How do I get rid of my Internet addiction?

[tina65]

My DS is addicted to the internet I believe. He is not addicted to posting and blogging or any of that, He is addicted to playing games, you know like left 4 dead, world of warcraft or call of duty games and such. DS is sitting in front of pc screen all day long. Exaggeration, of cause, but still I think it's not a good thing that he gets on the Internet the minute he gets home and it is interfering with his school work. I'm single mother who has a full time job, so I can't control him 24 hours a day. Please advice if you have the same problem with your kid and manage to get rid your child from Internet addiction. Thanks!

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Upset mother.

Pull the plug out and take out the fuse. Job done!

You need to put your foot down and limit his time on there.

My DS would happily play screen based games all day long. I say no, and he has to find something else to do.

Block access to even getting on the pc with a password on your control panel. You can also set it up to where after a certain period of time, the pc goes to sleep and when you move the mouse, the password will be required again to continue.
You can start it for him to get his school work done....and then give him an agreed upon amount of time for gaming.

........I may well be addicted to MN. Recently aquired a laptop (beautiful MacBook) and started taking it to bed with me (have wireless internet)! Should qualify this by saying that (a) DH is away at the moment and (b) by taking to bed I do mean for the purposes of surfing

how old is he?

I tried many things like ask him not play games more than 2 hours a day, pull the plug out, set password on ps, but my computer guru came around these easily...

Noonki, he is 11 years old. One more reason to limit his Internet access is that he is a little overwight.

tbh I would completely ban it for a month. DSS (12) is almost never allowed on the computer/to watch tv here as he plays/watches loads at his mums. He comes here for a longer periods over the holidays and rarely complains.

If they get out the habit they start learning how to do other things

Also those games are really violent and realistic and such a waste of time.

DSS now reads, sees friends, plays games is learning the guitar, goes to karate...

the more screentime they have the less able they are to entertain themselves

Linda35 are you on commission from EZ Internet Timer? You've only ever made 8 posts on MN and all of them link to that site

I would find a reason to have it turned off for an extended period of time. (month sounds good)
then when re introducing it I would set the amount of time he can be on there - you don't need to buy anything - just set the timer on the cooker.
We made the mistake of introducing DS1 to the computer too early and now he is allowed 45 minutes on a Saturday afternoon if DS2 sleeps and the same on the Sunday. Week days not at all.

I have no affiliation with the company, I'm just a satisfied user. That's it.

It was sooo difficult to find good parental control for my tech savvy you can't even imagine... Almost everybody here are happy mothers cause their kids understand their words. Regretfully not mine.

P.S. I have 3 favourite software: well known Photoshop, Total Recorder (audio recording tool) and EZ Internet Timer and it's so pleasant for me to share my experience with other people.

P.S.S. I'm not tech savvy as my kid and even the idea to insert a link in my post makes me happy

If you are removing the power cord there is no way he can use the pc unless you have another cord around. As far as the password....do you have more than one account? There is no way he can access the pc if you have a password set that he can not figure out or unless you have more than one account and have only set a password for one.

Is it possible he has started a new account on the pc without your knowledge? Check user accounts under control panel. You can set parental controls and automatic time limit controls as well....uninstall his games if need be.

Might ask him if he has been using someone else's trojan to bypass what you have set....if so, that would be quite an accomplishment! On second thought, maybe you shouldn't ask him that....no sense giving him any ideas!!

Wow Linda, there's a lot of poeple called Linda who have posted on all sorts of websites about their love of this product. In fact, quite often they're the only comment. You must really like it. Or there's a lot of people called Linda LOL.

Tina, I hope you get this sorted. Do you have the chance to get him doing different activities?

Thanks so much for all your resposnses!

To tell the truth, I'm rather shocked, but this software does the trick perfectly. I've been using Ez Internet Timer for 2 weeks already, and my techy son haven't broken it. Really! Now I won't have to police it constantly and have the peace of mind that an hour a day or a half hour a day will be just that. I've found that my kid do well when he is fully aware of his restrictions ahead of time and is prepared for it. This may help them also in terms of realizing that there is a time and place for everything, and help me in that I wouldn't justify give him that extra 10 or 15 minutes of play time in order to finish work around the house. Game saves, system shuts down, and we move on to reading time or playing in the yard time.

And my friend's advice helped me a lot: Decide on a fair amount of time to spend daily- bargain. You said a couple hours. I would suggest what you think is ideal, she can say what she thinks is ideal, and hopefully you can settle around one hour.

I hope this information will help somebody else.