Understanding of digital media is important in today’s society, and the use of digital services or applications is an important tool in everyday life. Now you can hardly do without a smartphone to take public transport, park or pay bills. The Internet can also be a good source for finding information about everything you want, from learning a language to repairing a bike.

But sometimes you lose control, as websites often are designed to make you spend as much time as possible there and spend money. Most websites that are going to make money want you to be tempted by the advertising that pops up.

I guess we’ve all experienced that we started searching for something either on Google or Youtube just to get suggestions on other similar topics that make us end up somewhere completely different and without having found what we searched for in the beginning.
Most people keep in touch with friends and families using social media. It’s cheap and good. But one danger with using social media is that it can lead to poor self-esteem. It is easy to search for confirmation that we have exciting lives by posting pictures of our lives and expect someone to “like” what we do.

The pursuit of this confirmation can take a lot of time, especially when we also look at other people’s pages and compare ourselves to them and feel inferior because our own lives do not look as good as theirs.

While many adults use Facebook, young people have long since switched to other platforms and applications such as Snapchat, Instagram, Tic Toc, where the information takes place more more directly one-on-one and “here and now”. Surveys show that adults also spend far too much time on social media, so children aren’t the only ones with problems. The average age of a gamer is 31 years.

Girls spend a lot more time on social media than boys. The boys play more, but it doesn’t have to be a problem if it doesn’t get in the way of school, family and other leisure activities.

But the challenge for many families is when to say stop. It is not easy when the children compare themselves to others and get angry when they are not allowed to game, and then it is important to have a good dialogue from the start.

The role of a parent becomes different when you live in Norway because children have different rights here than they might have in your home country. There, parents automatically had respect and a no means “no.” In Norway, one is expected to talk to the children and take into account their opinions.

The dialogue requires understanding each other and seeing the world through the other’s gaze. It is important that parents familiarize themselves with their children’s everyday lives with games so that they understand why their children spend so much time on social media or playing games. Gaming and social media are a part of life that won’t pass, so together you have to learn how to handle using the medium in a good way.

This course is designed for those who want to understand more about gaming and gambling addiction and how to set limits and help your children set limits for themselves when it comes to gaming to avoid problem gambling.

The course will cover different topics, and you can choose whether you want to go through them all in order, or if you can chose a little here and a little there. We will first go through some facts and myths like games, such as what kind of games exist, is gaming is dangerous for children, children become violent by playing, etc. in module 1.

In module 2, we explore the psychology of gaming for those who are interested.

In Module 3, we’ll take a look at what parents can do to regulate their children’s gaming habits or get help if it has gone too far.