Interviews// Tanya Byron: The Exit Interview, Part 2

SPOnG: It's interesting that you mention Asperger's. I don't know if you've had chance to look at this, but Dr John Charlton has just presented a study showing that people with a gaming addiction show characteristics similar to those people with Asperger Syndrome. Have you observed that sort of link?

Tanya Byron: I can't answer that and I wouldn't like to answer it anecdotally, if you don't mind, because it's an evidence-based question.

Certainly, we did look at the area of addiction and we did look at the work that Professor Mark Griffiths and others do looking at addiction.

The thinking is that very few people are truly addicted to video gaming. What I mean by 'truly addicted' is they show a number of behaviours that, put together, would indicate with other behaviours (that are considered an addiction) or even with substances, would indicate they are addicted. So, they can't live without it, will stop socialising because of it, will skip meals, will become very agitated if they can't do it, and so on... which is how you understand an addiction.

A very small percentage of people are truly addicted to playing video games, but there are a lot of kids, actually, who play video games probably for too long. I know there are a lot of parents who have said to me, 'the opportunity costs, they're playing video games, shouldn't they be doing other things?' My advice has been, in the same way that when we bring up our children we should have a healthy, nutritionally well-balanced food diet... well, in terms of our media diet, we have to think in the same way. With children, video gaming is part of play, play is a very positive part of development, and so long as what they're playing is appropriate for their age and stage of development, this is good. But, also, childhood and child development - and even for young people - should be balanced and, obviously, if there is a child who's playing so much that they're not going outside and playing or socialising with friends or talking to family, or spending time doing other activities – reading and so on - that are also important for their development, then that is a problem. So, for me, it's about having a balanced media diet.


SPOnG: So, do you play games yourself?

Tanya Byron: Yes, I do play games. I like to play games and I like playing games with my kids. I play different games with both my kids. My daughters older and she's into different kinds of games than my son.

I get a lot of pleasure from that and they teach me. All the Brain Training ones are really funny as well. Yeah, I enjoy playing games.


SPOnG: OK, so Brain Training... what other sorts of games?

Tanya Byron: Lots. I won't, if you don't mind, mention specific products, because obviously I avoid all that because I don't want to be seen endorsing particular products. There are probably loads of games that are brilliant but I don't play because I just haven't got them in my house.

But I'll tell you another story, if you want. On the weekend we were out buying a game, me and my kids, and we were in a big game store. These three little boys were trying to buy a very, very popular 18-rated video game. The guy at the desk, quite appropriately, was saying, 'no, I can't sell you this, it's for people who are 18 and over', and all that sort of stuff. So, the boys went over and got their granddad, who was saying, 'oh, well, it's a game. I'll buy it for them.' And the retailer was saying, 'well, if it's for them I can't sell it to you', but in the end the granddad was saying, 'no, no, it's for me.' And you could see this poor guy didn't know what to do...

As all this was going on I could feel myself twitching, and I started to walk over. But my daughter yanked me really hard and said, “Mummy, you can write the Review but please don't embarrass me in the shop!”

I thought, 'for God's sake, I'm going to become a vigilante here! So... I stopped myself. (Grins).