Being a parent can be difficult. You constantly fret about what your child is doing and how that may be affecting her. This anxiety only multiplies when your child starts doing things you don't understand.
Taking responsibility for our children's foibles is also a skill very few mothers and fathers possess. This is probably why a generation of parents have spent decades trying to convince the world that video games turn people into either axe-wielding serial killers or overweight agglomerations of pervy hair.
The question is, are they right? After all, the kids who shot up that school in the US played violent video games and you've seen how aggressive little Adrian gets after playing that game of his. Surely there must be a link.
The short answer is no, there is no link. In 2015, 200 academics penned a very sassy open letter to the American Psychological Association after it released research claiming there was a link between playing violent video games and increased aggression. According to an article published on BBC.com, the study concluded that while no one thing could be blamed for excess aggression, video games did contribute.
The academics, however, found that the study had used "deeply flawed" methodology, with one of the signatories, Dr Mark Coulson, saying: "I fully acknowledge that exposure to repeated violence may have short-term effects - you would be a fool to deny that - but as to the long-term consequences of crime and actual violent behaviour, there is just no evidence linking violent video games with that."The truth is, there is little if any conclusive evidence tying video gaming to violence. It's more likely that your little tyrant is a psychopath because of a combination of his socialisation and your genes.
The same applies to the idea of video games making someone lazy. There are more than a billion gamers across the globe and only a small percentage of them look like a greasy man named Chuck.
That said, gaming, like everything else, can be addictive.
'GAMING DISORDER'
The World Health Organisation is set to include "gaming disorder" in its 11th International Classification of Diseases this year.
It describes gaming disorder as "a pattern of gaming behaviour ... characterised by impaired control over gaming, increasing priority given to gaming over other activities to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other interests and daily activities, and continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences".
Before you start running around screaming that video games and crack cocaine are in the same WhatsApp group, bear in mind that if you swapped the references to gaming with shopping, exercise or turtle petting, you would still have an addiction. The point is: addiction is the problem here, not gaming.
Aside from that, there are a lot of positives to gaming. Various studies have found that gaming can improve your motor skills, visual ability and even aid brain growth.
Games like DOTA 2 and League of Legends require people to multi-task like an excitable octopus, and gaming is also a good social lubricant.
With the rise of e-sports, gaming has also become a potentially lucrative career. Annual e-sports world championships attract bigger crowds than most major sporting events and have multimillion-dollar prize pools.In essence the problem with gaming is the problem with everything that parents can't quite wrap their heads around.
When jazz first emerged, it was the devil's soundtrack and said to cause immorality. Doing the twist to a Chubby Checker song was the height of scandal in its day. When it comes to all things newfangled, parents tend to be quick to demonise. Video games are no different, which means in a generation or two's time, it will be seen as that lame thing that old people do but we'll be no more or less violent/lazy/immoral than we were to begin with. Pity...