Rupert Goodwins' Diary

Rupert Goodwins ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 20 Jun 2003 16:11 BST

Monday 16/06/2003
It's Monday morning, an event traditionally greeted at the House of Goodwins with cries of pain and disbelief. I'm not an AM type, but my beloved son is determined to go one better: he'll only entertain the thought of wild horses dragging him from his pit if they canter up silhouetted by the dying rays of the evening sun. I had put that down to the unavoidable consequences of my genes and the natural turpitude of the teenage years, but new research from the Akita University School of Medicine in Japan has posited an intriguing extra factor: video games.

It turns out that if you play exciting video games late at night with a bright screen, not only does the thrill keep you awake past your bedtime but the combination actually resets your body clock, leaving you in a bit of a mess. They found this out by measuring melatonin levels, heart rate and rectal temperature, which if you ask me sounds like an abnormally exciting bedtime treat in any case, but these are real doctors and we must trust them.

But I know that the lad enjoys his video games, and while I don't know exactly what he gets up to in his bedroom late at night I suspect there's a fair amount of digital thrillage. Shall I demand he leave the laptop outside his bedroom door at lights out? Install some form of parental monitoring system? Try and wean him off the diabolic pixel-bashing?

Parenting in the 21st century. It isn't easy.