Video game addiction: what to do to avoid it

The most obvious symptoms: anxiety, insomnia and violence. Players in Italy are more than 16 million. Crusades are useless, better to focus on simple gestures. How to propose some alternatives: reading, a film, music.

It all starts in the mid-eighties, when  video games  enter our lifestyles. They are used with increasing frequency on TV, in front of the computer, with a simple smartphone. In the car during a trip, at the airport or station before leaving, in a doctor’s waiting room, at a restaurant waiting to be served pEverywhere solitaire grand harvest for windows.

Faced with such a massive diffusion,  video games  risk two types of waste. A compulsive use, which implies damage to  health  and some behavioral changes, such as an increase in aggression. A waste of opportunities as there is potential of   digital gaming that should not be underestimated.

watching movies

Luckily for us we are not in Baltimore, America. Here, in the summer of 2018, a 24-year-old boy, addicted to video games, had participated in a tournament in a mall. And it was eliminated. A few minutes of rage and madness, and the boy opened fire, shooting wildly, killing three people and then himself. A horrible episode, but certainly not a unique case to understand into what abyss, the deepest waste of one’s life and those of others, one can be dragged by a compulsive, frenetic, obsessive use of what we still define simply.

Addiction to video games  ( gaming addition)  has officially entered the list of new diseases  certified by the World Health Organization. A step forward that makes treatments clearer and more widespread, but also a wake-up call on the seriousness of the phenomenon, which particularly affects the youngest. With three symptoms, one worse than the other: anxiety and stress ; anger and violence ; listlessness up to the total lack of appetite and sleep. A life that withers, in short.

How many times have we heard a mother, or a father, complain about the bad habit of their teenagers to spend hours and hours of the day in front of video games? Many times, too many times. We also have dozens of statistics that indicate mass hangover from  video games : among the most reliable it is estimated that 55 percent of boys and 20 percent of girls, already under 15, spend an average of  two hours a day in front of to the console . Not to mention the time that flies by playing on cell phones, tablets and PCs. Do you realize? Hours that add up become days, weeks, years and  a huge waste . Not only of time , but of soul , of personality, growth  and relationships.