60 Minutes Aired A Segment On Fortnite/Video Game Addiction And How It’s Killing Brain Cells

Bashing video games has become the thing to do since Fortnite hit the mainstream, but 60 Minutes tonight aired a very lengthy segment around video game addiction (mainly Fortnite) with two adolescent children.

At first, it seemed as though the segment was going to rely less on the stock standard things that we see in these kinds of stories (particularly in regards to Fortnite), but this story was a little bit different for a few reasons.

This particular story focused on these two children who had turned to video games in times of need. One who had just had their parents go through a breakup, and the other who had been suffering through one of their parents getting breast cancer. Now, most of us will know that games help us through times of need, but this is a case where children have been allowed to lock themselves in their rooms and rely solely on games to cope through these issues.

Both parents had admitted that they hadn’t taken consoles away, and both children had consoles at the foot of their bed. So on one hand, it’s clear that these children do have a level of addiction, but it’s been helping them cope through the issue, and there’s clearly been no parent intervention to get them proper help or pull them away from gaming.

The disappointing part of the story was that the blame was placed solely on games and how they are addictive in addition to games causing children to become brain dead, rather than parenting providing restriction and knowing how to limit their children from playing games.

The story then focused more on how video games are ruining lives and killing brain cells, which obviously isn’t true for regular situations.

Gaming is a form of entertainment and most kids when given the option between school and video games, would obviously choose video games, but it’s just sad to see video games cop all the blame once again.

It’ll be interesting to see how this progresses, as Fortnite doesn’t appear to be going away.

The full segment isn’t yet online, but we’ll update this post once it is.

If you are a parent that is worried about their child spending too much time playing games, the IGEA has provided a helpful resource: