THE father of a 15-year-old Perth computer-game addict has described the family's extraordinary nightmare - comparing it to heroin addiction.
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Stress over teen's 'addiction' | Perth Now - 0 views
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The Year 11 Ballajura Community College student has not attended classes for two months. He spends his time alone in a dark room playing the RuneScape game for up to 16 hours a day.
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The son used to dress in his school uniform each morning, but after his mother left for work he would change out of the uniform and spend the day playing the interactive game.
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The family is struggling to find help for him, and a succession of psychologists and counsellors have not yet made any progress with him.
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The boy's parents are divorced, and he lives with his mother. His sister moved out because she couldn't cope with his bizarre addiction.
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His son had been transformed from a typically bright, sports-mad teenager to being reclusive and aggressive.
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"It just got worse and worse,'' he said. ``He just wouldn't come off it at night. He'd play until two or three o'clock in the morning.
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"He displayed the characteristics of a heroin addict. You haven't got someone putting a needle in their arm and having a high, but you've got all the telltale collateral damage of a heroin addict _ withdrawal from his family, withdrawal from his friends, lies to cover his addiction. He'll do anything.
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"He was an outdoor kid. Every sport you could name, he was playing. Now he's white, doesn't go outside. He was very bright, he was going to be a forensic scientist.
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"Recently he has admitted it, before he was in denial. He wants to get back to what he was like. He wants to get better. He wants to go to school. He can't -- it won't let him. It's like any addiction.''
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When Escape Seems Just a Mouse-Click Away - washingtonpost.com - 0 views
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"I guess I knew I was becoming addicted, but I couldn't stop myself," Kim recalled from a clinic where he was undergoing counseling. "I stopped changing my clothes. I didn't go out. And I began to see myself as the character in my games."
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Last month, the government -- which opened a treatment center in 2002 -- launched a game addiction hotline. Hundreds of private hospitals and psychiatric clinics have opened units to treat the problem.
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An estimated 2.4 percent of the population from 9 to 39 are believed to be suffering from game addiction, according to a government-funded survey. Another 10.2 percent were found to be "borderline cases" at risk of addiction -- defined as an obsession with playing electronic games to the point of sleep deprivation, disruption of daily life and a loosening grip on reality. Such feelings are typically coupled with depression and a sense of withdrawal when not playing, counselors say.
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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. Most of the deaths were attributed to a disruption in blood circulation caused by sitting in a single, cramped position for too long -- a problem known as "economy class syndrome," a reference to sitting in an airplane's smallest seats on long flights.
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In one instance, a 28-year-old man died in the central city of Taegu last year after reportedly playing an online computer game for 50 hours with few breaks. He finally collapsed in a "PC baang " -- one of the tens of thousands of Internet game cafes that have become as common as convenience stores across South Korea. Users can pop in to these small, smoky dens -- with walls covered in gothic game posters -- for about $1 an hour, day or night.
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"Game addiction has become one of our newest societal ills," said Son Yeongi, president of the Korea Agency for Digital Opportunity, which offers government-funded counseling. "Gaming itself is not the problem. Like anything, this is about excessive use."
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Experts are seeing more cases of game addiction in many industrialized nations -- particularly the United States and Japan. But sociologists and psychiatrists have identified South Korea as the epicenter of the problem.
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That is in part because young people here suffer from acute stress as they face educational pressures said to far exceed those endured by their peers in other countries. It is not uncommon, for instance, for South Korean students to be forced by their parents into four to five hours of daily after-school tutoring. With drug abuse and teenage sex considered rare in the socially conservative country, escape through electronic games can be a hugely attractive outlet.
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At the same time, South Korea boasts an unparalleled gaming culture. In 2000 in Seoul, the capital, South Koreans inaugurated the World Cyber Games -- a sort of gaming Olympics that now draws players from 67 nations. Professional South Korean gamers can earn more than $100,000 a year in domestic and international competitions.
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Euthanasia: Should it be made legal? Why? - 0 views
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The difference is, in euthanasia, the person who is dying performs the last act while in assisted death another person performs the act. For example a physician can help in the process by giving lethal medications through the oral or intravenous routes. If the physician himself administers it then it is physician-assisted suicide, but, if he sets up the injection apparatus and the person who wants to die presses the button then it translates into euthanasia.
