4 Ways Gaming Changes Your Child’s Brain

And how to use this knowledge to finally get control over video games

Has your child ever thrown a controller when playing a video game, maybe even right at the TV screen? Has he ever hit or screamed at a sibling during or directly following a gaming session? Have you given up on setting limits because you fear his reaction when you tell him it’s time to turn off the game?

You are not alone.

There are countless other parents living this daily reality right now. And not too long ago, I was one of them.

When my oldest son Adam was playing video games, I thought they were just that—games. It took Adam dropping out of college due to his gaming addiction for me to realize that today’s video games are not like other childhood games. They aren’t even like the video games we played when we were young.

Today’s video games are carefully and methodically designed to stimulate the release of neurochemicals. The more exciting the game, the more chemicals are released. And the more chemicals that are released, the more your child will want to keep playing.

If this sounds like the basic description of addiction, that’s because it is. Today’s games—even those that look cartoonish and innocent to us as parents—are engineered to be addictive. In fact, the World Health Organization (WHO) now officially recognizes “gaming disorder” in the 11th Revision of their International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11).

Like all addictive substances, video games, especially when played often and excessively, have the ability to change the structure of your child’s brain in ways that affect their mood and motivation in the short term and their potential for success in the long term.

What effect does gaming have on the brain?

Gaming has many physical effects on a child’s body, including increased risk of obesity, vision problems, and sleep disturbances. Some of the most alarming and life-altering effects, though, happen in the brain.

Here are 4 ways gaming affects a child’s brain.

1) The fight-or-flight response activates

The fight-or-flight response is a defense mechanism that enables humans to rapidly mobilize a significant amount of energy in order to cope with and overcome threats to their survival. When faced with a physical threat, our fight-or-flight response increases our chances of survival. This is a good thing.

However, this ancient response can’t always keep up with modern technologies. While we can logically acknowledge that video game attacks are not real, the brain still responds as if the player is in life-threatening danger. It doesn’t know the difference between the game and reality. This is where all that aggression surrounding video games comes from. The amygdala—or the part of the brain that enables the fight-or-flight response—has taken over.

2) Cortisol (stress hormone) increases

If your child plays video games every day and video games activate the fight-or-flight response, this means your child’s brain and body are in a constant state of stress. To cope with that stress, their body will begin to produce cortisol.

Cortisol has many adverse effects. It increases anxiety and irritability, which we’ve mentioned. It also affects a child’s ability to concentrate as well as their ability to fall asleep and stay asleep, all of which can have tremendous negative effects on their social, emotional, physical and academic growth.

Chronically high levels of cortisol can also result in dysregulated blood sugar, which can drive cravings and consumption of junk food, as well as a host of other health problems.

3) Adrenal glands release adrenaline

While many parents think that gaming is a way for their child to relax and unwind, brain scans show that it’s the exact opposite.

Video game designers do everything in their power to make their games as exciting as possible through fast-paced action and time-sensitive challenges, among other things. They do this because the more exciting a game is, the more adrenaline a player’s body will release. When excess adrenaline is released into the bloodstream, it increases the heart rate and blood pressure.

After about 20 minutes of hyper-arousing play, the flow of blood shifts from the frontal cortex to the limbic area, which causes the “game coma” that many parents are all too familiar with.

4) The dopamine reward pathway activates

What’s incredible—and incredibly dangerous—about video games is that while they are releasing stress hormones, they are also simultaneously releasing a huge amount of dopamine, or the feel-good chemical.

Dopamine gets talked about a lot when it comes to screens, but it’s often misunderstood. Dopamine is not inherently bad. Without dopamine, we would not eat when we are hungry or go to bed when we are tired. Essentially, dopamine rewards the brain and keeps it wanting to do activities it deems beneficial for survival.

In the case of video games, this dopamine reward pathway gets hijacked. The dopamine released during video games is very, very high. In fact, few other activities besides sex or drug use will ever provide these insanely high levels of dopamine, which means that all other activities will quickly begin to feel boring.

When not playing the video game, your child’s brain will crave it, which is why video game play can quickly spiral into problematic or even addictive use.

What happens when the brain isn’t gaming?

Though your child may “only” be gaming for an hour a day, the effects of these games and the neurochemicals they release stay with them all day. Here’s how Dr. Victoria Dunckley explains it in her Psychology Today article “This Is Your Child’s Brain on Video Games”:

“When the fight-or-flight state occurs too often, or too intensely, the brain and body have trouble regulating themselves back to a calm state, leading to a state of chronic stress. Chronic stress is also produced when there is a ‘mismatch’ between fight-or-flight reactions and energy expenditure, as occurs with screen-time. Indeed, the build-up of energy is meant to be physically discharged to allow the nervous system to re-regulate.

Once chronic stress sets in, blood flow is directed away from the higher thinking part of the brain (the frontal lobe) and toward the more primitive, deeper areas necessary for survival, causing impairment in functioning. With children, whose nervous systems are still developing, this sequence of events occurs much faster than it does for adults, and the chronically stressed child soon starts to struggle.”

Essentially, she is saying the brain’s adaptation to overstimulation will affect your child in all areas of his life. They will have trouble focusing and regulating their emotions at both school and home.

If your child grows up chronically overstimulated, it will affect their ability to learn new things, to hold down a job, or even just manage the tasks of daily life. The areas of their brain responsible for planning and self-control will simply be underdeveloped, while the areas linked to reward-seeking will be overactive.

Luckily, your child has not finished growing up, which means this does not have to be your reality. Whether your child is 7 or 17, there is still time to make a change in your home and reverse the effects of video games. It all starts with a deeper understanding of the science. This is the mission of ScreenStrong.

Our new Kids’ Brains & Screens Home Edition covers everything we talked about here and so much more. It explains healthy vs unhealthy dopamine, the fight-or-flight response, and other physical effects of video games in a way kids can understand and connect with. It removes the emotion from the conversation and replaces it with science and logic, making it easier for parents to establish and enforce screen boundaries.

ScreenStrong has helped thousands of families successfully detox their children from video games, and we can tell you that removing the video games is not enough. You also have to give your children the “why” behind your decisions. That’s where KBS Home Edition comes in.

Daily arguments and aggressive outbursts may be your reality now, but they don’t have to define your family’s future. Order our new KBS Home Edition here and take the important first step towards winning your kids back.

ScreenStrong Resources

Podcast—“How Screens Hurt Kids’ Brains: A Conversation with Dr. Victoria Dunckley”

Podcast—“The Hero’s Journey and Immersive Gaming with Dr. Huu Kim Le”

Melanie Hempe, BSN, is the founder of ScreenStrong, a nonprofit organization, and the author of the Kids’ Brains and ScreensSeries for students and parents. She is dedicated to preventing and reversing childhood screen addictions by providing scientific evidence and community for families around the globe. Her educational material is filled with everything she wished she had known before her oldest child suffered from a screen addiction. ScreenStrong has created what every family needs—education and the community—to skip toxic screens through adolescence so teens can reach their full potential.