The mobile is addictive. Period. For one thing, it has gobbled up very many gadgets, nay, institutions. Look at the postal services, for instance. May be, the generation born circa 2010 would not have ever written a letter nor posted it. Wapping messages is the norm now, even professionally. Well, does not LinkedIn encourage kinda of messaging of professional communication?
Given such ubiquity of the mobile, a craze a computer/laptop cannot compete with, is it any surprise that children are addicted to online gaming? Surely less dangerous than online gambling as money may not be directly involved, it is much worse psychologically as it creates an alternative addictive world that is miles away from the reality!
We have all read about the PUBG craze that landed the over-indulging parents in to lifelong grief as the obsessed kids 'zombie'd in to life threatening accidents, murders, and what have you, forget comparatively, simple ailments such as dry eyes, but not to forget threats such as paedophiles who may rob a child of money, family information, and identity?
Why are children addicted to online games? I suppose, they are very eye catching, colourful, and more importantly, easy almost to a thoughtless level. Equally important is the familial world. There are mostly one or two children in a family these days. The aggressively over dominant mothers of the nuclear families do not want the grandparents, forget the other in-laws such as the aunt/uncle. Stupidly, moreover, children are assigned individual rooms whose doors they can snap shut in anybody's face, especially because they would have seen their mothers consciously show such disrespect to the elders.
Given such a heart-less 'home'(!!!) without any constructive communication, the lonely kid is lost to the online game, which is more fashionable, 'in', moreover, so much so that educational institutions encourage mobile gaming (at times, their making) during their fests!!!
Zapping thus the child in to a highly competitive, often violent, vindictive, vicarious world, is it any wonder that the mobile games, initially provided as appeasement to the cribbing child, eat up innocent, adolescent, adult 'real'ity, too?
Instead of blame fixing, absolutely necessary though not much productive, can be the ways to pull the addict out of the obsession! May be, make the child crave for the outdoors, actual sports ground, treks, trails in nature? May be, chat, communicate, discuss with the most often only kid?
As in erstwhile families of earlier bygone days, at least at the dinner table, the whole family should be together, with a strict rule that no mobile is to be allowed at the dining table! May be, the family discusses all the major events of the day after dinner? A family that chats together drives away the monster of gaming, in brief!
Pratima@ Family is the fortress that must not fall to invaders such as the mobile gaming addiction.
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