Most students who are addicted to computer games can be easily detected by a teacher in a class.
Take for instance, Robert who sleeps through his morning classes, not because of his homeworks and projects, but because of computer games. Another case is Jerry, who always needs extra allowance from his mother not to be used for school projects, but payment for computer interactive games. Another situation is that of timemismanagement. Mario seems to be always in a hurry, since he is always late in submission of projects and assignments because computer games are time-consuming.
According to research, the cohort age of computer games player are 14-18 years old. So the high school students are mostly the patronizers of computer games.
We can consider this situations as addiction in computer games which a teacher can easily detect in the classroom. If he/she noticed the likes of Robert, Jerry and Mario then it is possible that these students are addicted to computer games.
According to Carl Jung any form of addiction is bad, no matter whether narcotics, alcohol or computer games. How can teachers help these students from computer games addiction? More important, how can they help themselves or how can a teacher help them to stay away from this computer game addiction? A strong compulsion to go back and complete level by level of the computer game, makes it addicting.
The need for entertainment is maybe one of the reasons for computer games addiction, or probably competitive nature of a person, is the reason to reach the goal in a game, to defeat an opponent or to achieve a high score.
A teacher can help studentswho are addicted to computer games by telling them to use their will power strongly.
The teacher can advise these students to have a limit in playing a game, and most of all, they can tell these students to use their time wisely elsewhere. A teacher can advise them not to be possessed by computer games, instead they must realized that time is very precious and they must use it wisely.
By: Myrna Barrioquinto | Master Teacher I | Mariveles National High School | Cabcaben, Bataan
