Brian’s Reviews > Glow Kids: How Screen Addiction Is Hijacking Our Kids -- And How to Break the Trance > Status Update

I got through quite quickly. This book is *so* light on content. More on what I skipped discussing here in the review.

His solution is wilderness programs. He peddles the one he runs. He also encourages parents to get more riled up by spreading the word and getting political about this.

"Is having a rewired brain ... worth the potential for developing impulse-control disorders—like addiction and ADHD—not to mention more serious psychiatric and developmental disorders, such as schizophrenia and autism?"

I have been avoiding profanity so far, but exploiting ADHD and autism is too much. F*** you, Dr. Kardaras. This is despicable. I will be posting percentages only until you talk "treatment".

Finally, one article that I have not seen covered elsewhere. Problem is, it doesn't measure prevalence of gaming addiction. It just describes differences between "compulsive video game players" and "non-gamers". These are Dr. Kardaras' words.

Is every chapter going to start with an anecdote? These would be great if the author presented any research to illuminate us as to the actual presence of this issue. Here, they are just manipulative substitutes for data that for all we know does not exist.

And here's where I will stop for now. Ugh.

A journal with "Waldorf Library" in its name does not count as an unbiased source, Dr. Kardaras.

An eight-year-old child saying “I like Minecraft better than my homework." is neither scary nor surprising. How many eight-year-old actually like homework? Would people saying “I like playing out better than my homework" mean that outdoor play should be banned for them?

And by the way, the aforementioned kids are *not* dead. They are playing a game.

"Other parents have become “Minecraft widows,” lamenting that they have lost their children to the insidious game..."

First, this is another anecdote. Second, a parent who *actually* loses a child to some fatal event is not a "widow". The fact that they are referring to themselves as such is more than a little creepy.

The book quotes a supposed "Commander Dr. Doan of the U.S. Navy" to suggest that video game makers hire "the best neurologists and neuroscientists" to "hook up electrodes to the test-gamer" to measure neurological responses and make sure that every game raises blood pressure -- "typically 180 over 120 or 140 within a few minutes of playing". I will discuss in my review why this is horsecrap.