Fortnite addiction is real, health professionals warn

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Fortnite 2
Fortnite has taken the gaming world by storm.
Photo: Epic

Think Fortnite is all good fun? Not according to doctors it’s not. Some health professionals are likening the hit game’s addictive effects to hard drugs.

“[Players] are not sleeping. They are not going to school. They are dropping out of social activities. A lot of kids have stopped playing sports so they can do this,” Michael Rich, director of the Clinic for Interactive Media and Internet Disorders at Boston Children’s Hospital, said.

“We have one kid who destroyed the family car because he thought his parents had locked his device inside,” Rich continued. “He took a hammer to the windshield.”

The report notes that some teenagers even lose massive amounts of weight because they don’t stop playing to eat.

“It’s similar to working with parents who have a child addicted to drugs,” Rich Domenico, a therapist with LiveWell Therapy Associates, told The Boston Globe.

The concerns about the game center on its addictive design, which hooks players via a reward mechanism. While there are Fortnite players of every age, this is considered particularly dangerous for young people because their self-control systems are not yet fully developed.

The combination of addictive gameplay and Fortnite‘s social element makes the game very difficult for some kids to put down.

Should we really worry about Fortnite addiction?

It’s worth noting that, as with every youth interest, video games have long been labeled harmful. Just like comic books, TV, pop music and all sorts of other amusements in the past.

This latest report isn’t based on any large-scale, empirical study, but rather observations on the part of a few professionals. But the Fortnite issue does tie into wider concerns about the purposely addictive nature of modern technology.

Companies including Apple have tried to counteract this by introducing features like Screen Time, which monitors how much certain apps are being used. Screen Time makes it easier for parents (or users themselves) to take control of their use of iPhones and iPads.

Parents, do you worry about your kids’ Fortnite use? Is this an overblown concern? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

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