My son who just turned 18 has started Jr College and is still spending many, many hours per day on Warcraft which is helping neither his grades, his social life or his physical well being.
I foolishly gave him a high performance PC, Nvidia 8800 video card + 22" LCD monitor about a year and half ago, and this became rocket fuel for his involvement with online gaming which to that point had been a bit annoying, but not all encompassing. He lives with his mother so my direct control of his day to day is very limited. I tried removing the PC about half a year ago when his mother was cooperative (she is not at this point) and he just defaulted to the notebook I have given him 2 years ago and played it in low res mode.
I’m on the edge of doing something rash, but I’m not sure how unplugging a Warcraft addict is going to play out, but this is not going to continue.
I think it depends on the kid, and on his perceived cost-benefit ratio for playing World of Warcraft vs. doing other stuff. Plenty of people have normal lives while playing MMORPGs like WoW, plenty - of any age - manage to screw up relationships, jobs, lives in the process. I had a college roommate who was told to take a year off by the university after I accidentally introduced him to MUDs (text-based adventure worlds) and he started blowing off classes and his grades.
Just a heads-up - WoW launched a new “expansion” to their game yesterday, and speaking as WoW players, my husband and I were just drooling after last night’s gaming. So I wouldn’t expect him to have any incentive from the game world to play less through the winter exam period.
Don’t blame yourself for giving him that computer. WoW runs pretty well on even a basic system. A $100 computer from craigslist would run it just about as well.
I would say you do have cause to be worried. However, I don’t think it’s up to you to fix it. He’s 18. He needs to learn the consequences of his actions. If that means he fails college, then so be it. I really don’t think you can force him to quit WoW and I don’t think you should try. He needs to shape up on his own. This is just one of many temptations he’ll have in his life.
One thing you can do is not support him in a destructive behavior. Are paying for college? Tell him you’ll only do that as long as he’s making a certain GPA. Are you giving him an allowance? You could cut that out and make him get a job. That would cut into his WoW time. Any 18-year-old living at home going to Jr. College should have some sort of job anyway.
Is the problem that he’s addicted to something, or that the something is World of Warcraft? Because, 18-year-olds get addicted, get hobbies that consume their lives. It’s just the way of things.
A friend of mine, after we’d already graduated from college, would work 8 hours, play WoW for 8 hours, sleep 8 hours, and repeat. The weekends were even worse.
This went on for ~1.5 years. He eventually stopped, is in grad school, and has a girlfriend.
One of my friends met her fiance on WoW. After they met in person and the sex ensued they both cut back on a lot of the hours they were putting into the game and he enrolled in law school and she is getting a degree in biology.
So basically I’m saying he needs to get away from the computer and get laid.
It depends on whether or not he has an addictive personality, I guess. I was able to play it for a week and not get hooked. On the other extreme, I know people who have tried to quit (and succeed for about a week) and then they’re right back where they started. Even if they toss out the game, they go and rebuy it! Is it like an hour a day, or eight? With my friends it was the latter and they were definitely suffering in the social/work/physical department for it.
If he’s living under your house still I don’t see why you cannot set a limit for him. I think him focusing on his college will help him in the long run whereas I doubt anyone would be happy to look back and say “Ah, how many hours of WoW I spent playing in my twenties.” I have a friend who gave up computer games for the semester because he knows that he gets hooked and this time he’d rather work on school more.
Like I said, everybody’s degree of addiction differs. But as the parent you still have some control over it if you wish to do anything.
It’s highly individual; I know people who manage busy schedules and demanding jobs, yet find time for gaming, and I’ve known people whose video game addictions were almost certainly directly involved in them getting kicked out of school. I don’t like to watch TV, so I play video games instead; as a result, while it seems like I spend a lot of time playing video games, I probably spend less time on gaming+TV than most people I know spend watching TV alone.
Do you know that the game is affecting his grades? You say it’s “not helping”, but does that mean he’s getting Bs when you think he should be a straight A student, or does it mean that he’s barely getting by in classes? If he’s barely scraping by, you have a problem. If he’s doing well, you may not objectively badly, you’re going to have a hard time convincing him that he has a problem.
It’s going to be difficult to enforce any ban on the game from a distance; your best bet may be to convince him that it’s in his best interests to cut back or give it up entirely. If you make an ultimatum that you can’t enforce, you’ll look foolish and lose any chance you have of convincing him to make a change on his own. Maybe you could talk to him about it and find out what he is getting out of the game versus what it’s costing him.
/edit: I never got to see whether my acquaintances with the worst video game habits grew out of it; I assume they did eventually, but they didn’t come back to school. However, many of my friends were able to maintain jobs, heavy course loads AND an intensive gaming schedule. Most of them still play video games, though perhaps not as much as they once did.
My 16-year-old son probably plays 10-20 hours per week.
I’m 50, and I probably play 5-10 hours per week (I’ve peaked at close to 20).
One of the fellows who lives down the street is in my guild, and probably plays 30 hours per week. He’s 70 years old.
WoW isn’t an age thing. As others have mentioned, if he’s got that type of personality and you cut him off from WoW, he’ll probably just buy a game console or start playing poker or collecting rare butterflies or hanging out on the SDMB 40 hours a week.
Also, WHY is he playing it. If he is playing it because its entertaining and he has time to fill - cool.
If he is playing because he is depressed and he is self medicating by playing WoW and not thinking, that is different than playing because he is avoiding his homework and just being irresponsible. Both can be equally destructive, but they are quite different situations.
