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

Beware MMORPGs

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate the idea of regulating games, but smart adults should know what these games do to your health. I played WoW for a long time when stress in the real world shoved my ego the wrong way. I stopped fairly recently and resolved my real life problems. Then I realized that I had stopped exercising. I used to run 5 miles a day and lift weights 3 times a week. I'm now about 40 pounds heavier, my muscular strength is about 1/2 what it used to be, and my running endurance is greatly diminished - about 1/5th what it used to be. I'm not blaming WoW per se, but just warning everyone - when I was in the game I had no idea what I was doing to myself. Don't let it bite you in the ass too.

Re:Beware MMORPGs

[Frozen Void]

Of course he doesn't know how games work:.
Its the same game you got interested in.
Game you started playing.Game you bought.Value of expected entertainment.
A sense of accomplishment for playing.
Game that has your friends in.
Game that you can communicate better then real life.
Game where you can roleplay anything.
Game that has strong community.
Game where you can choose exactly what you want.
A detachment from real life.
Real life runs in separate process.
Game that can compete with real life.
Game that is superior to entertainment.
Game that is better then social networking.
Game that is better then physical activities and sports.
Game that interferes with real life.
the crucial step is revaluation.
Real life is chore,a burden on the better activity such as the game.
Real life interferes with inferior motives.
Game works for superior motives,better sounding and much more interesting at this point.
Game increases happiness more if investment in time increases.
Game needs concentration and awareness more then real life.
Real life is boring and bland.

Connect the dots.That how addiction forms.

Fuzzy statistics

[andrewman327]

I am sure that more than 2 people died from gaming related causes in that time period. The medical community just wasn't yet aware of the effects of non-stop gaming. I am an EMT, but if someone dies of a blood clot, the cause of death will not be listed as "LAN Party," it will be listed as "Pulmonary embolism."

Re:Pretty Safe Addiction;

[evileyetmc]

I would love to see video game manufacturers being sued for "death due to overplaying". I mean they already have to put on rating stickers.
Next sticker on the box: "Warning: Death or dismemberment may ensue if this product is used in excess"

Wow. If only people acted like the "advanced species" we are supposed to be.

Re:Pretty Safe Addiction;

[rolfwind]

Take it in context. Gaming isn't an inherently dangerous activity, like say, mountain climbing, bungee-jumping, or even driving.

The danger they are describing isn't a physical one (for the most part) but a social, personal and pyschological one primarily - the deaths simply highlight how extreme the problem is in some people.

Replace the word gaming with internet, wouldn't you sit up and take notice if several people died from internet addiction?

That said, I don't blame gaming, because it might as well be replaced with the word internet. But as in everything else, learn (and teach the kids) moderation.

Re:Is it the games?

[boxfetish]

I beg to differ. As a former alcohol/drug addict, online games have been a godsend. Yes, I am "addicted" to a game now, but I have used the MMORPG as a substitute for my previous addiction to drugs and alcohol. I may be somewhat antisocial by normal standards, but at least, now, my relationships to others are somewhat normal.

Before, I could not hold down a job, or maintain any sort of lasting relationship. My relationships with family members were severly strained.

Now, that I am a MMORPG addict, my relationships with my (most recent) girlfriend and family are excellent by comparison, and I have been able to hold down an excellent full time job for a year.

It is all a matter of perspective. There are many worse things in this world that a person could be doing with their spare time.

And, to be honest with you, how is spending 10 hours "gaming" any different than spending 10 hours reading fiction, or watching TV? They are all "wastes of time", right.

Time that could have been spent...

Painful flashback

[Moraelin]

You know, that sounds like just what pushed me towards programming.

For whatever other qualities my parents had, and much as they did give me some good education too, they had two problems:

1. Between them and grandma, I had exactly zero privacy.

It may sound like "wtf, he'll have privacy when he's on his own, not in _my_ house", but seriously, please don't do that to your kid. Even the most affectionate cat needs its moments when it's alone.

It's not even just that _they_ were with me all the time (I couldn't even just go to a freaking summer camp, one of them had to come there to keep keeping an eye on me), the worst was that they told everyone every single detail I ever did. It's a freaking nightmare to live with your whole life posted on a public billboard, so to speak. Virtually _noone_ is _that_ extroverted. It gives everyone in town control over your life: e.g., you can't tell your friends "sorry, can't come now, I haven't finished homework" when you know they already know, or will find out, exactly at which hour you were already done with your homework. Or not without quickly losing every single friend you ever had.

Or to give an example that's still traumatic to think about, I had a girlfriend at some point in high school (yes, I wasn't that nerdy) which pretty quickly got addicted to my computer. Well, fairy 'nuff, I'm not even opposed to sharing the computer, but let's at least try to do something else too. So I pull a "let's go out today, mom doesn't let me use the computer today." (Right, I'm losing all nerd credibility here;) Mom actually called her to tell her that's not true. That was one relationship that went down hill very fast thereafter.

2. Their approach to "rewarding" any personal initiative was, well, best illustrated by Mac Hall Comics. (It's just a comic and safe for work.) Just about everything I did was most likely to be met with, literally, "*sigh* Who the hell told you to do that?" or "*sigh* Who the hell told you to do it like that?" It was as good as a slap in the face, let me tell you.

You get the idea.

Thing is, programming was something that side-stepped both issues and put _me_ in control. Finally. Bloody finally.

Now they're both programmers and perfectly capable of understanding what I did there, but:

A) Anyone they _could_ tell stuff like "our little Moraelin used a goto instead of a loop today" (and have any hope they'd understand that) was usually way outside the circle of people I was in. Which was as good as having some privacy for a change.

B) They were actually pretty easy to satisfy in that domain. I suppose that when a kid writes machine code and it works, it's pretty hard to pull a "*sigh* Who the hell told you to do it like that?" (And I really mean machine code: the 1K RAM in a ZX-81 wasn't enough for an assembler, so I had to convert it to hex by hand.) If nothing else, it works.