A special seminar is tonight at Collingwood Collegiate Institute on video game addiction.
It’s tonight at 7 PM in the school library, and it open to the public.
It’s also free.
The school council is hosting the event, and council chair Laura LaChance says Doctor Bruce Ballon will be the speaker.
LaChance says Doctor Ballon is a psychiatrist from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Healt in Toronto, who works with adolescent addiction issues, and he’s also an assistant professor of psychiatry at the university of Toronto.
Doctor Ballon also uses gaming to help youth understand their issues with it, and he has created games that have won awards as well, and is considered an expert in interactive techniques.
LaChance says they’re expecting an audience of between 75 to 100 people.
She says they were originally going to have the meeting in December, but had to cancel because the panel withdrew at the last minute.
LaChance says gaming addiction is a new problem, and it’s still up in the air as to whether it’s an addiction or not.
She says they got funding for the event through the Collingwood General and Marine Hospital Foundation Education Endowment Fund.
LaChance says the youth of today use different electronics for communications than even a few years ago.
And they need to prevent them from getting hooked, and it hurts their academic and social success.