Have you ever heard of gaming disorder? This is also known as gaming addiction. On September 2018 the World Health Organization said that gaming addiction is an international classification of disease. The American Psychiatric Association’s said “Gaming Disorder is becoming a bigger problem because now, not only does everyone has a computer, and almost everyone has a video game system in their home.” Video game addiction has always been the main topic of controversies recently due to its impact on the younger generation, in spite the fact that it’s enjoyable to play it also helps them improve their critical thinking skills and hand-eye coordination. Its negative effects towards children, teenagers and adults need our consideration. Video games are harmful to humans because it affects social interaction,causes sleep deprivation and develops physical disadvantages.
One of the factors that video game addiction affects is social interaction.Social interaction is a must in life.Being able to communicate is something everyone has to learn how to do ,at least being able to converse just a little. Some may feel as if they are not accepted in society but may feel otherwise when they’re playing video games and communicating with some people they’ve maybe never even met before. This can later on result in a big problem due to the lack of actual face to face communication with the outside world the reason why ,is because people get so used to talking to people online and being alone in their own little world that they actually disconnect from the real world, which then once again results in another problem;not being able to fit in .Because they have no experience in communication this actually just makes it harder for the person to easily mesh into society like the rest . This causes problems with the people they spend the most time with on a daily peers, family, etc. They don’t try to make friends ,actual friends ,and sometimes may not even have a good relationship with their family members because of their video gaming addiction.Brigham Young University undergrad Alex Jensen and his faculty mentor, Laura Walker, publish their results in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence. ‘It may be that young adults remove themselves from important social settings to play video games, or that people who already struggle with relationships are trying to find other ways to spend their time,’ .Relationship quality is one of a cluster of things that we found to be modestly associated with video games ‘The most striking part that we found is that everything we found clustered around video game use is negative.’
Statistical analyses also revealed that the more young adults play video games, the more frequent their involvement in risky behaviors like drinking and drug abuse than those who don’t.
Another factor that video game addiction has on on people is called sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation is the condition of not having enough sleep, sleep is very important and we all need it. Many kids that are addicted to video games play all night and causes tendency to fall asleep in class the next day. An early study published in Journal of Applied Physiology found that playing video games before bed can cause your body to produce less “Sleep Hormone” called Melatonin.
Physical disadvantages are also a result of video game addiction. For example your eyes ;they get damaged by straining them for a long period of time. As Troy Bedinghaus a certified optometric physician said in his article Playing Video Games May Cause Eyestrain that “Kids tend to blink much less frequently while absorbed in a video game. This reduced blinking can significantly affect the flow of tears, sometimes resulting in dryness and irritation.”
