How to Handle Children's Addiction to Video Games?

Many parents frequently complain that their children are addicted to video games at home, severely impacting their studies and daily lives. Teachers have also expressed concerns about students' declining academic performance due to gaming addiction, but effective solutions seem elusive.

Parents and teachers often view gaming as a major distraction that not only hampers academic success but also harms children's vision and intellectual development. Consequently, they see video games as a harmful influence, akin to a form of spiritual opium for children.

While society widely acknowledges the harmful effects of gaming addiction, there is no consensus on how to understand and address this issue. Today, we will focus on analyzing this social problem of children's gaming addiction.

Just like treating an illness, we cannot provide an effective remedy without diagnosing the root cause. Why do children become addicted to video games? We must first answer this question, identify the underlying issues, and then work toward positive transformation and correction.

Current popular explanations in society lack a foundational theory and often address the symptoms rather than the cause. Many believe that children are drawn to video games because the virtual world seems more appealing than the real world, providing an escape from the pressures of everyday life. These explanations, however, only scratch the surface and do not get to the root of the issue.

It's akin to asking why the temperature on a thermometer rises and answering that it's because the mercury column has risen—such explanations are meaningless.

Children enjoy playing video games, watching cartoons, and engaging in activities that adults might find childish. There is a deep-seated theory behind these behaviors. To understand children's world and behavior, and to provide effective guidance and education, we need to grasp this theory.

The ancient text San Lüe states, “All living things have their desires and pursuits.” This means that every living being has its own needs and goals. They keep moving, striving, and seeking a certain purpose in life until they achieve it. The ancients referred to this as "ambition" or "will." It’s evident that children become addicted to games because they first develop the ambition to play them.

Ji Kang, in Jia Jie, said, "Without ambition, a person is not truly human." Wang Fuzhi, in Si Wen Lu, stated, "What distinguishes humans from animals is ambition. If one does not uphold their ambition, then what differentiates them from animals?"

For Ji Kang and Wang Fuzhi, what makes a person human is their ambition. Those with great ambition achieve great things, those with small ambitions achieve small things, and those with no ambition achieve nothing.

Plants are busy photosynthesizing, flowering, bearing fruit, and reproducing the next generation—this is also a form of ambition. Animals spend their days hunting and struggling for survival, and when the mating season arrives, they compete fiercely for the right to mate. These are the non-human ambitions of living beings.

So, what sets human ambition apart from that of plants and animals? It lies in the fact that humans are the spirit of heaven and earth, the masters of all things. Born with the responsibility to maintain order in the world and to create a harmonious society, humans have a unique mission. This ambition is evident in personal, familial, and national growth.

If a person indulges in trivial and meaningless activities, their consciousness is unlikely to awaken. This is why the ancients condemned the loss of ambition due to indulgence in trivial pursuits. For example, playing games can neither improve one's body and mind nor benefit one's family or country—this is a loss of ambition.

From the analysis above, we understand that ambition drives human behavior. Next, we will analyze why children are more prone to gaming addiction.

Observing closely, we find that one-year-old children are particularly fond of animals like cats and dogs, finding them endearing and wanting to interact with them. This is because a one-year-old's intellect is still weak, and they can only connect with things of a similar intellectual level.

Expecting a one-year-old child to set a great ambition for a grand purpose is unrealistic. This shows that ambition is rooted in intellectual capacity. When intellect is lacking, even great ambitions are meaningless and can lead to impractical aspirations. Children talking about things beyond their intellectual capacity are often seen as speaking out of turn.

As children grow, around three to five years old, they become less interested in animals and more attracted to doll-like figures and things that appear cute and round. This reflects their self-image and intellectual development at that stage.

By the time children reach five to eight years old, their intellectual development allows them to understand abstract concepts and complex problems. At this stage, many children outgrow their earlier interests. In ancient times, this is when children began primary education to establish a basic intellectual connection with the real world.

During adolescence, children start studying ethics and practical skills, learning about human interactions and preparing for adult responsibilities. As they grow, their intellectual capacity expands, enabling them to pursue more ambitious goals.

Adolescents are often rebellious because they seek to connect with higher intellects that parents may not satisfy, leading to rebellious behavior.

In modern society, there seems to be a deliberate effort to delay children's intellectual development. The consequences are severe, with some children reaching adulthood but still having the intellectual level of a one-year-old, preferring to connect with animal figures. Others remain at the level of a three- to five-year-old, even as adults, enjoying cartoons and other childish activities, indicating delayed intellectual development.

Delayed intellectual development leads to immaturity, with individuals unsure of their purpose in life, lacking ambition, and failing to grasp great purposes and motivations. Their actions are driven by animalistic impulses, mistaking crude behavior for a bold life.

Playing video games is a low-level intellectual activity. Children who enjoy games and become addicted to them likely suffer from delayed intellectual development. Their immature intellects lead them to pursue activities that match their intellectual level, resulting in the first major cause of gaming addiction.

