New Email Counseling is Available!
Counseling/consultation is now available. Please click here to learn more.
MIT’s Sherry Turkle Warn’s of Dangers of Our Digital Culture
MIT’s Sherry Turkle Warn’s of Dangers of Our Digital Culture
Turkle’s warning, “We expect more from technology than from each other.”
Commentary on Possible Concurrent Problems with Video Gaming
Commentary on Possible Concurrent Problems with Video Gaming
Mark Griffiths is a respectable researcher in problem gambling, and he recently began to study the possibility that video gaming might impact likelihood of the development of problem gambling.
Parents, regardless of your level of concern, might benefit from awareness of this 21st century issue. Take a peek when free.
Toronto Star Article Series
The Toronto Star published the first of a series of articles “Is the Internet bad for us?”
Is it???
I do not think so. No sensible person nowadays should think so given the demonstrable benefits the internet offers.
What I do think, and so does (I believe) Josh Tapper with The Star, is that as a society we rarely give voice to what we lose as human beings in choosing to be wired and digitized to the extent we currently are.
Boys becoming less and less sophisticated?
Here is an article documenting the observation that our generation of boys are becoming less sophisticated than previous generations.
And be sure to check out Philip Zimbardo’s ground-breaking account of how arousal addictions (video games and pornography) are eroding the healthy development in boys on their quest to responsible adult-manhood, The Demise of Guys (2012).
New Engagement Option for the Active Teen!
For years I have experimented with various approaches to engage youth and young adults in physical activities outside of the counselling office. I have come to conclude that my first sports love, tennis, is one of the best (if not the THE BEST) activity to achieve positive outcomes for youth struggling with emotional distress, learning difficulties and problematic behaviors.
I maybe biased. After all, I not only fell in love with tennis, but was motivated enough to have been certified as a tennis coach for a 7-year period of my adult life. Yet here is what the US Professional Tennis Association has to say about the physical and psychological reasons to pick up tennis.
For more information about my tennis coaching, with a strong clinical/resilience-building focus, please visit www.playtenniswell.com .
Do I work with parents of younger children?
Most who inquire about my services do so because of problematic use of screen technologies in youth, i.e. teenagers ages 13 to early twenties. Reasonably so because this is the period when the developing teen faces the demands of sound decision-making and planning in order to successfully enter adulthood.
However, it is never too early to seek education and support! I often work with families struggling with mental health, behavioral and learning challenges in their tweens (ages 7 to 12; i.e. elementary school age kids).
Remember, we live on arguably the most technophilic (technology loving) continent in this increasingly technophilic world in an unprecedentedly technophilic age in human history. It is only responsible for parents to take leadership in instilling values that safeguard children from the negative effects that screen technologies bring into their lives.
Please call and chat about this. Partner with me to simplify our daily living without getting inundated with everything too much, too quickly, and in an irrelevant manner. Do it today!
New Content!
I recently updated the Media/Public Appearance tab to include a couple of links to Kelty Mental Health of BC Children’s Hospital in which I was interviewed on the topic of Internet Addiction. Feel free to check it out.
http://cmch.typepad.com/mediatrician/
http://cmch.typepad.com/mediatrician/
Concerned parents often ask me of reliable source of information and support online they can consult regarding appropriate use of media and technology for their children. I use the Mediatrician’s website often. See what you think!