Playing Too Many Video Games Can Lead to Anxiety Depression and Social Disorders in Children

One of the classic episodes of South Park, the animated TV series on Comedy Central, has all of the kids playing a game called "World of Warcraft." None of the kids are able to score enough points to beat an anonymous player who is undefeated, so they decide to play for something like three weeks straight, 24-hours a day, to gain enough points to beat him.

At the end of the marathon, they finally are able to get a secret weapon to beat him, but by then they are all overweight and pimply from being glued to the computer for all that time. And the guy that they finally beat slumps over dead in his chair. Being beaten was just too much for him after he had devoted his entire life to the game.

A lot has been said bout the negative physical effects that playing a lot of video games have on children. The lack of exercise that used to come from playing real sports is now replaced by playing them on a computer or TV monitor or engaging in games that promote violent behavior.

Recently, a professor at MIT wrote a book about how technology alienates us. Instead of meeting face-to-face, we now Twitter and communicate through Facebook. Social networking sites may introduce us to more people around the world, but since we don't get to meet them, the quality of the relationships can suffer.

Kids used to dress up as superheroes and chase each other around outside, now they play video games with state-of-the-art graphics. They are lost in an alternate world where most of the relationships are violent and shallow. If not, they play "reality" games where normal life is imitated.

According to Medical News Today:

"Video game addiction is a global phenomenon and appears to lead to poorer grades in school and serious psychological problems, including depression, anxiety, and social phobia."

Dr Douglas Gentile, an associate professor of psychology at Iowa State University, and five researchers from Singapore and Hong Kong came to these conclusions by studying some 3,000 eighth graders.

The researchers used guidelines that were established by the American Psychiatric Association that are also the same guidelines that are used to establish gambling addiction.

The pathological gamers suffered from more depression, social disorders, and scored lower grades in school than the control group. So just like in adult gamblers, letting your child play a video game every now and them probably won't turn them into compulsive gamers, but you may want to monitor the type of games that they are playing as well as how long they spend at it.

Source: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/213929.php