Mark Brandenburg has a Masters degree in counseling psychology and has been a counselor, business consultant, sports counselor, and a certified life and business coach. He has worked with individuals, teams, and businesses to improve their performance for over 20 years.

Prior to life and business coaching Mark was a world-ranked professional tennis player and has coached other world-ranked athletes. He has helped thousands of individuals to implement his coaching techniques.

Mark specializes in coaching men to balance their lives and to improve the important relationships in their lives. He is the author of “25 Secrets of Emotionally Intelligent Fathers,” and “Fix Your Wife in 30 Days or Less” (And Improve Yourself at the Same Time).

BOOKS BY MARK BRANDENBURG
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by
Mark Brandenburg, M.A., C.P.P.C., C.S.C.
© 2007

According to a recent study of 1,178 children in the US, almost 9 percent of child gamers are pathologically or clinically "addicted" to playing video games.

However, 23 percent of youth say that they have felt "addicted to video games," with about one-third of males and a little more than one in 10 females reporting the sensation, according to the survey by Harris Interactive.

Forty-four percent of the youth 8 to 18 also reported their friends are addicted to video games, the survey said. The average child 8 to 12 plays 13 hours of video games per week, while teens age 13 to 18 year play 14 hours of video games per week, according to the survey.

These statistics raise some interesting questions. While the majority of kids who play video games don’t become addicted, what does it say about our culture when one third of our boys have felt addicted to video games? How do video games and other stimulating products prepare our kids for the future? What child, after the excitement of 14 hours of video games each week, doesn’t get bored when faced with “spending time with grandma”, or some other activity that doesn’t provide intense stimulation?

Furthermore, Japanese researchers found that playing computer games stunted the development of the frontal lobe of the brain in teenagers, which is a crucial part of developing impulse control. The tendency to lose control is not due to children absorbing the aggression involved in the computer game itself, as previous researchers have suggested, but rather to the damage done by stunting the developing mind. The full article can be accessed here: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,539166,00.html

I don’t know about you, but when it comes to decreasing the chances of my kids’ developing as well as they can, I don’t like to take any chances. I don’t like to allow my own denial to impact their development—socially, physically, or any other way.

Letting your kids play video games for hours each week? Their brains only have one chance to develop.

Can you really live with that?
 

Mark Brandenburg MA, CPCC, coaches busy fathers by phone to balance their life and improve their family relationships. Mark is an Instructor for the Academy for Coaching Parents (www.acpi.biz), and the author of “25 Secrets of Emotionally Intelligent Fathers.” http://www.markbrandenburg.com/father.htm

Visit him and the free resources at his site at http://www.markbrandenburg.com

BOOKS BY MARK BRANDENBURG - Click here to buy