‘Spiritual opium’: could gaming addiction ruin a generation?
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It’s an industry worth billions but more than 86 million players have a dangerous obsession – and the pandemic has only made things worse.
By Annabel Heseltine
It will surely never happen again – but every parent must have been nodding in agreement with the Chinese state media yesterday. That’s because it declared online games were ‘spiritual opium… that has grown into an industry worth hundreds of billions... No industry, no sport, can be allowed to develop in a way that will destroy a generation.’
It’s hard to disagree. In the past decade or so, online games have become ubiquitous around the world in a way that may be best described as careless.
From hailing the education potential of the internet, schools are now warning that classroom iPads and online textbooks are normalising the use of screens in a way which is potentially harmful to teenage brains. MRI scans have found the part of the brain which controls compulsive behaviour and decision-making tend to be less developed in t...
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