Debbie Vitany is fighting a losing battle against Fortnite.
Her 17-year-old son, Carson, has been logging 12 hours a day on the video game, searching for weapons and resources in a post-apocalyptic world where the goal is being the last person standing. Teachers complain he falls asleep in class and his grades have plummeted.
Wed made some progress in getting him to cut down his Fortnite hours and get better sleep, but hes slipped back into his old habits, Vitany, who lives near Saginaw, Michigan, said in an interview. Ive never seen a game that has such control over kids minds.
Vitanys anguish is echoed by an army of other parents, teachers and bosses around the world grappling with a game that sucks up hours of players time -- sometimes to the detriment of other activities. More than 200 million people have registered to play Fortnite, which has become a billion-dollar business for its creator, Epic Games Inc. Some desperate parents have sent their kids to rehab.
This game is like heroin, said Lorrine Marer, a British behavioral specialist who works with kids battling game addiction. Once you are hooked, its hard to get unhooked.
Epic has issued past warnings about avoiding Fortnite scammers, but it declined to comment on the addiction issue.
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Video-game addiction isnt new: Parents and teachers have been carping about distracted children -- and their joystick-addled hands -- since the days of Atari consoles. But the ubiquity of Fortnite has created a more widespread menace. And its happening against the backdrop of broader concerns about social-media and smartphone overuse.
Fortnite, first released in its popular battle royale mode in September 2017, isnt just causing problems for kids. An online U.K. divorce service says 200 petitions cited Fortnite and other video games this year as the reason for the breakup of marriages.
Professional athletes are getting hooked, too. The National Hockey Leagues Vancouver Canucks had so much trouble getting players to meetings and dinners they banned Fortnite on the road. David Price, star pitcher for Major League Baseballs World Series-winning Boston Red Sox, was scratched from a May start against the archrival New York Yankees because of wrist problems that may have been exacerbated by Fortnite playing.
Some pro-baseball players are so Fortnite-obsessed that theyve hooked the game up to their stadiums Jumbotron video system to play it while waiting to take batting practice.
Randy Kulman, a child psychologist in Wakefield, Rhode Island, has seen a surge in parents taking their kids to counseling because of video-game addictions.
I had a 13-year-old in my office who said he had 300 Fortnite wins, Kulman said. I had to stop for a minute and calculate what he had to invest just to get those.
Michael Jacobus, who works with kids suffering from video-game addictions, said about 60 percent of the 120 children he counseled at camps in Santa Barbara, California, and Asheville, North Carolina, last summer were playing Fortnite excessively. Treatment involves a technology detox -- their devices are taken away -- combined with healthy eating, sleep and group therapy. Next summer, he plans to work with more than twice as many kids, adding locations in Texas, Indiana and New York.
Fortnite is particularly compelling because the battle-royale version is free to play and available on a range of devices from phones to gaming consoles, notes Cam Adair, who dropped out of high school at age 15 due to his own video-game addiction and now speaks on the subject to schools and others groups.