Tag: ADDICTION

Teenagers have been running away from home since, well, forever. But usually, the runaway is a rebel who's had enough of his parents' rules -- not a nerd who's addicted to 'World of Warcraft.' Leave it to a 16-year-old from the Great North to turn this classic stereotype on its head. According to The Globe and Mail, Andrew Kane, who lives with his mom and dad in Barrie, Ontario, left the house ...

We've seen the cops called over video game-related incidents before. It's just that the fuzz usually gets involved only when someone's committed an actual crime -- too often murder. But no killing was required (at least not in real life) for Boston mom, Angela Mejia, to call 911 on her 14-year-old son. It seems that Mejia just couldn't deal with her boy's constant gaming. According to the ...

With all the recent controversy surrounding Internet boot camps for teens, scientists are looking for ways to stop the problem before it starts. That means finding out not only why kids become addicted to the Web, but also which kids are most likely to suffer from this addiction. New Scientist reports that Taiwanese scientists recently identified a group of mental health conditions that ...

digg_url ='http://www.switched.com/2009/08/21/u-s-gets-its-first-net-addiction-rehab-center/'; Internet addiction has been blamed for bad grades, lackluster sex lives, and violence. Now, finally completing its rise to the status of a serious affliction, it has its first rehabilitation center in the U.S. reSTART, a new Internet addiction recovery center 25 miles outside of Seattle, features a ...

With reportedly more than 10-million Internet-addicted teens in China, many parents are taking their children to clinics across the vast country. And these clinics, which often use controversial methods instead of behavioral therapy, are producing some terrifying results. According to the Times Online, 16-year-old Deng Senshan was beaten to death Saturday by trainers at the Guangxi Qihuang ...

Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently urged graduates of the University of Pennsylvania to turn off their computers and gadgets in order to get outside and engage in actual human-to-human interaction. According to SiliconValley.com, John Ribovich, a teacher at Milpitas High School in California, last week decided to impart the same lesson to his senior English students. While guiding lessons on ...

According to a British researcher, video games and computers are making us fat, stupid, and lazy. Baroness Susan Greenfield, director of the Royal Institution science research center, contends that gamers and computer users don't learn painful, real-life lessons -- such as those learned by a child who touches a hot stove or pulls a cat's tail. According to the Baroness, this leads people to ...

We've discussed before how constant connectivity has become a source of stress, distraction, and even addiction for Americans. We've even suggested taking regular breaks from technology, where you completely unplug for a day or a week, just to get a respite from the constant barrage of IMs and e-mail that so many of us face. Soren Gordhamer, a self-proclaimed stress-reduction expert, however, ...

Douglas Gentile, an Iowa State University psychology professor and one of the nation's most highly regarded researchers of media and its effects on children, has spearheaded numerous studies on video games and how they influence child behavior. His most recent study, which observed the gaming tendencies of 1,178 adolescents, contends that 8.5-percent of American youths demonstrate addictive gaming ...

What is the latest dangerous and corrupting movement plaguing youths around the world? Is it that rock 'n' roll? What about death metal or rap? The Internet? Nope, once again it's video games, or rather, kids' addiction to them. Parents, be warned. This month, GameSpot Australia published an in-depth look at game addiction that attributes unhealthy preoccupations with video games to a natural ...

If you believed the manufacturers of e-cigarettes, you would think they were God's gift to the nicotine-addicted. They are marketed as safe nicotine delivery systems, complete with the look and feel of real cigarettes. According to a recent story in CNN, the FDA isn't sold on these magic sticks just yet -- is it really any surprise? E-cigarettes are plastic cigarette-like contraptions that ...

Above the Influence, an arm of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, has launched a Web page informing gamers that only n00bs smoke doobs, a move that seems to be in line with the Federal government's grand old tradition of being "down with the kids," According to the site, which we learned about from Business Insider, smoking marijuana can impair gaming judgment and, ...

Most Americans are saying "Screw the economy, I'm keeping my gadgets," according to Fox News. Despite hard times, most folks aren't giving up their music downloads or smartphones. In fact, they're spending nearly as much as they ever have. According to the article, a poll by research firm Forrester showed that 80-percent of respondents said they wouldn't alter their video game purchasing, while ...

Conventional wisdom tells us that, in our direst economic times, the alcohol business does pretty well. Possibly responding to this phenomenon, and hoping worried citizenry won't crawl into a whiskey bottle, the federal government has now launched the Rethinking Drinking Web site, the Wall Street Journal reports. Operated by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), ...

Christians and Catholics traditionally observe Lent, the approximately 40-day period between Ash Wednesday and Easter, by praying frequently and fasting from certain types of food. Abstaining from food -- and vices such as drinking and smoking -- is intended to help the believer prepare for the Easter celebration of Christ's resurrection, and to also create empathy for Jesus's time spent ...