Psychiatrist Wants to Make Kids Into ‘Healthy Gamers’

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May 14, 2024 – “The challenge with video games is that when we play one game, we don’t just have pleasure in that game,” says psychiatrist Alok Kanojia. “Our brain wants more, and so kids are playing a second game, a third game, a fourth game, and they really don’t want to put it away.”

The topic hits close to home. Before his residency at Harvard University, Kanojia nearly flunked out of college because he was gaming too much.

“I was stuck in this cycle of playing until absolute exhaustion, so that when my head hit the pillow, I passed out and I did not have to deal with the guilt, the shame, with sort of the realization that I was messing up my life,” says Kanojia. “The only escape was more gaming.”

So Kanojia’s parents took drastic action. They sent him to an ashram in India, where he learned spiritual practices and meditation.

“What I learned in India was how my mind works, because I didn’t understand the rules of the game with my mind,” he says. “Once you understand how the mind works, why it is going into a video game, you can create alternatives to satisfy the mind in a healthier way.”