Video games: a way of entertainment or a destructive addiction?

Video and computer games are an integral part of the modern world. They are used for education, entertainment, medicine, and even in military environments. Games are played by people of all genders and all ages. 

Despite the huge number of advantages, a large amount of time spent playing games can lead to serious problems. Many sources say this, such as parimatch tech news. 

A pleasant and useful pastime

Undoubtedly, video games have many advantages. If you devote a little time to games, they are a great way to relax and have fun. 

In addition, many researchers claim that video games can have a positive effect on a person’s cognitive abilities. When a gamer focuses on the gameplay, they develop many useful skills. This is how memory, attention span, and the ability to perform many tasks develop with games. 

Games can also help self-expression and bring out hidden talents. And this, in turn, affects further life – the understanding and proper use of the skills leads to success in the career and can improve the quality of life in general.

The flip side 

However, talk about the negative impact of games appears for a reason. With rational approach video games do not bring a person any harm. However, excessive immersion in the game world can also have negative consequences. First of all, it is a negative impact on health – the vision suffers most of all. 

But sometimes there are situations when a person is so much fond of the game that almost ceases to interact with the real world. There are several reasons for this:

• The lack of bright and interesting moments in real life. Everything is so mundane and ordinary, that a person is looking for a simple and often cheap way to diversify your life. So he begins to join the virtual world;
• The latent complex of inferiority, various psychological traumas in childhood and teenage years are the consequence that the person “underplayed” in time, so he tries to make up for a lost time;
• Quite often such addiction develops on the basis of sexual dissatisfaction when relationships with the opposite sex do not develop and a person tries to “switch” to something;
• Sometimes the first step toward developing this addiction is “extra” time. For example, people who are forced to stay in the workplace from 9 to 18, when this time is just to “sit out”, begin to join computer games.

All these reasons in one way or another lead to gradual immersion into the game world and to the appearance of game addiction.

Stages of Game Addiction

Like any other disease, game addiction has several stages.

1. The initial stage is mild infatuation. It occurs when a person has already played a few times, as they say, entered the taste. This pastime gives a person positive emotions. At this stage, the game has a situational nature, a person plays sporadically, only under certain conditions, when there is free time, but to play to the detriment of something important he will not.
2. The next stage is passion. The transition to this stage can be determined by the emergence of a new need – play. At this stage, a person is already playing systematically, and if there is no such opportunity, he can sacrifice something to make time for his favorite activity.
3. And finally, the stage of dependence. In the pyramid of values, the game is elevated to the top level. Such dependence has two forms – socialized and individualized.

Game addiction can negatively affect all spheres of human life. To avoid these problems, it is necessary to allocate time correctly and not to pay more attention to games than to real life. Socializing with friends, walking, concerts and interesting events can make life much more entertaining than any game. 

In the case where there is already an addiction, you should turn to professionals who can help solve the problem.