Helping someone with a gaming addiction is never easy, especially if the person has no plans to quit. Some gamers might be so addicted to gaming and prefer to spend 12 – 18 hours with their consoles. A combination of routine changes and therapy should help you solve gaming problems.

Knowing how to help someone with a gaming addiction is essential, as letting such problems continue could cause severe other issues that may become irreversible.

That’s why this article provides enough details you need to support someone with a gaming addiction. Follow the steps in this post to eliminate gaming addictions with relative ease.

How to Help Someone with a Gaming Addiction?

Sometimes, it might be difficult to help an adult with gaming problems on your own. If the person affected has friends or family living nearby, it’s best to form a support group to help fight their addiction.

The support group will perform several essential actions required to help your friend or spouse end their gaming addiction. But if you’re a parent dealing with a kid in their early teens, it might be easy to end their addictions alone.

Follow these steps to help someone end their gaming problem:

• Sell multiple gaming PCs and consoles the affected person owns and leave one. Leaving one PC or console reduces the desire to play games across platforms for several hours.
• Cancel gaming subscriptions. Monitor how your child, spouse, or friend funds their gaming subscription and cancel as many as you can.
• Parents should reduce or stop the gaming expenditure of their kids. Support groups should continue monitoring an adult with gaming problems to seize new consoles and spend more time with the affected person.
• Play multiplayer games that may need 2 or more people on your team.
• Reduce the gaming time of affected kids or adults by 25% every week or two. For example, someone gaming for 10 hours per day should reduce to 7.5hours and then 5hours and so on every week.

Following these steps will prove effective against reducing gaming addictions and might end game problems altogether.

How to Treat Severe Gaming Addiction?

Severe gaming addictions might seem impossible to treat, especially in adolescents and young adults. But experts can provide treatment for serious gaming problems with:

• Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT),
• Over-the-counter (OTC)medications, and
• Through in-patient addiction treatment centers

One of these methods or a combination of two or more might be enough to help someone struggling with severe gaming addictions.

When to Offer Help against Gaming Addiction?

Knowing how to help someone with a gaming addiction could be hard without spotting enough warning signs. You’ll know when to offer support against gaming addiction when the following signs become too obvious to ignore:

• Expresses disappointment/anger when there’s no game to play
• Always talks about games
• Playing games for long hours every day without stopping
• Finding it hard to reduce gaming hours
• Problems at school, home, or work due to gaming
• Ignores personal hygiene because of games
• Unnecessary spending to get different kinds of games

Spotting one or more of these signs might be enough to know such a person needs help to solve gaming problems. You’ll need to apply some steps to prevent mild gaming addictions or seek expert assistance to solve severe game problems.

How to Prevent Gaming Addictions?

You don’t have to stay away from gaming altogether to prevent addictions. Follow these steps below to maintain a healthy gaming routine with ease:

Store gadgets outside your room

Gaming devices are so many nowadays, and that’s a problem for people struggling with a gaming addiction. Mobile phones, tablets, PCs, and dedicated gaming consoles can render high-quality game titles in moments.

You’ll need to keep these gadgets away from your rest or study area, especially at night. Storing phones, tablets, PCs, and consoles in your bedroom or study might cause a gaming addiction.

Consistent night gaming could ruin your day-to-day activities and cause several avoidable problems.

Set and stick to time limits

Games are designed for enjoyment and shouldn’t become a problem if you recognize time limits. Set a time limit for each gaming session and make sure you don’t exceed it.

Most games come with storage options, so you can always continue from your last checkpoint later. Keep your gaming time limits within 1 – 3 hours during weekdays and 2 – 5 hours at weekends.

Indiscriminate gaming may cause an unhealthy addiction you’re not prepared to handle.

Engage other productive activities

Gaming addictions usually makes other activities seem boring. However, engaging in other activities apart from gaming is essential to prevent a nasty addiction.

Some common activities to engage in to prevent gaming addictions include:

• Exercise,
• Completing chores,
• Socializing (with friends and family),
• Completing online courses,
• Learning new skills, etc.

Doing stuff apart from gaming all day will help your mind and body and prevent addictions without much work.

If you’re a parent, you can help your kids prevent addictions by following these steps above. Moreover, if your friend or spouse is tilting towards a gaming addiction, you can provide such assistance to prevent lingering problems.

Final Word

Nowadays, game ratings don’t do much to prevent addictions in kids, teens, and adults. Knowing how to help someone with a gaming addiction is essential to maintain their physical and mental health.

You can solve mild gaming problems with simple changes to daily routines. You’ll have to make sure someone with a gaming problem doesn’t sit in front of their console for too many hours.

But if the gaming addiction has gotten too serious, therapy might be the only solution. Consult an experienced medical practitioner for assistance to solve deep-seated gaming addictions in kids or adults.

You’ll likely need the services of a clinical psychologist or physiotherapist to deal with such an addiction. Cutting down gaming hours is essential to end such addictions, and with professional assistance, you could offer effective, long-lasting help.