It’s game over for a 14-year-old Roxbury boy, whose overwhelmed mother was so exasperated with his incessant video game playing that she called the cops on him.
The final straw for Angela Mejia snapped at 2:30 a.m. Saturday when, “I woke up in the middle of the night and saw the light on in his bedroom,” hours after she had told him to go to sleep.
“Sometimes I want to run away, too,” Mejia said, breaking down in tears in her immaculate apartment. “I have support from my church, but I’m alone. I want to help my son, but I can’t find a way.”
Mejia is among thousands of parents struggling with today’s video-game obsessed youth. The Entertainment Software Association reports the popularity of video games is skyrocketing, with 42 percent of adults intending to give, or hoping to find one in their Christmas stocking this week.
Mejia’s son - one of four children the 49-year-old is raising alone - was playing “Grand Theft Auto,” an exceedingly violent video in which the gamer assumes the role of ladder-climbing criminal.
An argument ensued as Mejia unplugged her son’s PlayStation. Then, this mad-as-hell mother dialed 911. Police responded and managed to talk the boy into shutting off the game and going to sleep.
“They (police) were just like, ‘Chill out. Go to bed,’ ” the boy told the Herald.
Mejia said she approves of athletic-themed videos, but as for “Grand Theft Auto,” she said, “I would never buy that kind of video. No way. I called (police) because if you don’t respect your mother, what are you going to do in your life?”
Mejia, a cafeteria cashier at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Jamaica Plain, said the two officers who responded “were surprised” there was more involved than putting the lid on a simmering family feud.
Emmy Award-winning documentarian Lawrence Kutner, former co-director of the Center for Mental Health and Media at Massachusetts General Hospital is the author of “Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do.”
“Clearly, it’s a very, very rare situation for someone to call the cops. That she went to the extreme of calling the police tells me more about her level of frustration than anything else,” Kutner said.
“Adults tend to view video games as isolating experiences,” Kutner said. “Kids view them as social experiences. It’s a way in part - especially for boys - of gaining social acceptance.”
Source: Boston Herald
Follow Me @Twitter.com/ChasinMoPaper
}
Comments