I had a roommate who clocked 2400+ hours in online gaming in a year in college. His GPA that year snapped him RIGHT out of it.
Me, I have a great job, a great wife, and she thinks it’s peachy that I spend 3-5 hours on the computer every night–usually she’s playing with me, and it’s not a big deal to put it down when there’s stuff to get done in the real world, it’s just my hobby.
I’m with the rest of the folks here–make sure his actions have consequences and then let him figure out how to manage it.
Is the issue really World of Warcraft? Would your son be plugged into some other addictive behavior if not gaming? I mean, how serious of a problem are we looking at here?
Are you paying his tuition? If so, you have a basis to set a limit that he must get a certain GPA or you’ll cut off support, but his social life and “physical well being” are his own business.
If the computer was a gift to him, then trying to take it back is really dubious. It’s not like a car that’s in your name which you are allowing him to use, you gave it to him. It’s his property now, you can’t just take it back because he isn’t spending his free time in the manner you wish he would.
I’m thinking back to when I was 18. Friendly suggestions and discussions were welcome. Nagging was not. Ultimatums and demands were downright laughed at and resulted in the desire to do exactly the opposite, for the sake of being contrarian. I was 18, and an adult, and you’d better get used to it or just cut yourself out of my life.
Don’t like my habits/hobbies? Thanks for your opinion; I’ll do what I want.
Of course, I wasn’t living at home then, but I don’t imagine my attitude would have been any different if I were.
You can’t force your son to have a social life if he doesn’t care to pursue one. You can’t force him to be physically fit if he’d rather be sedentary. You can, however, discuss courses of action with his mother should he be unable to keep his grades up. Whether or not he’s behaving like one, your son is an adult now, and trying to control him beyond the whole Get-a-Degree-and/or-a-Job thing will only damage your relationship (and be doomed to failure anyways).
Also, what Dangerosa said. If his gaming addiction is a symptom of something larger, then keeping him from gaming isn’t going to change anything.
I’m not much older than your son, and in college myself. I know many, many (many…many…) people who obsess over World of Warcraft, and also games like Gears of War, Halo, etc. Personally, I think people this age who spend untold hours on these games need a good bitch-slapping. That’s just my opinion, of course.
My son is 17, so I feel your pain. When my son was 14 and 15 it was Texas Hold’em. He played ALL THE TIME. On line and with his friends. Then, he discovered World of Warcraft. He played ALL THE TIME last year. This year he discovered the opposite sex and decided he wants to go to a decent college (i.e. his grades need be good) and his play time has tailed way off. However, he’s always been someone who has enough self-discipline to do what he needs to do once he decides on omething.
I think WOW helped his self-esteem. He was the only high school kid in his group (guild?), and he got a big ego boost over the fact that they accepted him and liked him because he didn’t play like a teenager. So it made him feel grown-up. Plus at least one of his group was a female, and he got practice talking to a female in a totally non-threatening way. I think this helped him interact with the girls he sees at school. This was at a time when he grew 8 inches over 2 years and went from one of the guys to the tallest kid in his grade who was, frankly, a real spaz for a while when he was growing into his frame.
Bottom line - if your son can use WOW as a bridge to normal interaction it can be a good thing. When he no longer needs it, the real world will become more attractive again. If he starts urinating into a cup rather than leave his game for a minute, he probably needs to be cut off.
Well, I grew out of my addiction to FFXI. 5 years ago, It was basically my life for 3 years, although nothing drastically bad happened because of it. It dropped my GPA some and took away a lot of time I should have spent meeting people in college, but it also had some real benefits. It helped my self-esteem because it was something I was very good at it, I made some very good friends who have lasted past FFXI, and I had my first real-life GF come out of it. Out of all the things I could have spent the vast majority of my time doing, FFXI was far from the worst.
Like others said, MMORPG addictions are highly individualistic. Also, for me it wasn’t the FFXI that was the real problem, but rather it was my lack of self-esteem and ambition. I would have latched onto anything at that time; MMORPGs are just easier to do so because they are fun, cheap, and legal.
Gaming addiction is serious, but, attempting to drag him away will likely only increase the problem. People in the game do literally view it as a lifestyle decision to spend all of their free time on WoW, and are very resentful when family members dismiss it as ‘just a game’. Keep in mind that, while it may be a game, most people are dragged in for that amount of time because of social commitments to other players more than the game itself. For people who lack confidence, it can be very intoxicating to all of a sudden find yourself to be a popular and respected member of a community.
Think of it this way. Let’s say all of your friends play tennis. You start playing tennis and you really like it. You start spending more and more of your time playing tennis, talking about tennis with your friends, reading about tennis on websites, and so on. You have plans to play tennis with others at certain times and refuse to drop these social commitments when your family wants to make plans. You are engaged on many levels - by the strategy of the game, by training for it, improving your technique, reading about famous players, learning about equipment, and so on. It’s mental stimulation and social stimulation beyond the game itself. How would you react to someone demanding you stop altogether cold turkey?
You are dismissive of and annoyed by his gaming habit, and that’s common from people of another generation. But, I think it’d be best to find the root of the problem. Talk to him about it! Why does he like World of Warcraft? What does he do all day? What is he getting from the game? Does he feel that the game makes him miss out on other things? Is he leading an unhealthy life? How many hours is he playing a day? What is he doing during that time?
As stated before, right now is a big time for Warcraft players because of the expansion coming out. I’d guess he was getting all set up for that and is in the middle of the exciting first week. It’s all new and exciting now, but it’ll die off in a few months, and it’ll be easier to wean him away if he’s inclined to do so.
