There are numerous cases where children and many adults get addicted to their video games. As a result, they just can’t wait to rush home from work or school to sit in front of that monitor screen. This is dangerous as the individuals are likely to suffer some long-term consequences, including health issues.
Withdrawal from friends and poor academic performance is common with students. While adults, on the other hand, may lose their jobs due to poor performance. This article has provided 6 rules to help you curb those bad gaming habits. Moreover, visit battlelog.co to get useful hacks for your favorite video games.
6 rules for video gamers
1. Set time limits
After a long busy day, it is recommended to get some recreation time to relax your brain and nerves. Playing your favorite video game is a great way to go about this. However, it becomes bad when you spend too long on the game since you’re likely to wind up lazy and cranky at the end of the day.
An hour is enough time if you have other chores to be taken care of. More advisably, play your games after you have completed any tasks you have for the day. It allows you to stay focused and helps you to get the best from your gaming experience.
2. No Gaming at Specific times of the day
It is common to find folks playing video games deep into the night, continuously promising to sleep after the next round. This practice is unhealthy as it makes it difficult to relax and eventually fall asleep.
Moreover, some gamers don’t find sleep hours after they’ve ended the gaming session. So we recommend that you stop any gaming activity an hour before bedtime. So avoid that and stop sleeping in the office or kids sleeping in school.
3. Your kids shouldn’t contact persons they meet online
With the increasing global rate of violence and insecurity, meeting strangers is not completely safe. And for children, it is a big NO. Unfortunately, some children have been tricked into disclosing vital information to strangers they met online.
Some have been caught in unfriendly situations when they agreed to meet the stranger they met online. Sometimes, it is important to restrict children under certain ages from playing multiplayer games with strangers.
4. Play the games before your kids
An important benefit of video games with your kids is that it increases the bonding between you and the kids. Unfortunately, however, there are games on the internet that has content that you might consider too violent for kids. Some games even have excessive adult content. And just in case you skip some details, make provisions for you to monitor whatever they’re doing online.
So, it is wise to first play the games yourself before allowing them to stay in your game collections. It allows you to uninstall inappropriate games before your kids get to them. Also, since the kids know you know the games’ dynamics, they get more careful with what they do.
5. Set automatic limits on the console
To further ascertain your control of activities on the console, you can automatically make some of the settings. These settings allow you to set specific age ratings that your kids can access if you are not around to supervise them.
You can also make the settings to include what times of the day they can access the game. In addition, you can make an informed decision in case the kids wish to play any older games. The age rating limit is important because it limits your kids from inappropriate games for their age.
6. Identify healthy substitutes for video games.
Irrespective of the short duration you or your child plays video games for, you should identify other recreational substitutes. It helps to reduce the risk of being addicted to video games. Furthermore, it reduces the health risks associated with excessive exposure to monitor screen lights.
Importantly, these recreational activities should be scheduled for times when you are to play video games. Also, you should be available to participate in the activity and be sure that your child enjoys the activity. You can still have the child invite some friends from school to participate in the game. It makes the game more fun and allows the child to improve in his social skills.
7. Resort to games that help to boost your brain performance
As shown in research involving many surgeons, the researchers discovered that gamers surgeons executed advanced procedures faster than those who were not. Furthermore, they were found to make fewer mistakes (37 percent) than the other surgeons.
Also, video games can be a great way of increasing your brain’s gray matter content. Gray matter has to do with your muscle control, perception, memory, and spatial navigation.
While some video games are designed to just keep you occupied at your leisure, some can be a good performance enhancer. For example, did you know that video games have been used as physiotherapy for stroke patients? The games are used to help them regain dominance over their wrists and hands.
8. Set realistic and binding penalties for broken rules
Some games are designed to be very immersive and easily lure your kids or yourself into several hours on them. So it’s understandably very easy to lose track of time and break some rules. If you must do a thing, then it has to be done the right way.
This includes setting penalties for your kids or yourself if you break any of your set rules. For example, such penalties could be subtracting the extra hours spent beyond the allotted daily gaming time from the following day. This may have you ban gaming for a day or more for extreme defiance.
Conclusion
Video games are a good recreational activity to help unwind from the day’s stress. However, it isn’t healthy when it is done excessively. One could suffer consequences ranging from social to health complications.
So, make sure to implement and abide by these rules for the best results. Finally, in a nutshell, avoid addiction, limit inappropriate content for your kids, and get healthy recreational substitutions.
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