Video Gaming

Michael Jacobus figured out how to get more magical summer camp days out of his life by combining his knowledge of digital wellness with his experiences as a camp director for over 40 years. In the summer of 2018, he started the world's first clinical summer camp program for teens and adolescents suffering from unhealthy screen time, social media use, and gaming addiction. Reset Summer Camp is a camp for digital detox and life skills. Michael’s book: UnHappy Campers is a great read and a fantastic resource for families who want to implement more structure around tech in their home. In this episode we discuss the book, the camp and the ReSet app Listen today!

Tessa Stuckey, AKA:The Mom Therapist, works with families navigating the digital, tech-filled world that our kids are growing up in. Tessa takes on today’s negative cultural effects on our kids’ mental health from the perspective of a therapist but with the heart of a caring mother. In this episode we talk about creating a healthier and positive lifestyle for the whole family through anxiety management, understanding online harms, necessary limits of screen use, and the need for healthy connection. Listen now!

After her oldest son dropped out of college due to his video game addiction, Melanie Hempe put her nursing degree to good use and founded Screen Strong,@bescreenstrong a nonprofit that empowers families to prevent screen problems and reclaim their kids from toxic screens. Listen to this episode and learn how your family can stop fighting over screens, kids can gain more life skills and everyone can benefit!

You don’t drop off kids at the mall, park or bowling alley without accompanying them the first few times and then laying out groundwork for how to keep themselves safe. The internet is a PLACE. It needs the same amount of teaching and monitoring that we give to offline spaces. In fact, knowing that predators go where kids are and online they can hide behind fake personas - it can be argued that online gaming needs MORE safety building! This is where Protect Me from Kidas comes in. Protect Me is the first of its kind monitoring platform for online PC gaming. The best part is that the reports that are provided to parents provide conversation starters - you get to ask your child age appropriate questions and have a discussion around various areas of concern. The next steps are then also provided to give support. Enjoy learning more about this platform by listening to this week’s episode!

Summer is coming and how do we teach kids to self-regulate around time spent video-gaming? Tracy Foster from the organization START teaches all about their tool called the “video game decision tree”. In this episode we talk about the founding philosophy and components of START as well as go over this invaluable tool to help parents maintain summer sanity!

Hilarie Cash is a pioneer in the field of digital addiction and one of the nation’s leading clinical experts in internet and gaming disorders. As a co-founder and Chief Clinical Officer of ReStart Life, the first-of-its-kind residential treatment facility in the U.S. and Canada, she has been studying technology and its effects upon mental health since the 1990s. Learn how to recognize problematic behaviors and when to ask for help by listening to this episode.