Oxford Prof Says "Online" the Danger to Kids in "Online Gambling"

A study by an Oxford professor suggests that the inability to control impulsive behavior, as in problem gambling, may be caused among children not by exposure to online gambling specifically, but by too much computer time period.

An Oxford professor says that her studies show the biggest danger to children online, rather than online gambling, may be in being online at all. Susan Greenfield, a professor of synaptic pharmacology, finds that repeated and extended time using a computer by adolescents can cause damage to young, developing brains.

Greenfield's evidence indicates parents obsessed with preventing their children from the horrors of glimpsing an Internet casino may instead want to consider turning the computer off. Rather than seek problematic national bans of online gaming sites, parents may want to simply place strong limits on the time children can spend using computers, much as television viewing is restricted by many concerned and involved parents.

Greenfield explains that the human brain is still forming itself until well into teenage years. By not receiving a normal array of stimulation, including experience outside the narrow domain of the computer, development can be damaged or arrested.

"If you damage the prefrontal cortex, your senses and movements are not impaired but you change," Greenfield told the Daily Mail. "You become more reckless, lose a sense of sequence and consequence, of narrative and of your place in these sequences."

This area of the brain, so sensitive to proper input while young, is the same area that controls impulses and is often found to be a cause of problem gambling, drug addiction, and other mental disorders.

Greenfield explains that all human learning is based on a narrative, placing new knowledge in a contextual and conceptual framework. Without such, sensory input becomes merely sensational, losing the thinking process that should develop.

The professor says that exposure to computer presentation does not allow for the context to properly develop, causing thinking only in the moment, such as experienced in impulse control. So, worrying about the effect of online gambling in causing problem gambling may be ignoring the actual cause, an overdose of computer imagery while the adolescent brain is forming.