It is good when you do things for your enjoyment. But playing video games as a part of your hobby can sometimes become an addiction to you. When does the hobby become an addiction? This is the question, which is keeping the experts busy.
Gaming has been a part of our lives for almost 50 years, and we are still in the initial stage to know what harm it can do. PUBG is such a game which had turned deadly as the addicts go high in the virtual world.
A photographer-cum-travel consultant Anoop Bhaskar brought to light about PUBG game. According to Bhaskar, it’s a game which you need to play with 100 people in a given map.
There is a circle on the map, and it gets smaller as you enter the game much deeper. Either a player or a team has to shoot down people to survive for the next step of the game. The triggering of the time, the shrinking of the circle and killing more and more people to survive in the game, makes people go mad. The addiction pushes him towards anti-social behaviour and turns narcissistic.
The murder of a retired police official Shekarappa in Belagavi was carried out by his son Raghuveer, a 21 years old boy who was a PUBG Addict. Another report of suicide came forward about Shreyas, a 9th standard game addict in Nizamabad district, Telangana. These reports have shocked the gaming industry and gaming fans.
Such accidents have been reported earlier too, like the Blue Whale challenge. This challenge designates task leading to some horrified and un-natural activities for the youth to commit suicide. In 1999, Columbine High School Massacre, Colorado, US, where 12th standard students who were addicted to the first-person shooter games named ‘Doom I and DOOM II,’ Eris Harris and Dylan Klebold randomly opened fire in the campus and killed 12 students and a teacher.
These examples point towards the issue with a receptive outlook and also to the need of subsiding the myth and taboos connected with the phone gamer.
When asked to some of the gamers and psychological experts, various answers about PUBG was received.
According to some people, it acts as a platform where people get connected with their best friends even though they are separated through distances during the game just as they do in playgrounds. While others say that isolated players are more affected towards anti-social activities developing in their minds attaching them to virtual world provoking a dangerous reaction in the real world.
It has been noticed that children nowadays are growing up with mobile phones tends to disconnect from the real world and real people in the game of “likes for likes on social media,” which allow the player to grow self-centred, easily getting upset by real-life situations.
The recent news about PUBG playing teenager committing suicide on being warned by his parents and another player beheading his father in Belagavi need serious attention. An alarm to the society which needs to address this problematic issue among children and adolescence as said by Gracy S Jebastina, a phycologist and head of Unleased Schools Pvt. Ltd.
Adolescence and children are addicted to this virtual game as they are attractive and motivating them to spend more time.
The impact of this game is addictive in both ways, physically and psychologically.
Sharat Nanjappa, a Masters in Clinical Psychology and an Art Therapist interning at Inspiron, said that crime depends on a person’s mental condition. He further added that the game may ask you to do anti-social activities like hypnosis or black magic. He strongly believes that the individual violently attacking his father might have had unresolved issues leading to an aggressive personality. Sharat hopes that a psychologist should soon get in touch with the individual to understand better about his thought pattern or reasons behind such dangerous behavior.
