Fortnite Is Killing Your Grades

Fortnite has become a global sensation. The combination of the quick turnaround into the next game alongside the incredible fun of gunning down other players with your own squad of friends have made this rather basic-graphic game into hours of fun. Oh, and did I mention it’s free?! The trouble with Fortnite is exactly its plus-point: it’s highly addictive and can be genuinely difficult to stop playing. Now, instead of reading that book for tomorrow’s class, writing that assignment that’s due in a week or even going to bed, college kids are playing into the early hours, barely even noticing the damage they’re doing.

Mortifying frustration

First things first, I’m not judging you. I’ve pissed away over 75 hours of my life on Fortnite, but I was fortunate enough to finish Uni before I downloaded it. Had I been able to access it during my studies, I have no doubt I would be struggling to find the balance between work and getting the all important W. I know the pain of dropping straight down into Tilted Towers, only to have some noob find a gun before you and blast you out of the game before you’ve even got going. Or, even worse, successfully battling your way out of Pleasant Park with 5 kills and an all-orange loadout but coming second as the guy you were left with has clearly done nothing except play Fortnite every day for the past year. And what’s the reaction after these things happen? You go again. You just need to play a couple more games and maybe, just maybe, you’ll win one in a few games time.

‘Just one more…’

This is Fortnite’s danger. Hours can be lost in the effort to get that elusive win, evading you by so few other players. Your brain’s reward hormone, dopamine, fires off big time by the immediacy of the gratification you experience. By getting so close to winning and falling short, your desire to try again and win shoots up. As a result, time stops being an obstacle and other, more important concerns fall out of the equation. This is where your grades lose out: your college work may become less of a priority and you might even skip class just to play. Even if you finish all your work, you may end up playing way past midnight, and being sleep-deprived can make you even less effective at school than not having done any work at all.

This isn’t a Fortnite-specific problem

It would be unfair to blame all of this on Fortnite, of course. This desire for quicker, more instant gratification from gaming is reflective of the shift in the way we consume almost everything. It’s well documented now that Twitter and Facebook notifications create a hit of dopamine, forcing us to keep looking and post more. Think of the way companies have tried to capture this too: we watch chains of Youtube videos or scroll through Instagram for hours, instead of sitting and reading a whole book or focussing our attention on one film. Even Netflix figured this out, uploading a whole series at a time rather than an episode a week, banking on our pleasure-seeking brains to watch the whole thing in one sitting. All these distractions are designed to ensnare you, keeping you from doing the things you need to be doing.

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Moderation is key

It’s difficult to suggest a technique to combat these issues. Certainly you could try cutting them all out, but going cold turkey can often turn vices into forbidden fruits, and the feeling of breaking the rules could be just as lucrative. I would suggest setting a curfew time for your leisure activities, for example saying you’ll only play video games between 8 and 10pm. A 2-hour window is enough time to get into any game, it leaves plenty of time for school work before and after and should also leave enough time for your brain to cool down before going to sleep.

My direct advice to college kids playing too much Fortnite? Delete it. Now. If you’re able to balance your college and gaming life then well done, it’s highly admirable. But if, like me, you’re unable to do that, then take some personal responsibility and literally get rid of the temptation. I know I said cold turkey could be a bad method but I’m not talking about abstaining from playing, I’m saying full on delete that download.  When you’re done with your studies, when you’ve read that book, or written that essay, or got those hours sleep you’ll need to be productive, or even graduated, you can re-download it and play as much as you like. What I can absolutely assure you of is that, if you don’t get the grades you wanted out of college, you certainly won’t regret not playing Fortnite, but you could very well wish you’d worked harder.

What are your Fortnite habits like? Do you prioritise your gaming time above your studies? Or maybe you don’t see the point in wasting time on things like that at all? Tell us in the comments!

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