11-17-2008, 06:05 PM
Prog Wrote:A schoolboy collapsed and went into convulsions after playing a new version of the "World of Warcraft" online computer game for 24 hours straight.
Wikipedia: Video Game Addiction excerpts:
A Harris Interactive poll released in April 2007 found that 8.5% of "youth gamers" in the United States could be "classified as pathologically or clinically 'addicted' to playing video games."
A British survey reported in November 2006 indicated 12% of polled gamers exhibit addictive behaviours.
Video game overuse is believed to be more of a problem in Asia. A governmental survey in South Korea estimated that 2.4% of South Koreans aged 9 to 39 are addicts, with 10.2 percent more "borderline cases."
China: In Jinzhou, China, Xu Yan died after playing online games continuously for over 15 days during the Lunar New Year holiday. An unnamed 30 year-old male died in Guangzhou, China after playing continuously for 3 days.
South Korea: Lee Seung Seop was an industrial boiler repairman in Daegu, South Korea. On August 3, 2005, he visited a nearby Internet cafe and proceeded to play StarCraft for almost fifty consecutive hours. He went into cardiac arrest from both exhaustion and dehydration-induced heart failure. He died shortly thereafter at a local hospital. About six weeks before his death, his girlfriend, also an avid gamer, broke up with him, and he had been fired from his job for missing work to play computer games
Ooops, I crapped my pants