S. Korea's Stress-Driven Online Gaming Addiction

techsoldaten writes "The Washington Post is running an article about the ever-increasing problem of videogame addiction in South Korea. From the article: 'The situation has grown so acute that 10 South Koreans -- mostly teenagers and people in their twenties -- died in 2005 from game addiction-related causes, up from only two known deaths from 2001 to 2004, according to government officials.'"

Comments

Re:Is it the games?

[alexandrecc]

Actually they probably died of massive pulmonary embolism secondary to a deep vein thrombosis in the legs that traveled into the right chambers of the heart and then to the lungs.

Reopro is not a prophylactic (prevention) agent. Heparin or low molecular weight heparin is usually used in hospitals to prevent this to happen in the patients who stays in bed for many days or weeks. A filter in the lower vein cave to prevent the migration of the clots are something used. But honestly we can't seriously suggest all these options for these guys. These drugs all have potential secondary effects of bleeding anywhere (skin, GI tube, or even worse in the brain).

Usually as some of you said, the best advice is to walk like 2-5 min every hour. This is even more true for the women, taking birth control pill, pregnancy, smoking, or obese.

Deep vein thrombosis is a medical emergency. The symptoms are pain in the calf or leg, asymetric swollen leg, skin color change.

I did a computer engineering degree from 1995-1999 playing about 40 hours a week Warcraft II online. I then did my M.D. from 1999-2004, playing probably 20 hours a week Warcraft III online. I am now a resident 2 in diagnostic radiology. I was for sure addicted (or at least at risk) to these highly competitive games. I am a competitive person. Japan, Korea and US are all very competitive countries where competition is inherent to the culture. Probably inconsciently, for me these games were a way to show to someone else I was better than him. Any competitive human being gets satisfaction from this. Evolution forced this to be in our genes.

I disagree a little bit about the opinion saying it is a complete waste of time. Hand-eye coordination and speed is very useful in many works; complex decision about a multi-parameters real-time situation can also be useful in the life. If I had a software company or if I would be on the admission commitee of a medical school, I would hire any top 10 world players of a RTS game. At least if they can show they can be functionnal in the life.

The only thing I was honestly surprised to see about that article was the main cause of death. Before reading it, I was almost sure the main cause would be suicide like in many others addictions. They didn't even talk about it. Maybe this is only a underreporting bias where the relation of suicides aren't that clear with the hardcore gaming like in the case of the deep vein thrombosis relation.