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While the computer is an incredibly useful tool and can help you get a lot done, wasting time on it seems to be all too easy. Lots of kids have problems with spending too much time on the computer, to the dismay of some parents. Computer addiction, especially to such features like games or instant messaging, has been described as being just as powerful as a drug addiction, and while your child may not be to that point, their excessive computer usage could lead to more serious problems down the road.
Steps / Ways
1. Talk with your child about his/her excessive computer usage. Find out if there are any specific reasons that he/she spends so much time on the computer – sometimes the computer functions as an escape from reality. If your child is facing problems that are causing a desire to “escape”, try and address those.
2. Move the computer to an open area if it’s not already in one – sometimes taking it out of the child’s bedroom is sufficient to reduce their computer usage, and it makes it easier to monitor their usage.
3. Set a password for the computer so that only you can log on to it. Your child will have to ask to be logged on to the computer in order to use it.
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4. Find out how bad your child's addiction is, and what exactly your child is addicted to – does your child spend most of his/her computer time playing games, chatting online, or just browsing the Web?
5. * If he/she is addicted to learning information, as long as it is legal, safe and decent, then that should not be an issue. Using the Internet for education, rather than chatrooms/gaming, is a great use. Programming sites are a useful class of site, and provide a skill that is good to learn, plus they teach a skill which will be beneficial. If your child is addicted to learning information, then that is benign, and useful to his/her education. Praise them for that.
6. Some children go through phases where they like chat room sites, then decide it is no longer of interest, and move on to more educational-related sites, e.g. computer programming, history, cookery etc. These will not cause worry in most cases.
7. Set a time limit on the amount of time your child can spend on the computer each day. In reality, though, time limits seldom work due to the stress of modern life. As a child gets older, they work it out for themselves, in most cases.
8. Be aware of what your child is doing on the computer. Check the Internet browser's history to see what websites she's visiting.
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9. Buy or download a program that restricts computer use. Parents often find it difficult to enforce time limits because their kids will put up a fight. If necessary, buy software that will enforce time limits or block use.
10. Replace the time that your child would normally spend on the computer with other activities – play board games with her, take her to the library, get her together with friends to play sports, etc.
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Website: http://www.wikihow.com/Stop-Your-Child%27s-Computer-Addiction
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Through this article, there are a lot of useful ways to stop the little child in your house from computer addiction. However, the issue of computer addiction not only happens among the children, but the teenage as well as us.
The popular and famous website where everyone is using is Facebook. Even some of the young children are using it as well. Teenage and children are using it because Facebook do have applications with variety of games, chatting rooms, commenting other people's post and others. We, as teenage do addicted to some of the games as well where the game require to cook, collect or harvest in the time they have set, and we will need to do it between the time given. Although we knew that it is wasting time, we will still do it because we found the games are fun to play, different challenges in each level and allows us to play with our friends. So, we need to control our duration on playing Facebook Games and do some other beneficial activities.
Therefore, it is important to stop addiction to computer by replace it to other activities either with families, neighborhoods, or friends just like the way suggested in the article.