Delayed intellectual development has serious consequences. Weaker intellects struggle with complex, higher-level activities, retreating to simpler, more familiar pursuits. Children stuck in this low-level zone seek satisfaction in these activities, leading to addiction.

Satisfaction is a basic instinct for all living beings, and as previously mentioned, all living things seek to fulfill their ambitions. Children stuck in a low-level intellectual zone are not there by choice but because their intellect has not developed with age. Consequently, they only understand and pursue basic goals, finding satisfaction in these pursuits.

Our second conclusion is that when children are trapped in this low-level zone, society, families, and schools fail to provide timely external support to help them develop their intellect and move to a higher intellectual level.

Different stages of intellectual development require different levels of guidance. The third reason for children's gaming addiction is the failure of society, families, and schools to fulfill their responsibilities, leading to the problem's escalation into a widespread social issue.

To summarize, there are three main reasons children become addicted to games:

1. Delayed intellectual development makes children attracted to low-level intellectual activities.

2. Lack of external intervention to help children escape the low-level intellectual zone.

3. The inaction of society, families, and schools exacerbates the problem.

To solve a problem, the root cause must be identified, or the solution will be ineffective. Just like treating an illness, a misdiagnosis leads to incorrect treatment. In the case of children’s gaming addiction, incorrect solutions can cause secondary harm.

For example, the notorious electroshock therapy to treat internet addiction and gaming addiction caused further harm because it was the wrong solution. Similarly, "happy education" can cause secondary harm. A child drowning in the low-level intellectual zone should be rescued, not left to struggle. Pushing them further into this zone under the guise of happiness is wrong and anger-inducing.

The correct approach should be to cut off connections to the low-level intellectual zone, rescue the child from these activities, and help them develop their intellect. As they mature intellectually, they will naturally lose interest in games. Society, families, and schools must work together to provide a healthy environment for intellectual development.

Many parents indulge in games themselves and fail to set a good example for their children, making it difficult to convince them to stop gaming.

Some experts argue that children should be allowed to make their own choices, doing what makes them happy. However, many adults struggle to live wisely, so how can children be expected to know what is right or wrong? Letting them make poor decisions without proper guidance will lead to failure. The prevalence of misbehaving children and juvenile delinquents shows that these experts' ideas have contributed to serious social issues.

Parents must guide their children until they mature intellectually, helping them discern right from wrong. Good behaviors should be encouraged, and bad ones avoided.

How can we guide children toward higher intellectual development? We can learn from Mencius's mother.

When Mencius was young, his family lived near a cemetery, and he started playing games related to funerals. His mother said, "This place is not suitable for a child to live," and moved to a market area. There, Mencius imitated the activities of traders and butchers, which also worried his mother. She then moved near a school, where Mencius began imitating the behaviors of students and teachers, learning social etiquette. His mother finally settled there, believing it was a suitable environment for his upbringing. Mencius grew up to be a great Confucian scholar, which many attribute to his mother's wise education.

If there had been "happy education" in Mencius's time, he might have become a professional mourner. This shows how absurd the idea of "happy education" is. The more foolish one is, the more they enjoy trivial pleasures, which is the essence of "happy education."

Mencius's mother was determined to cut off all connections to low-level intellectual activities, not because those professions were inferior, but because she wanted Mencius to pursue a higher purpose in life.

Mencius's mother's approach teaches us that the guidance of parents and teachers is crucial for a child's development. Whenever a child starts to slip into a lower intellectual zone, easily captivated by low-level goals and cheap gratification, it is essential to pull them out. With appropriate guidance and encouragement, we should push the child towards a higher intellectual zone, where they can pursue higher life goals and more meaningful satisfaction. This way, the child's intellect will continue to improve. With higher intellect, they will have the ability and conditions to set more advanced life goals, nurturing greater ambitions. This is the path to becoming talented and successful.

Parents and teachers are often frustrated when children become addicted to activities that reflect low intellectual maturity, such as playing video games. The solution we provided earlier involves cultivating both intellect and ambition—wisdom and aspiration. Indulging in trivial pursuits inevitably leads to a loss of ambition; to achieve success, ambition must first be nurtured. In addition to concerns about intellectual development and ambition, parents and teachers are also worried about other issues, such as how to improve a child's concentration or how to prevent them from being easily distracted. This requires cultivating focus.

We have previously discussed many broad principles and fundamental theories. If parents and teachers can truly understand and apply these concepts, they should be able to address most of the challenges children face in their studies and daily lives. If there is a need to learn and master a more systematic and professional theoretical framework and specific methods, I recommend studying the book The Seven Techniques of the Yin Symbol from The Classic of the Pivot. This book systematically explains how to nurture the mind, cultivate intellect, foster ambition, and develop concentration.