My friend visited me with her 7-year child. I was wondering because he does not interact with people at all, does not talk, and concentrate when people talk to him. I asked her about his situation, she replied “He was born normally but this happens becuase he addicted to video games, mobile phone, and this was diagnosed by specialised doctor”
So, I will talk about these important things because we start to harvest the bad results due to neglecting of awareness. This causes disasters of a level to education and loss the brain ability.
What does addiction mean? It is a bad habit a person falls into because of long time of practicing. And then they are not able to leave this bad habit easily except if he goes under a recovery programme. Some examples of addiction are drugs, shopping, alcohol, and video game addiction.
Video Games have a fast movement, for example murder chase, cars race, etc. Here a person plays, speeds up and chase but stays still on his chair comfortably. He just moves his fingers, and his brain reacts with 24 vibrations in a second for 20 minutes, compared a healthy brain with 14 vibrations in a second. After months of playing continuously, this causes a destruction of three main brain skills, which are: ability to pay attention, concentration, and memory.
Why is this happening? The brain is compound of two parts, thinking and emotional.
Thinking brain is a system that distinguishes between right and wrong and holds morals and values, also the ability to obey rules. This part of brain gets destroyed with video games. The parents come to a doctor and complain about their son. Addicted kids frequently fail school, become depressed, stop eating, instead they straight away go to video games.
Emotional brains look for fun, for example, enjoy shopping, travelling and so on. But with the electronic addict causes the fun to be only limited to video games. This releases Dopamine (pleasure hormone).
Other symptoms of Games Addiction are psychological disorder such as sleep disorder, anxiety, depression, isolation, aggression and bullying. Because Video games are fast movement, this causes a child to not live in a calm and balanced life because he goes under stress and the Adrenaline is high. Radiation from the screen causes dry eyes and muscles weakness and a risk of obesity.
What are the common misconceptions in this field? Some people say that electronic games develop intelligence. This is wrong, instead it develops stupidity. They say all children play videogames, so why do I avoid my son from enjoying just like others? I say I do not follow the people.
Lots of countries are opening clinics for Game addiction such as: France, Canada, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and even California prevents video game.
In summary, the addiction of Video games is even more dangerous than drugs and hookah. So, we should hurry for the treatment from professional doctors.
There are loads of alternatives like watching TV, sport, drawing and painting, caring of pets, design technology. So, raising awareness is very important. We should ask ourselves; how will we have a bright future with an addicted video games generation? So, parents are responsible for the video game addiction to their children and teenagers. There should be awareness campaign to public about the danger and the long-term effects to the video game addiction.