VIDEOGAMES AND ISOLATION

One of videogames mayor problems is that they cause isolation from society, causing severe problems in almost every aspect of a person’s life, specially it´s social abilities. This happens specially in the case of people addicted to videogames, wich are about 12% of polled online gamers according to the BBC. This people might have important problems in their future that must be try to be avoid in order to have a better and more healthy life.

To begin with, we need to look out how and why videogames cause people to isolate from society. To understand imagine a kid with a TV and a console in his room to which he can access every time he wants and added to the fact he have  really addicting and fun videogames to play. The analysis of this situation is simple; he won´t get out of his room as he is going to prefer playing inside his room, rather than doing a sport, playing at park, or simply, speaking to others. The last is cause because games are interactive and the kid takes the role of the main player in most games, leaving to “interact” with programs, not with real people. In the long term, the boy will feel more comfortable “interacting” with a videogame rather than people, because it is far more simple and it doesn´t even require you to get out of your room. This has been proved by a studie from the University of Rochester, that conclude that many games satisfy basic pshycological need, and player often play because of the ingame rewars, freedom and a connection to other players. 

After we have just explained how and why videogames isolate people, the consequences of it are pretty obvious. The kid or grown up that plays videogames too much will have problems to establish relationships as he will become more shy and quiet. He will loose contact with reality, causing severe problems with how he develops and interact with society, and more importantly as a result of playing too many videogames and get isolate, is that the person affected by this problem will end up alone, without any type of real and solid relationships. If we get back to the example of the kid, imagine that he plays compulsively every day, he will not be interested in  entabling new relationships, as such he will gradually start to lose his “soft” abilities, specially his social abilities, this might not affect him at a beginning or if he is a child, but when he has to get to university for example, the lack of social abilities will really matter and as a result of not being able to socialize with others, he will isolate more, eventually fall into depression and then maybe even worse things. 

Finally, we need to focus on what can be done to prevent or to control this severe problem. I want to say here that playing videogames occasionally is not something bad, all the problems come when the user doesn´t know when to stop and they lose the whole day doing nothing but playing.  The solution to this problem is to organize your time, put a time where you can play videogames, another for doing a sport, for hanging out with friends, etc.. By organizing your time and getting out more, you will have much less problems to stop playing. If your kid is the one addicted  to videogames, try to reduce the amount of time he spends playing videogames, different studies recommend that a maximum of 1 to 2 hours a day, by no way he can have access to videogames in his own room, and you must encourage him to make new friends and spent as much time as possible playing games outdoors. As a last tip, remember that determination and self-control are the key to free yourself from videogames and start to have a normal and sociable life.