The glow of the screen isn’t just a light, it’s a cage. What starts as a 20-minute escape from reality swiftly and quietly turns into a 5-hour gaming session where meals are skipped, hygiene is forgotten and the real world starts to fade into the background.
From the outside, video games can seem like a hobby, but on the inside, it’s a loop of dopamine spikes made to keep you attached and to never let go. Health organizations now recognize gaming as a serious health issue, classified as a disease and called “Gaming Disorder”.
“[My gaming is] not bad, probably around eight hours [a day],” junior Easton Macci said.
Modern games are engineered to get you stuck in a loop. Game creators use psychological principles like variable ratio reinforcement which is “a variable-ratio schedule is a partial schedule of reinforcement in which a response is reinforced after an unpredictable number of responses.” the article Variable-Ratio Schedule Characteristics and Examples said. This is the same trick many gambling machines use to keep people hooked and to keep spending money.
“Per day, I would have to say on a school night, [I play] roughly around three hours and weekends definitely a lot more,” junior Owen Clark said.
Modern video games are also getting increasingly more violent. The National Center for Health Research says some gamers have an increase in aggressive thoughts and have changed feelings and numbness when shown more violence. Many people also like the feeling after they kill something or someone and get a sense of accomplishment and see killing more as a reward system.
“[Violence] is like a common thing and is like second nature to people, they expect it,” junior Deacon Jasper said.
Violent behaviors have been linked to video games. If someone is desensitized to violence, it can be more common for them to participate in violent behaviors. This doesn’t mean that playing violent videogames makes people serial killers. This just means that people shouldn’t allow themselves to be desensitized to these violent things. And we should maybe limit video game use, especially violent video game use.
The consequences of gaming aren’t just confined to a screen. In most cases, it can lead to unhealthy behaviors. Video games can affect sleep schedules and sleep quality. Harvard Health Publishing says people who stay up playing video games are more likely to have increased risks of chronic conditions like heart disease, diabetes, and mental health disorders and lose more energy throughout the day because of inconsistent sleep.
“I stay up roughly around from 5 p.m. to 4 in the morning,” Owen Clark said.
Recovery often requires more than just trying harder. Experts from the website Ceniork suggest quitting cold turkey is the most effective route and requires replacing the addiction with other hobbies that provide similar reward-based achievements.
The effects of gaming isn’t just lost afternoons, it’s the gradual dissolve of a person’s physical and mental structure. Beyond sleep deprivation, people also face “dopamine burnout” where real world achievements feel dull compared to everyday life. This is similar to the effects that drugs can have on people.
“I spent a lot of my time wasted on video games, and to be honest after playing too much, I just get really bored of every game,” Owen Clark said.
