Parents Webinar: Understanding Games, Gamers and Game Addiction

In 2020, we had 2765 Singapore secondary school students complete COMEBACK’s Game Dependency Test. 19.4% of the students have game dependency, with 4% being significant. This means that one out of five teenagers in Singapore have some form of disruptions in their lives related to gaming. To read the full report, go to https://www.comeback.world/2020/10/08/game-dependency-in-singapore-secondary-school-students-2020/

Games are here to stay and will be part of our lives. Complete embargo of games for your child and youth will mean social and technology isolation. This is not possible when students are required to go online for some school classes or assignments. On the other hand Game Dependency is a very real challenge for many parents. Yet, game dependency is rarely on the clinical radar as a cause or contributor to educational or behavioural difficulties for which psychological services were being sought as compared to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), conduct disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, insomnia, and mood deregulation.

For this Parents Webinar, we seek to equip parents with frameworks to help parents better understand games, gamers and game addiction, which we termed game dependency. With better understanding of games and your child’s gaming motivations, parent-child communication and relationship can be improved. Developed from the understanding of a youth's brain development, various communication strategies will be examined. We will also do a brief introduction to neurofeedback intervention that is noninvasive and non-medication-based, that can help programme the brain to achieve greater mastery over ineffective or dysfunctional behaviours, i.e. game dependency, poor relationships, etc.

Date and Time: 26 May 2020 (Wed) 10am – 1pm

Venue: Zoom Webinar

NOTE: A unique link will be emailed to you to join the webinar. Please sign up using the email address you use for your Zoom account. Otherwise you might have problem logging into the Zoom webinar as the zoom links are linked to the email provided during registration. 

Cost: $15/registrant

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Nicholas Gabriel Lim

Nicholas Gabriel Lim is the principle psychologist and a board director of COMEBACK. As a registered psychologist, he has worked with youths for 2 decades. He is the co-founder of the Youth Work Association (Singapore), the author of the ebook Clash of the Mind and Heart: Understanding Adolescents, a clinical supervisor to young budding psychologist, and a youth mentor!

He has spent his career in the people, private and public sectors. All of which have been with youths, families, and advocates of youths. Given his depth and breadth of work with youths, he has been on various government advisory councils, like the Media Literacy Council and the National Council for Problem Gambling.

Nicholas not only has Degrees in Psychology from the University of Queensland and the Nanyang Technological University, but also various clincial and practice certificates like for Youth Work Coaching and Supervision, Choice Theory and Reality Therapy, Adventure Therapy, and Therapeutic Behavior Management, just to name a few. He is currently pursuing his law degree.

In his free time, Nicholas enjoys reading a good book and heading to the gym. Together with his beautiful wife, he has three children. He lives by his favorite mantra, a life well reflected would be life well live!

Nicholas Lim's Website: https://nigel.com.sg/

Ruth Lim

Ruth is on staff with SOOS OIO as an Esports Coach and co-developed TeleTrip, an offline gaming community event. She conducts DOTA 2 foundational classes and workshops for Esports Academy under SCOGA and also teaches the module “Team Management” in Informatics Diploma for Esports and Game Design.

Ruth Lim coached a competitive DOTA 2 team TenTwenty in 2017 that won CPL Championship DOTA 2 Edition 2017, came in 1st in Dew Challenge 2017 and represented Singapore in Asia Pacific Predator League in 2018. Ruth managed Team Impunity FIFA Online 3 who got 3rd in EA Champions Cup (EACC) Winter Cup 2016 representing Singapore. In 2017, she coached Team Impunity FIFA Online 3.

Ruth graduated from Temasek Polytechnic with Diploma in Games & Entertainment Technology and SIT-University of Glasgow in Bachelors of Science with Honours in Computing Science. She also holds a CoachSG coaching certificate.

Well recognized in the DOTA 2 community, Ruth attended numerous international gaming tournaments, got to know and learnt from many of the top players worldwide. Ruth hopes to share her knowledge and experience to gamers in Singapore and beyond.

Poh Xing Yong

Xing Yong is an Associate Psychologist with COMEBACK. He has struggled with game dependency since Primary school, and now aims to help others overcome their similar struggles in game dependency using his past experiences and background in Psychology. He has completed his Psychology Degree (Honours), and is currently pursuing further studies in Counselling Psychology to further hone his skillsets.