This past week Harris Interactive came out with research revealing the potentially negative affects of too much game play. The research is claiming that many kids are actually "addicted" to video games. The negative effects from this include lower grades and attention deficit problems. From their press release:

Nationally, 8.5 percent of youth gamers (ages 8 to 18) can be classified as pathological or clinically "addicted" to playing video games.

Most youth play video games and many feel that they may be playing too much.

Nearly one-quarter (23%) of youth say that they have felt "addicted to video games", with about one-third of males (31%) and a little more than one in ten females (13%) feeling "addicted."

Forty-four percent of youth also report that their friends are addicted to games.

With nearly 8 in 10 American youth (81%) playing video games at least one time per month, including 94 percent of all boys playing, this certainly raises concerns about video game addiction.

Dr. Douglas Gentile, Director of the Media Research Lab at Iowa State University and the director of research for the National Institute on Media and the Family, states, "It is important that people realize that playing a lot is not the same thing as pathological play. For something to be an addiction, it has to mean more than you do it a lot. It has to mean that you do it in such a way that it damages your life. This is why we based our definition on how pathological gambling is diagnosed in the DSM-IV. Almost one out of every ten youth gamers show enough symptoms of damage to their school, family, and psychological functioning to merit serious concern."

To me, this is clearly a parenting issue -- and it starts early since kids can begin playing games either on CD-ROM or online as early as age 3 (probably even earlier than that!). There are tons of positive effects kids get from game play as well. But if your teen is allowed to be in his bedroom with the door locked playing games for more than an hour or two a day, it's time to step in and set limits. Or if we're using addiction terminology, it's time for an intervention.

Also check out Common Sense Media's video game reviews for parents and don't forget to join the discussion at the Blog Safety Forum.

Update: Here's a great column from Wired Magazine about this first generation of "gamer parents" having to make decisions about what types of games they let their kids play and what kinds of limits they set.