The pandemic was a scenario that enhanced video game addiction in many young people in our country. This is the case of Sergio, who between the ages of 12 and 13 found his own refuge in them: “It was my moment of peace, I forgot about my problems. I put my headphones on and did what I liked, which was to play… even though I knew it wasn’t right.” Sergio tells us that he considered his life boring “And I’d rather be a 22-year-old who spent hours killing zombies.”

Sergio used to spend more than 6 hours playing all kinds of online games. When he finished confinement and it was his turn to go back to school, he was reunited with his classmates “and I had a very strange anxiety attack, which made me think that something was not right”.

His parents, as a first measure, took away his computer and he even hacked the parental control of the mobile to download more video games. The situation was out of control and they took him to one of the two Desconect@ centers in Spain (one in Madrid and one in Barcelona). In his case, the one in Madrid, where they are specialized in this type of case. They give secondary school classes to these types of kids and accompany them to therapy in the afternoons.

Francisco also goes to this place, who during the confinement was also quite hooked on video games. He faked connection problems to follow his high school online classes but, really, he was playing an online video game with other friends. “We played all day long, until we went to bed. We woke up and kept playing,” remember this young man who came to repeat 1º ESO for this addiction.

His parents reproached him for it but he was so seduced by the world of videogames that he isolated himself and did not speak to them for 6 months. His competitive character was also accentuated, but from a very ugly plane. “I got frustrated when I didn’t achieve my goals in video games. I got very angry and hit things. I even broke a table and a computer”points out.

Laura also goes to the Desconect@ center in Madrid but her addiction, since she was 12 years old, to social networks. She came to expose herself, with risqué photos, in some of these networks, where she received messages from men over 30 and 40 years old. “I exposed myself to men of legal age who only sought sexual purposes. I got to meet one and put myself in danger”indicates.

In addition, in this type of networks other young women with exuberant bodies appeared with whom they compared themselves and had a hard time. She also received criticism for certain photos or videos that she posted. “I had such a bad time that it led me to self-harm, to cry a lot and to get depressed”manifest.

Marc Masip, director of the Desconect@ centers, explains that treatments against video game addiction usually have a very high percentage of success. “Of course, they require therapies that can last one or two years,” says. It is more complicated, according to Masip, to treat addiction to social networks. “In these cases we have to see where the discomfort that the adolescent feels comes from and see how to deal with it,” he adds. Without forgetting, Masip expands, the training also for parents “so that they do not give devices to their children before they are mature enough to handle them.”

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