This is what the specialists are saying about kids with gaming problems. `..more we work with these kids, less I believe we can call this addiction. What many of these kids need is their parents and their school teachers - this is a social problem.` So says Keith Bakker the founder and head of Europe’s first and only clinic to treat gaming addicts.

Parents and teachers to blame
For Mr Bakker the root cause of the huge growth in excessive gaming lies with parents who have failed in their duty of care. 87% of online gamers are over the age of 18. From that age, help is something they need to seek for themselves, because as you know parents no longer have the legal right to intervene.

For those who are younger, intervention may be the only solution. That means even sometimes literally taking a child away from a computer, removing them from the game for a period of time until they begin to see there are other choices. If parents aren`t there for them, they are more likely to isolate themselves in virtual worlds.

“This gaming problem is a result of the society we live in today,” Mr Bakker told BBC News. “Eighty per cent of the young people we see have been bullied at school and feel isolated. Many of the symptoms they have can be solved by going back to good old fashioned communication.”

At least 10 hours a day playing
George [not his real name] is an 18-year-old gamer being treated at the Keith Bakker`s clinic in Amsterdam. He was spending at least 10 hours a day playing Call of Duty 4 until he sought help at the centre.
“Call of Duty was somewhere I felt accepted for the first time in my life,” he says. “I was never helped by my parents or my school. At the clinic I also feel accepted and have come out of myself.”
Read more about George`s case, here.

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