Internet Gaming Addiction - Root of All Evils ?

The recent attack on an NTU (Nanyang Technological University) lecturer by a final year EEE student who then jumped to his death shocked many in our fast paced society.An 19 year old online gamer who was caught having sex with a (unbelieveable) 10 year old girl was jailed for a long time. Almost at the same time, there was the death of a bright doctor from the Armed Forces who went AWOL in Singapore only to end up dead in Melbourne Australia,possibly committing suicide. The 'link' was that all 3 were young men who were very active on-line gamers, playing up to 6 - 8 hours PER DAY.

The papers all insinuate that on-line gaming,especially when playing many hours of certain games like World of Warcraft with devilish figures and massive scenes of torture and death are the cause of these tragic events. I do not like my children playing the online games especially as the lines between reality and virtuality are blurred and leaving the socially inept or introverted to 'find themselves'. Therfore computer 'geeks' are always seen as introverts and lacking in social graces and not developing their social interactive skills. Most young male and female teenagers go through a period of searching for their indentity and turn out all right. The few (perhaps 5 - 10%) end up in a world of the virtual and close themselves to anyone and everything outside of their little 'worlds'. That is where the danger sets in. When the person withdraws from all around him and cocoons himself and lives out a make-believe world, that is when he is most vulnerable and COULD perhaps a danger to himself and society.

What good would banning the on-line games serve ? Young people and teenagers need the Internet like we needed Rock and Roll 40 years ago and all the bad connotations (sex,drugs,long hair,foul language) that go along with it !

The case where the bright maths student('genuis' to some friends) snapped when his scholarship was withdrawn from him and he apparently chose to take out his 'failure' on the lecturer and subsequently he jumped to his death.He apparently spent up to 6 hours daily on the computer PC playing this game.

Was the cause of this triggered by some sublimal messaging in the Warcraft
game ? Maybe he was so used to the killing and maiming in his game that he re-enacted in real life some parts of his game to get some relief ?

I DON'T THINK SO.

When a person 'loses it' or feels he is threatened with his life (real or perceived), he will resort to one of the three scenarios :

a) Fright - scream, yell,curse and totally freak out;When YOUR EPL team loses theFA Cup Final for example

b) Flight - Run for your dear Life

c) Fight - No explaination necessary

For the NTU student, it COULD BE a simple case of over stressing himself whereby he had a distorted view of the world and 'lost it' and blamed it totally on his lecturer. But 'IT TAKES 2 TO TANGO'. So it is NOT PURELY THE STUDENT'S FAULT I am led to think.The lecturer should have looked out for some emotional 'triggers' from the student and advised him to seek counselling or even assign certain counsellors to the student to help him.

All this is said with 20/20 hindsight.

In all,the pressure cooker environment set up in Singapore and the 'Win at All Costs, One Strike You Are Out' mentality which is very prevalent here,is probably one of the greatest causes of people running amok and as you may have noticed ;

2 out of the 3 highlighted are highly educated, overachievers and smart people.

I think you will not see many if any cases happening in places such as the Caribbean or in the Maldives. In short, the fast paced and highly pressurised society and the expectations set by us or around us (peer pressure) is the one greatest contributing factor to mental illness and violence.The society and community development which we are living in determine who we are, so it is very very critical to strike a healthy balance and accept failure in certain aspects of our lives from time but not take that failure as the end of the world.

WE ARE OUR OWN GREATEST ENEMY.

"A MAN (OR WOMAN) MUST KNOW HIS OWN LIMITATIONS" - DIRTY HARRY