'Fortnite Addiction' Is Apparently A Real Thing

Fortnite is everywhere. It's a ubiquitous piece of pop-cultural interactive entertainment media. Everybody is playing it, everybody knows about it, but not everyone is capable of pulling themselves away from it. According to one story, it seems as if "Fortnite addiction" is turning into a real thing.

Bloomberg is reporting that some parents are dealing with their kids becoming addicted to Fortnite. They just can't seem to separate themselves from the wildly popular Battle Royale shooter game.

The story recounts how a certain Debbie Vitany is trying to get her son, Carson, to ease up on his 12-hours of game-time a day that he invests into Epic Games' Fortnite. That's more time than what most people put into work each day, and certainly more time than what's invested into sleeping. In fact, Carson is apparently opting out of sleep in order to play the game; all in an attempt to get good and become one of the best at being the last man standing.

This has reportedly resulted in Carson dozing off in the classroom and missing out on important classroom study sessions. In result, the teachers have told Bloomberg that his grades have "plummeted" and that he isn't doing so well in school.

Carson's mother is trying to get him to slip back into a proper sleeping habit and get back into the groove of performing well in school again, but she told the news outlet that it feels like a losing battle. The report indicates that some behavioral specialists have likened the addiction to "heroin," while tying in the gaming habits with the growing concerns over an over-exposure to social media and personal tech devices.

The article goes over how some people have cited Fortnite addiction as one of the reasons they were getting a divorce, while it also covers the recent surge in popularity among sports stars who have taken a liking to Epic's widely popular game. Not every sporting league out there is pro-Fortnite, though. Some NHL teams decided to cut the game out of their lives when it comes to traveling and prepping for a big game.

There are also some other loosely correlated stories about some child psychologists seeing an upsurge in patients due to video game addiction, but it doesn't actually cite if those psychologists specifically named Fortnite as the reason for those kids being addicted to video games.

Keep in mind that the whole video game addiction occurrence has been prevalent in gaming for years, and even managed to gain some widespread attention back during the height of popularity for MMORPGs such as City of Heroes and Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft.

However, near the end of the report from Bloomberg, there was a reference to Michael Jacobus, who counsels kids out of Santa Barbara, California, citing that 60% of the 120 kids he counseled played Fortnite excessively. According to the article, Jacobus will be doubling his efforts in 2019, opening up new locations in Texas, Indiana, and New York to treat kids addicted to tech, and Fortnite in particular.

It's not all doom and gloom, though. The article has some words of wisdom from a psychiatrist who suggests that parents keep kids under 10 from playing video games at all, and to closely monitor what their kids are playing and limit how many hours of gaming they can play a day. Seems like part of the cure for gaming addiction is sound parenting.