eye Problems
- Less Quality Sleep
- Focus More on Games Rather Than Studies
- Learning Bad Habits
- More Online and Less Real Life Friends
- Spending Less Time with Family
- And Much More…
How to control my child’s screen time?
Banning your child permanently from playing video games is not a good solution! There are plenty of games for childs that are both fun and educational at the same time, your kid can learn a lot of useful things from visual games rather than just reading plain books. You just have to keep an eye on what video games they play on their devices and set a screen time so they don’t waste most of their day and get video games addiction.
Letting your child play real-time strategy and creative games, such as; Minecraft, Lego Worlds, and LittleBigPlanet can do so much good for your child’s brain as they will be using their imagination to create stuff and learn new things that plain books cannot teach. You just have to keep a balance in everything and notice a sudden change in your kid’s behaviour.
The most effective way to do all this is to use parental control apps which allows you to manage your child’s devices and keep them under your observation. Below are some of the most popular parental control apps that you can use to keep to your child away from video games addiction:
- mSpy
This is the best parental control app you can find in both iOS and Android which has all the modern features you need to keep your child safe from video games addiction. It offers you a lot more than just setting a screen time, you can also block adult video games and only allow educational games for childs that are not harmful in any sort of way.
Out of all the parental control apps we’ve tested, mSpy is the best! It allows you to control multiple smartphones at the same time without having to pay a lot of fees. It’s much more affordable than every other app out there and has a very simple interface so anyone can start using it right away. mSpy is incredibly responsive and takes very less time to set up.
- Family Link
This is another great parental control app which is free but is only available for Android smartphones. It only has basic features that allow you to regulate your child’s gaming routine and let you see which app he/she downloads in their smartphone.
The only reason why this app is on the 2nd number of our list is that it has a very hard user interface and takes much time to set up as compared to mSpy. You also don’t get access to a huge amount of features and can only control one mobile at a time.
- ESET
ESET is also an Android parental control app like Family Link but offers you a lot more functionalities. The major drawback is that you have to pay an annual fee of 30$ to get access to all of the features. You can set screen time and block adult gaming apps but your child can easily uninstall it from his/her smartphone without even letting you know.
- RealizD
RealizD is not a parental control app but can be used to set screen time and see how many hours your child has spent on the smartphone. But, if you want to see how many hours are spent on each app, you’ve to pay them a monthly fee of 3$ which is much more considering that it can only track the screen time and do nothing else.
This app is only recommended to those parents who only want to see one child’s screen time because you’ve to pay every time you want to add a new smartphone on the list.
