By the time Al and Christine’s son Josh was 14 years old, he was so consumed with playing video games that he stopped going to school.
“He just said, ‘Hey, I’m dropping out,'” his father Al told ABC News “20/20.”
Josh would stay up late to play well into the night and sleep in late the next day. His mother said he would often play for as many as 12 hours straight, for as much as 60 hours in a week. They tried to talk to him, Al said, but made little progress.
“It’s like, ‘You’ve got to stop … you’ve got to close it down,'” Al said. But he said his son replied, “I can’t.”