by Jims Vincent Capuno
These days, online games are the “in thing” among teenagers. In 2007, the Harris Interactive online poll asked American youths aged eight to 18 their opinion on online games. About 81% of those surveyed stated that they played video games at least once per month. The average play time varied by age and sex: 8 hours per week for teen girls and 14 hours per week for teen boys. “Tweens” – those from eight to 12 years old — fell in the middle, with boys averaging 13 hours per week and girls averaging 10.
There are 114 million people around the world who play online games and most of them come from Asia, according to research firm DFC Intelligence. In the Philippines, more and more teenagers — most of them students (high school and college) and even elementary pupils — are hooked on online games as Internet cafés, which are readily accessible day and night, are proliferating not only in the cities but in far-flung areas as well.
Is this a healthy phenomenon? Like cigarette, coffee, and illicit drugs, online games can be addictive. “Video game addiction is a particularly severe problem in Asian countries,” commented Michael Cai, director of broadband and gaming for Parks Associates (a media/technology research and analysis company. In South Korea, for instance, results of a survey conducted in 2006 showed that 2.4% of those aged 9 to 39 suffer from game addiction, with another 10.2 percent at risk of addiction.
The Philippines is not free from such kind of addiction. In an article (“Killing Time Online, October 2006) which appeared in the Asian edition of Reader’s Digest, Cebu journalist Mars W. Mosqueda, Jr. explored the story of an 18-year-old computer science student who flunked from most of his exams, thus failing to graduate on schedule.
For almost three years, the student compulsively logged on to play Ragnarok – an online role-playing adventure game based on Norse mythology – “until he suddenly realized that he was no longer living his own life,” to quote the words of Mosqueda. “He had lost contact with friends, fell behind in his studies and had spent about 100,000 pesos playing online games – more than enough to finance a year of his education.”
Why are online games addictive? Goh Chee Leong, dean of the Department of Psychology at Kuala Lumpur’s HELP University College, told Mosqueda: “Many people feel powerless in society, but in online games they’re in control of armies, of cities, of other people. This power is exhilarating and provides the mental challenge their brain seeks.”
Once they are hooked with such power, they become addicted to it, according to psychology professor Mark Griffiths, author of several in-depth studies of online gaming and gambling addiction. “They are the types of games that completely engross the player,” he explained. “They are not games that you can play for 20 minutes and stop. If you are going to take it seriously, you have to spend time doing it.”
Theorists focus on the built-in reward systems of the games to explain their addictive nature “This is how the best games are programmed: to keep the player interested by promising predictable outcomes, but to hook them by randomly allowing them to earn new positions or powers in the game,” Mosqueda wrote in his article.
“The gamer may not win very often, and rewards may not come every time they play the game, but they never know when they will win again or get a reward for their character. It could be the next hour, or the next minute, and if they don’t continue playing, they fear they will miss the chance to win or receive rewards.”
Aside from addiction, other health hazards a gamer may suffer from are hunger and fatigue. In Jinzhou, China, Xu Yan died after playing online games continuously for over 15 days during the Lunar New Year holiday. In South Korea, gamer Lee Seung Seop perished after playing in a non-stop, 50 hour gaming marathon.
Some teenagers even resorted to commit crimes. In Vietnam, a 13-year-old boy strangled an 81-year-old woman with a piece of rope and took the money from his victim. The boy confessed that “he needed money to play online games and decided to kill and rob the woman.”
In the United States, Ohio teen Daniel Petric shot his parents, killing his mother, after they took away his copy of a video game. In a sentencing hearing after the teen was found guilty of aggravated murder, the judge said, “I firmly believe that Daniel Petric had no idea at the time he hatched this plot that if he killed his parents they would be dead forever.”
There have also been suicides linked to online games. A news report from China states: “Xiao Yi was thirteen when he threw himself from the top of a twenty-four story tower block in his home town, leaving notes that spoke of his addiction and his hope of being reunited with fellow cyber-players in heaven. The suicide notes were written through the eyes of a gaming character…”
There are more health problems that online games bring among teenagers. In the past, students play basketball and other games that require physical activities (like bicycling, hiking, swimming, running, walking, etc.). With online games, they are confined in their own little corner without moving a little bit save for their hands. The result: obesity.
Inadequate exercise, overeating, obesity and work pressure are all leading to increased numbers of younger people in Asia suffering from cardiovascular disease, according to Dr. Huang Kuo-chin of the Department of Family Medicine of National Taiwan University Hospital. The American Heart Association listed obesity as an independent risk factor for heart disease, in addition to other known risk factors such as age, smoking, hypertension, high blood cholesterol and diabetes.
Today, more and more children are getting fat. In Thailand, the prevalence of obesity in children between the ages of six and 12 rose from 12.2 percent to 15.6 percent in just two years. In the Philippines, 1.8 percent of boys and 0.8 percent of girls between the ages six and ten are overweight.
“I am seeing a lot more obese children compared to ten years ago,” Dr. Sioksoan Chan-Cua, a pediatrician-endocrinologist and associate professor of pediatrics at the University of the Philippines, told Reader’s Digest correspondent Lam Lye Ching.
“About 90 percent of my overweight pediatric patients watch more than two hours of TV a day. If we include computer time and video game time, the sedentary hours of these children are getting longer and longer,” Dr. Chan-Cua added.
Online games also deprive teenagers of the much-needed sleep. “We’re so busy that we just don’t have sufficient time to get the sleep we need,” says Dr. Patrick Gerard Moral, head of the sleep and snore diagnostic and treatment unit of the University of Santo Tomas. Among teenagers, playing games online can engage them beyond their bedtimes.
And not getting enough sleep can compromise their immune system. “The immune system works best when you’re asleep,” says professor Stanley Coren, author of Sleep Thieves. “That’s when your natural killer cells are generated.” Natural killer cells are produced in the bone marrow and found in the blood and lymph fluid.
“Natural killer cells are part of your body’s defense system against external infections,” says Dr. Ong Kian Chung, a consultant respiratory physician at the Mount Elizabeth Medical Center in Singapore. A study at the Cerrahpasa Medical School in Turkey found that after 24 hours of sleep deprivation, the percentage of natural killer cells in the blood declined by 37 percent.
While there is a lot of controversy hounding computer games, some researches suggest that computer games can actually be educational, beneficial and help in children’s learning and development. “Playing computer games can be beneficial,” pointed out Gail Ilagan, a psychology professor at the Ateneo de Davao University. “It can help a child to become observant.”
Such was the case of Celsus Kintanar. He won in the Philippine National Cybergames and Samsung sent him to an all expenses-paid trip to Daejeon City in Korea for the International Cyber Olympics. After that, he joined the Top Coder International Programming Contest in the United States and emerged a winner each time. Last year, he went to join the contest in Las Vegas, Nevada and landed in third spot among the contestants.
“These are the pluses in games,” his father, Rodolfo Kintanar, admitted. “The minus is that he did not graduate from his B.S. Computer Science Course. He did not submit his thesis and the university won’t give him his diploma.”