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On one side it has been argued that for people on life support systems and people with long standing diseases causing much pain and distress, euthanasia is a better choice
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it is much more practical and humane to grant the person his/her wish to end his/her own life in a relatively painless and merciful way
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It will lead to a person having an option to consult his/her medical practitioner and choosing the right time and right way to end his/her life.
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But at the same time laws should be in place to make sure that there are proper standards in place to avoid unnecessary deaths in our present day stress filled lives.
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Mozart's Legacy: Early music lessons may help children later in life - 0 views
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Kindermusik is an early childhood program that introduces children as young as 1 to music, with the intent of stimulating a variety of abilities.
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teachers who play Mozart to their students in the hopes their test scores will improve. "And for a lot of students it's not going to work simply because Mozart is weird to them. They're not used to it. They don't like it, and so nobody performs well under stress."
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Video Games: A Cause of Violence and Aggression | Serendip's Exchange - 0 views
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when action is taken upon the frustration and stress, and the action is taken out in anger and aggression, the results may be very harmful to both the aggressor and the person being aggressed against, mentally, emotionally, and even physically.
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, violent video games were considered to be more harmful in increasing aggression than violent movies or television shows due to their interactive and engrossing nature.
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Although there have been studies that have found video game violence to have little negative effects on their players,
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However, violent games do affect children, as the studies show, especially early teens, and I feel that there needs to be a stricter regulation regarding the availability of these games to young children.
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Debate: Portrayal of women in mass media - Debatepedia - 0 views
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The impact of media on the morality of the younger generation can affect the future of our society negatively.
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hile stressing the importance of being slim. This leads in consequence to "promotion of anorexia", which is clearly undesirable.
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The fashion industry is not to blame for eating disorders. Eating disorders are serious mental illnesses and are not simply triggered by models and images of thin people.
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Violence and Video Games - 0 views
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As the level of violence in video games has increased, so has concern for the effects on those who play - especially those who play a lot. Many are quick to point out that most school shootings in recent years have been carried out by avid gamers, and their games of choice were always dark and violent.
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But it begs the question: Which comes first? Can aggressive and violent behavior be attributed to violence in video games? Or do those who play already have violent tendencies which draw them to violent games? It's a type of "chicken or the egg" debate that has strong advocates on both sides.
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The more lifelike they've become, the more interest there has been in the correlation between violent games and violent behavior.
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In order to play and win, the player has to be the aggressor. Rather than watching violence, as he might do on television, he's committing the violent acts. Most researchers acknowledge that this kind of active participation affects a person's thought patterns, at least in the short term.
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Another factor that concerns both researchers and parents is that violence in video games is often rewarded rather than punished.
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If played frequently enough, games like this can skew a young person's perception of violence and its consequences.
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In 2002, researchers Anderson and Bushman developed the General Aggression Model (GAM). Often considered one of the greatest contributions to the study of violence and video games, the GAM helps explain the complex relationship between violent video games and aggressive gamers.
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The GAM takes some (though not all) of the heat off video games by acknowledging that a gamer's personality plays into how he is affected by violence. Anderson and Bushman refer to three internal facets - thoughts, feelings, and physiological responses - that determine how a person interprets aggressive behavior. Some people's responses are naturally more hostile, making them predisposed to respond more aggressively to violent video games.
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Short-term effects were easily identified in the GAM; the most prominent being that violent games change the way gamers interpret and respond to aggressive acts. Even those who aren't predisposed to aggression respond with increased hostility after playing a violent video game. The game becomes what's called a "situational variable" which changes the perception of and reaction to aggressive behavior.
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Anderson and Bushman theorized that excessive exposure to violent video games causes the formation of aggressive beliefs and attitudes, while also desensitizing gamers to violent behaviors.
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Parents would be wise to monitor the amount of time their kids spend gaming and watch closely for any negative effects.
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Should euthanasia be legalised? - The Times of India - 0 views
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Passive euthanasia, where an incurable patient is taken off the respirator with the consent of his relatives, for another patient who needs the respirator system, is also not uncommon.