When one thinks about addiction, it’s typical to go to your immediate standbys: alcohol, tobacco, certain foods. But one trend that’s become increasingly worrisome is the tendency for people to become addicted to video games. South Korea was the site of a fatality that occurred because a gamer reportedly failed to take care of himself for hours on end so that they could focus on a game, an incident that somewhat repeated itself in a Taiwan internet cafe this year.
But you don’t have to go across the world to find instances of video game addiction writ large. Parents in Ohio are saying that their 15 year old son’s collapse was the result of a four day period in which the child hardly ever looked away from his Call of Duty: Modern Warfare game session. After emerging from his Xbox 360-equipped cocoon, the teen allegedly collapsed and had to be treated for dehydration.
His mother is now taking a stand against the video game system that brought him to this juncture, saying the Xbox is gone. She claims his lips turned blue and he repeatedly fell over shortly after he came out of his room.
This comes five years after a debate was had on whether video game addiction should be considered as a possible mental disorder by the American Psychiatric Association, a proposal which was eventually shot down. If you do want to risk playing a video game, a doctor from Nationwide Children’s Hospital has some advice: eat, drink, sleep, and exercise to offset the danger.
Check out the video below for more.