A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
Scroll through the In Real Life (IRL) section of streaming site Twitch and you could be forgiven for thinking, now and then, that you have landed on a camgirl site. Scattered among the artists, cooks and professional eaters are a growing band of young women wearing revealing clothing while they game. Some go further and [...]
In June, the World Health Organization recognized video game addiction as a mental health disorder. It described the addition to digital and video gaming as “a pattern of persistent or recurrent gaming behavior” that becomes so extensive that it ‘takes precedence over other life interests.” In a dzBB interview on Sunday, IT expert Jerry Liao [...]
A mum has urged the NHS to diagnose her 15-year-old son with gaming addiction, as she says he has become so consumed by online games that he has not been to school for a year. Kendall Palmer, from north London, told The Telegraph she has fought for three years to have her son’s condition recognised [...]
How concerned should people be about the psychological effects of screen time? Balancing technology use with other aspects of daily life seems reasonable, but there is a lot of conflicting advice about where that balance should be. Much of the discussion is framed around fighting “addiction” to technology. But to me, that resembles a moral [...]
Lisa Pont, a social worker at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, has heard plenty of skepticism about video game addiction and whether it’s truly a medical condition that should be classified as a disease, as the World Health Organization plans to officially do in a couple of months. “Some people think it trivializes other [...]
Staff in pubs owned by Woolworths are secretly recording and sharing detailed personal information - such as gambling habits or even favourite football teams - about high-turnover gamblers to encourage them to stay in the venues longer and increase their losses. The data is being shared on a Google drive among all 400 pubs in [...]
Thousands of children and young people are losing money on websites which allow them to trade virtual items, gambling experts have warned. The Gambling Commission's annual report has, for the first time, looked at the problem of so-called "skin betting". The items won - usually modified guns or knives within a video game known as a [...]
Gaming on a computer or device is a wildly popular pastime for kids in Australia. In fact, 94 per cent of children between 6 and 15 play games and, while girls are fast gaining on them, gaming still remains more popular with boys. It seems that although (almost) everybody’s doing it, a lot of parents feel [...]
A large needle is jabbed into the lips of a young girl. Instantly they become sausage-shaped. Another girl, oxygen mask over her mouth, has her nose cut into with a scalpel. Where did I see these images? In games targeted at children. With online gaming apps like Girls Plastic Surgery Doctor, Mermaid's Plastic Surgery, Princess [...]
Scene One: It’s December 2015, in Melbourne, and the Royal Melbourne Children’s Hospital releases the results of its first Australian Child Health Poll. Excessive screen time has emerged as the top ‘big problem’ for the health of Australian children and teenagers ahead of obesity; not enough physical activity; unhealthy diet; bullying; illegal drug use; family [...]
