Gaming - Issues/Concerns/Solutions

As we begin to look at BS for our son, I’m wondering how big of an issue this is. I had a friend tell me the other day about her DS’s freshman roommate who would stay up way past lights out, playing video games on his phone under the covers. Is this really prevalent? Any insight into how schools manage this?

Yes, this is quite common, especially with the freshman boys. As a dorm parent, I confiscated cellphones regularly after lights out… I actually had a closet with a whole shelf full of phones, iPods, game systems… It was crazy. Not all dorm parents are that strict… But the kids who stay up way too late and play games when they should be studying generally get a wake-up call early on in the form of grades. It will become obvious to faculty and advisors pretty quickly if a kid is focusing on other things rather than their work. Even the upperclassmen in our dorm were enthusiastic gamers, but by then they had their priorities in order, and played mostly when their work was completed.

My son’s roommate has a gaming system in their room, which I assume serves as a social draw. (I think the school doesn’t allow them for 9th graders). As long as my son is getting good grades and enough sleep, it’s fine with me. We all need our down time, some more than others (imagine what I could do if I weren’t on CC all the time!). BUT, I think it should be very carefully watched with students who are new to boarding school. With luck, the dorm parents or prefects will catch this problem. If not, advisors are generally very responsive to parents’ concerns. Ultimately, though, it is up to the student to exercise self-control.

The most dangerous ones are often innocent looking massively multiplayer online games. They are enormously time consuming and addictive, while giving little stress relief or brain stimulation. That is a huge problem among teens generally.

Fortunately, it seems heavy workload and structured daily routine of boarding school don’t allow kids to spend enough time on those MMO games (e.g. World of Warcraft for boys and FarmVille for girls) to be competitive, or long-term strategy games (e.g. Civilization V) to stay interested. They simply won’t be allowed to play from 3 pm to 6 am straight as some day school kids do. Also, when they are not surrounded by critical mass of kids who play those MMO games, they are less likely to start them from the first place, just to stay in the social groups.

Therefore my guess is that they will resort to mostly single/dual player offline games which do serve as stress relief activity if played moderately. I wouldn’t be able to control if my daughter would play phone games at home while we are sleeping. So I don’t expect dorm parents to be able to control that strictly. But my guess is that mine won’t be able to do that often or else she will be sleep deprived for her own good, and we will know it by her failing academics. Grier School has goodness “7 reporting periods” per year for parents to monitor online. At first I felt it was a bit excessive and micromanaging. But if that sort of problem happens, we will know it before too late.

This is all very interesting. My DS isn’t into it at all, so I’m a little clueless!

Look for a school that has a set time for freshman strict lights out and Internet shut down (usually 10 pm).

However many clever kids including mine get around this. One way is by using data roaming plans on cell phones. So make sure you get a plan that is capped at a relatively low limit (like 1 GB).

Also avoid letting kids bring big gaming PCs to school.