School’s Out, Time to Turn off the PS3

With school going out for another year, Centreville families face the challenge of keeping their stay-at-home youngsters occupied with physical activity and away from languishing in front of the household’s electronic gaming consoles.

During summer vacation many youngsters to go full-tilt into electronic games, whether it’s the latest Playstation 3 or Xbox 360 offerings. Centreville gaming stores note an uptick in game rentals and sales during the summer. For example, the Call of Duty game series is still selling extremely well, said Anthony Ingenito, store manager of the GameStop store in the Centrewood shopping plaza on Route 29.

Experts warn against allowing kids to vegetate in front of a computer screen for the next couple of months.

Shelley Leeds, office manager at Centreville’s Fairfax Pediatric Associates, said their office is launching a summertime stay-active campaign, called “95210 Rx for Health.” Each of the numbers in the 95210 logo stand for reminders for parents to help their kids this summer:

• 9-Get nine hours of sleep each night.
• 5-Eat five servings of fruits and vegetables each day.
• 2-Limit screen time to just two hours a day.
• 1-Get a least one full hour of exercise each day.
• 0-Consume zero sugary beverages.

The screen time limits are especially important and includes all time in front of a screen, such as watching television to playing games to answering emails, she said.

“We want to make sure we have active kids,” Leeds said, “because active kids are healthy kids.”

The folks at Cox Communications noted that the summer break may mean a tug-of-war over the family’s wireless Internet connections. As kids log onto their on-line gaming platforms, moms and dads may find it a bit slow to conduct business from home with the family laptop – even if they have the fastest Internet hook-up.

Gamers usually climb onto the Internet well after business hours, but with school going out, many will be getting on at the same time as their parents, which can cause some problems. It’s not necessarily intuitive that a PS3 online game, which doesn’t involve normal internet apps like email or a Web browser, would slow down a family’s internet connection. But it can, said Mike Leone, Cox spokesman.

“Gaming or other bandwidth-intensive online activities can slow down multiple connections in a home,” Leone said.

Also, any computers connected wirelessly typically experience significantly slower speeds than if they are competing against another computer in the house that is wired, Leone said. Gamers can slow down everyone else’s connection by wiring their consoles directly into the internet modem.

Leone also offered some other things to watch for that can impact Internet speed: 

• An unsecured wireless network can allow others to get on the Internet using your connection.
• The number of computers (or other devices) that share your Internet connection, especially when performing bandwidth-intensive activities (like gaming or watching movies).
• Viruses and Spyware that slow your computer and surfing, including some (Trojans) that can partially control your computer to send files & information without your knowledge.
• Computer and router settings not optimized for fastest surfing and file transfer (ex. – TCP/IP settings; TCP Optimizers are available free online).
• The wireless standard you may be using - for example, wireless routers that use the older 802.11b or g standard are not optimized for faster speeds offered on the Cox network.

And finally, Leone notes that some browser add-ons, such as multi-media add-ons, are bandwidth hogs and can slow everything down to a crawl.