Menacing addiction in kids

Most Indians okay with moderate online gaming for kids

A 16-year-old boy, addicted to the Players Unknown’s Battlegrounds game on the Internet, faked his own kidnapping and demanded ransom from his own parents because they had taken away his mobile phone.

A 21-year-old mobile game addict from Kakati village in Belagavi, Karnataka, killed his father and sliced his limbs because he was stopped from playing PUBG. 

A class XI student, son of a deceased police officer, was addicted to a dangerous internet game. The boy used the bank accounts of his mother to make the payments for online games. When his mother went to the State Bank of India (SBI) to withdraw the money, she was shocked to learn that there is no money left in the account. A total of Rs 27 lakh was spent from the account. She then checked her account with HDFC bank and found that Rs 9 lakh had disappeared. Her entire life’s savings and the money her late husband had left behind for the family had vanished without trace. 

A 19-year-old boy from Wanaparthy, Keshavardhan, was admitted to a corporate hospital in Hyderabad after he revealed symptoms of a stroke following playing PUBG unstopped for many hours.

A 14-year-old allegedly committed suicide by consuming poison at his residence after he got a scolding from his family members for playing PUBG. A 15-year-old who was “quiet and good” suddenly smashed his grandfather’s expensive laptop to smithereens as the older man had snatched his mobile from him. The boy, an orphan was being taken care of by his paternal grandparents.

These real-life cases are much more dangerous that they appear to be when you see your growing child or grandchild glued to his/her cell phone for hours, not talking to anyone in the family, keeping aloof from friends and relatives, refusing to attend family functions or participating in sports or other cultural activities. These are symptoms that call for immediate psychological counselling and attention by a trained doctor also.  But adults do not find all this alarming except that they get irritated because the child is not paying attention to school work or to studies at home or at tuitions. Not paying attention to studies is just the tip of a dangerous iceberg where the top layer of ice might break at any time and literally swallow the addicted child into the deep ice-cold waters of the sea, never to return.

Every technical and scientific invention brings along with it, associated socio-psychological problems, especially for children. Parents, knowingly or unknowingly, contribute to the child’s addiction to cartoon shows and videos on television or on the Internet.   This happens because among the urban middle-class, parents mostly have just one child and both partners have jobs to attend to. The child is left with a nanny or a maid. As the child begins to grow, the parents hand him a cell phone to play with, not knowing it may bring calamity to the family and destruction for the child.

Zee News Editor-in-Chief Sudhir Chaudhary had about six-months back analysed how the Indian youth is falling prey to online gaming. Nearly 41 percent of India’s population i.e., around 55 crore people are below 20 years of age, which means that online gaming addiction will ruin an entire generation. 

Last year, the WHO defined Gaming Disorder as a pattern of gaming behaviour characterised by impaired control over gaming, increasing priority given to gaming over other activities and continuation or escalation of gaming despite occurrence of negative consequences. 

In a survey conducted in India in 2020, 65 percent of children under the age of 20 said that they were ready to give up food and sleep to play online games. Many confessed they were ready to steal their parents’ money to play online games. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the addiction to online gaming apps has increased tremendously among children across the country, leading to adverse physical and mental health effects. 

In a survey conducted by Subha Das Mullick, a filmmaker and a consultant-cum-teacher, who asked whether students should be allowed to bring mobile phones to school, the children who said “Yes” explained that a mobile phone was a substitute for a dictionary, they could do quick fact-checking during class and many interesting activities could be done with the mobile phone. Some teachers said that if students have mobile phones with them, they can be taught netiquette using the gadget. They can also be familiarised with useful sites and taught to glean useful information. Those students who responded with a “no” to students bringing mobile phones to school said that it was too much of a distraction, parents called up, they kept messaging each other, they cheated during exams, and they were constantly on Instagram or Facebook while class was going on. Some teachers said that smart phones were status symbols. Those who do not have smart phones or cannot afford them, will begin to suffer from an inferiority complex.

It is largely felt that gaming addiction affects a given age-group of growing children but this is not exactly true. Today, the addiction has percolated above to reach higher age groups to affect university students and occasionally, even working adults. It is like any other addiction such as smoking, drinking and gambling but much more dangerous as it begins first to affect the very young who are often handed a mobile by their own parents to get irritating children out of their hair.

Conventionally, we connect addictions with substances such as alcohol and drugs but with the increased use of technology in our regular routine addictions to similar things such as the internet, smartphone and gaming are becoming more ordinary. Unlike alcohol and drugs, individuals are not warned about the dangers of spending additional time in gaming or realize the warning signs of such addictions.

Gaming through mobile and internet-ready games for cash, or for kind, or even intangible and abstract gifts and coupons, is much more dangerous that it may appear to be at first instance. Parents of gaming-addiction children are not even aware that rehabilitation is available and necessary in extreme cases.

Residential treatment programmes for gaming addiction works by removing a patient from their triggers. It allows them around the clock professional treatment and supervision. But, should parents be counselled first and then children? Think about it.