Gaming & Mental Health: Unveiling the Not-So-Good Connection
posted on Jul 10, 2023
Has your home become a battleground between your child’s gaming habits and you? Are you concerned about the negative impact gaming can have on the mental well-being of your little ones? If yes, trust us; you’re not alone!
In today’s digital age, where addictive online games are readily accessible, many parents share the same concerns. We at Gurukul The School, ranked among the best cbse school in Ghaziabad, believe that while playing online games in moderation is not harmful, it can be all-consuming in excess. As such, striking a healthy balance between real-life and virtual experiences becomes crucial for children, or else it can have far-reaching adverse effects on their overall mental as well as physical health.
The Concerning Connection between Gaming and Mental Health
As parents, it can be disheartening to see children spend countless hours engrossed in online gaming and getting detached from the world around them. While excessive gaming can weaken their eyes and influence their physical growth, it also has a disastrous impact on their mental health.
If you don’t intervene and restrict your child’s gaming addiction, they may be affected in the following ways.
- Escapism and Emotional Detachment
Online gaming provides an immersive experience, enabling kids to escape from the worries and troubles of their real-life environment. While it can be okay within the limit, excessive online gaming as a coping mechanism can cause serious emotional detachment. After continuous exposure to online gaming, children can begin feeling difficult to confront and process their real-life emotions and problems.
It can make them spend more time gaming online. This growing emotional disconnection can eventually affect their ability to establish healthy coping mechanisms, straining their relationships with their parents, siblings, friends, and other acquaintances.
- Social Isolation and Loneliness
We at Gurukul The School strongly advocate restricted gaming habits for children because excessive gaming can take away most social interaction opportunities. While online gaming was created to increase social interaction, it is doing the exact opposite.
Once children get used to spending long hours in the virtual world, they can find it challenging to create meaningful interactions and relationships in the offline world, eventually degrading their mental health.
Some children can also develop severe loneliness and struggle with their social skills. Hence, kids should always be encouraged to involve in in-person interactions to foster their social development.
We all know how important it is to get a restful sleep. If your kids spend too much gaming online, the stimulation from their device screens can eventually disrupt their sleep patterns. Late-night gaming sessions can lead to a disrupted sleep cycle, which is very harmful for their overall mental well-being. If kids continue excessive gaming, they will start experiencing sleep deprivation which can cause difficulty concentrating, irritability, impaired decision-making, poor academic performance, etc.
- Increased Stress and Anxiety
Intense and long gaming sessions can evoke high-stress levels and anxiety, especially in the case of competitive multiplayer games. Even though gaming is intended to relax, excessive gaming ends up building in kids the pressure to perform well, the constant need to stay ahead, and the fear of losing, which is unhealthy for sound mental health. Prolonged exposure and indulgence in gaming can spike anxiety and stress levels in children, eventually lowering their self-esteem and the sense of enjoying life.
- Poor Emotional Regulation
Children who indulge in excessive gaming have been found to experience intense emotions and an adrenaline rush that can negatively impact their emotional regulation capability in real-life. We at Gurukul The School, one of the best school in ghaziabad, have also noticed that kids who spend long hours playing online games show more impulsive behavior in class than others. They often show heightened aggression and have difficulty managing their disappointment and frustration.
Besides, studies have shown that such children start struggling to strike a balance between their virtual and real life, resulting in poor emotional regulation outside of the gaming environment. All this hinders their mental growth, negatively influencing their quality of life.
Conclusion
Parenting has become difficult in today’s digital age, but it isn’t an impossible feat. By identifying where your kids spend most of their time and evaluating its impact on their overall well-being, you can prevent your children from going on the wrong path. Since online gaming has emerged as a growing menace that is making children hooked to virtual stimulation, which is gradually detaching them from their real-world environment, it is important that timely action is taken to keep the kids from falling into the pit of gaming addiction. If you want your kids to grow in a healthy way, you must ensure they don’t spend excessive time playing games online. Limit their gaming time and help them achieve a healthy balance.