I am a mother of five children, three boys and 2 girls. I could do my own personal little study with the number of children I have and the age gap between their ages. My children rage in age from Twenty-one to five years old. I grew up in the age of the Nintendo System, cell phones were just becoming the new “cool thing”, I got my first cell phone in 1998, this was just one year before I graduated high school. I personally have no love for electronics especially video games.

I don’t think that I truly started to diss like games/gaming until I divorced and eventually blended two households into one. My two (not birthed from me) children are obsessed with games, gaming, videos, pretty much any electronic you can mention. My oldest son plays games when he has free time, loves to get on a game and zone out with his buddies, but he is twenty-one, works full-time and goes to school full-time.

My middle son is a video junky, he plays games, but he would rather play them when his friends are over, he is my more outdoor nature/video boy. My five-year-old daughter also loves videos, but I only allow educational videos, yes some not educational ones sneak in all the time. She does not really play games, she is not familiar with how controllers work, and I’m going to keep it that way. I have read quite a few articles over the last three years on the impact of gaming and electronics; some are peer reviewed articles from SWOCC library and others I found on the internet. The article I really enjoyed was from written by Victoria L. Dunckley M.D. It was so great to read an article that let you know you were not the only person/mother dealing with these issues. I chose this article because my oldest daughter will be going off to college in 2021 and this hit home for me. I completely agree with every article I found, I believe that the amount of obtainable information, connectivity, and accessibility play a huge part on our mental health. The overuse of electronics causes cognitive, affective, and behavioral concerns. Examples would be lower self-esteem, anxiety and mood disorders, in ability to set boundaries i.e. time frames or schedules, and ADHD. I have personally seen this in three (middle three) of my five children. They cannot focus on normal day to day tasks, they have this want/need for instant gratification, short tempers and attention spans. I find it so frustrating; I monitor the best that I can. I have the family link app on one child’s phone, I remove all apps from cell phone devices, I make them use the cell phone the way it was intended to be used. We have a policy of no electronics until all home and school things are completed. Then the weekend comes, and they zone out, then we repeat the process all over again.