Ask Our Families: Raising Kids Sane and Safe Part 2: Cyber Health: Gaming and Social Media Addiction

ASK OUR FAMILIES:

Raising Kids Sane and Safe Part 2:

Cyber Health: Gaming and Social Media Addiction

Gaming, the internet and social media are here to stay and will be part of our lives. The problem is: addiction to these mediums remain a major challenge for many parents. According to a 2020 Survey by Comeback Singapore, 1 in 5 students in Singapore has game dependency or addiction. Furthermore, it is a major contributor to educational or behavioural difficulties. Banning games and social media is not ideal as that would mean social and technology isolation. So, what can parents do?

In this second session on Cyber Health, we have lined up a great panel of speakers to speak to you on the matter - Comeback Principal Psychologist Nicholas Gabriel Lim, eSports Coach Ruth Lim and Comeback Associate Psychologist Poh Xing Yong who used to struggle with gaming dependency too. They will seek to equip parents with frameworks to better understand games, gamers, game addiction and your child’s gaming motivations. Parent-child communication and relationships can then be improved. Parents will also be taught various communication strategies, that have been formulated from the understanding of how a youth’s brain develops. 

Join us for this LIVE interview session moderated by Journalist Olivia Quay. There will also be a chance for you to ask our three panellists all your burning questions about keeping our kids safe and sane. 

Date: 13 Nov 2021 (Sat)

Time: 9.30 am – 12.30pm (Singapore Time)

Via ZOOM

The zoom conference details will be emailed to you.

More on the Panel of Speakers

Nicholas Gabriel Lim

Nicholas Gabriel Lim is the principal psychologist and a board director of COMEBACK, a rehabilitation program for gamers to gain back mastery over their lives. 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 and a clinical supervisor to young budding psychologists.

A father of 3, Nicholas is also most passionate about causes involving family and young people. Having had almost two decades of experience working with youths, he volunteers his time on advisory councils like the Media Literacy Council, sits on boards of non-profit organisations like the Singapore Psychological Society, and even volunteers as a Youth Mentor with Advisory SG, Youth Corps.

Ruth Lim

Ruth works with social enterprise, 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. She has also coached competitive DOTA 2 team TenTwenty and Team Impunity Fifa Online 3 from 2016-2017, with both having gone on to participate and do well in numerous international gaming competitions. Ruth graduated from Temasek Polytechnic with a Diploma in Games & Entertainment Technology and from SIT-University of Glasgow with a Bachelor of Science with Honours Degree in Computing Science. She also holds a CoachSG coaching certificate.

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.

About ASK OUR FAMILIES

This is the third episode for our ASK OUR FAMILIES series of interviews, brought to you by the Family Enrichment Society and Dads Matter. We hope to cover a broad range of topics related to parenting under different circumstances to help inspire, educate, and build loving, lasting families.