By: Jade Luo <[email protected]>

It’s one in the morning on a Saturday night, but sophomore Emerson Woerner is not asleep. He is instead wide awake, laughing, talking—and pushing buttons on the controller of his Playstation 2 with his friends. Like weekends before, Woerner is staying the night at his friend’s house to play video games.
Such a scenario is not uncommon among students here. Woerner, who said he is a “casual gamer,” enjoys getting together with his friends on the weekends to play video games. “It’s just a bit relaxing,” Woerner said.

However, with the recent hype over the newly released “Halo 3,” some bad aspects of video games seem to have surfaced. According to Best Buy employee Jake Ellis, one of the complaints from parents about video games is that students spend too much time playing them and not enough time doing homework and socializing. “It can be an addiction,” Ellis said.

Video games have recently been a heated topic of debate. The American Medical Association met in June this year to discuss whether video game addiction is to be considered a diagnosed disorder. The American Psychiatric Association is still researching the issue, although its official statement says that it does not consider video game addiction to be a disorder as of now.

As for the students here, counselor Stephanie Benson said, “Video games can be an outlet for fun, and that can be a good thing. But video games do have a tendency to become addicting, and when the student loses the balance (between school and video games), it can be a bad thing. (Video games) can impede on school work.”

Ellis said he thinks high school students are more susceptible to video game addiction than other people. “(High school students are more susceptible) due to the fact that they go to school the next day and talk about it to their friends. Their friends have got certain achievements, and they want to match that. It’s like a peer pressure thing.”

Despite the statistics, Emerson’s mother, Anne Marie Woerner, said she is not worried about Emerson’s hobby. “He’s got a pretty good grip on video games. For him, it’s not distracting,” Mrs. Woerner said.

According to Emerson, balancing video gaming with school stems from prioritizing. “For me, school and my extracurricular activities are (priorities), so you have to get those done,” he said. “Once those are done, if I want to play video games, great, I can. If there are already things I’d rather do instead of play video games, I’ll do those.”

Like Emerson, Michael Knighton, president of the Video Game Club and sophomore, said he tries to get his schoolwork done before he plays video games. Knighton also said he finds video games somewhat distracting from school.

Sharon Shelburne, Knighton’s mother, said, “I think Michael does a pretty good job of monitoring his own video game use. Certainly I’d like to see kids put more effort into academics at home. Michael says he gets most of his homework done at school or in SRT. I’m not entirely convinced of that.

“I think homework should be done before video games. If it’s a problem, the best (solution) is just to limit the amount of time and say, ‘You’ve got two hours, or one hour.’”

“If they didn’t tell me to stop, I would definitely play longer,” Knighton said.

Playing video games is often a time-consuming hobby among students. Sophomore Scott Nocco said he plays about three to four hours in the school week and seven to eight hours during the weekend. Knighton said he plays about 12 hours a week.

Despite the amount of time Nocco spends in video gaming, he said he cannot think of any benefits of video games. “I play them because it’s something you do when you’re bored that at least feels constructive,” he said.

“You don’t gain anything from playing video games,” Ellis said. “You get wrapped up in the worlds (the video game designers) create. It’s an escape. You can create a different world for yourself if you want to. If things go bad at school, or your friends are mad at you, you go home and play video games. You’re the ruler; you can do anything you want with anybody.”

For students who are too preoccupied with video games, Knighton recommends students unplug their consoles and stay focused on other activities first. After more important activities, video gaming can act as an award.

If playing video games becomes too much of a problem, parents should intervene as well, according to Shelburne.

“Clearly, I think that if the student is spending five or six hours a day playing video games, that’s just too much, and the parent should limit it to a reasonable amount of time,” she said. “I know some kids get overly involved in role playing games, and if they envelop their whole thinking, I don’t think it’s so much a problem with the video game itself. I think it’s a problem with that particular student.”

Ellis suggested addicted video gamers start a new hobby. “(Video games) are a good way to spend free time, but you definitely have more fun spending time with your friends. Don’t spend every free moment you have playing video games,” he said.

Luckily, according to Emerson and Knighton, playing video games is turning more and more social with the introduction of multi-player games.

“You hear about pro-gaming now,” Emerson said. “I think it is the way to go towards making (video games) more of a social thing because you get people talking about it and more people interested in it. You get more people at gaming parties. That is, I think, the direction to take it socially. I think (video games) just needs to reach more people, and people need to play with more people.”