Ghaziabad minor sisters' deaths trigger alarm over online gaming addiction, Korean culture craze

New Delhi: The death of three minor sisters, who were allegedly obsessed with a Korean task-based online game, has put a spotlight on the severe effects of online gaming addiction and the increasing craze for Korean popular culture among youth.

Three minor sisters, with the youngest being 12 and the other two 14 and 16, died in the early hours of Wednesday after jumping off the balcony of their ninth-floor flat in Ghaziabad. The police suggested that the sisters were "influenced" by Korean content and were highly "addicted" to mobile phones and an online Korean task-based interactive game.

A mix of elements, including limited social interaction, blurring of lines between reel and real and addictive online gaming, could lead adolescents to take extreme steps, mental health experts said.

According to forensic psychologist Deepti Puranik, any addiction can be looked at in terms of the brain responding to a reward system.

"Games give pleasure to these kids through rewards or appreciation. Gaming directly may not cause an individual to take extreme steps, but it can lead to a lot of these factors that can make an individual's life chaotic and uncontrollable," Puranik told PTI.

According to the police, the sisters took the extreme step after their parents objected to their excessive use of mobile phones.

The Mumbai-based psychologist added that adolescents associate themselves with their gamer identities and taking that away can lead to drastic results.

"Their entire psyche starts moving around their competency in that game rather than in real life. When you take that away, the identity as an individual collapses. They may experience complete emotional isolation that can lead to them taking extreme steps," she said.

Chetan Kumar, father of the three sisters, told PTI Videos that they had been playing the game for close to three years and had not attended school for almost the same duration after failing academically, "which made them feel embarrassed and increasingly withdrawn." Vandana Prakash, clinical psychologist and senior consultant at Max Superspeciality Hospital, Vaishali, said that apart from consuming time and resources, online gaming addiction can keep individuals away from meaningful activities like school, office and outdoor games.

"It also keeps the person away from social interaction, making him/her isolated and lonely. Lack of productive life and away from real world often has effect on the person's mental health, making them suicidal,” Prakash said.

The latest incident shares eerie similarities with the 2017 Blue Whale challenge. The deadly 50-day challenge, which was believed to have originated in Russia, claimed over 130 lives across Russia and the Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

The game reportedly consisted of a series of tasks assigned to players by administrators over a 50-day period. Starting innocuously, administrators would gradually introduce challenges involving self-harm before the final challenge requiring the player to commit suicide.

Unaware of the nature of the "Korean Love Game", Kumar said he later learned that the game involved instructions which the children followed.

"If I had known that such tasks existed, no father would ever allow his children to be part of it," he said.

Clinical psychologist Shweta Sharma said that children start out in such games with a "curiosity to prove something under peer pressure." "At each stage of the game, there is a constant need to prove yourself. So, usually, these children cannot understand proper emotional regulation. They have a strong need to be seen, need to be acknowledged," Sharma said.

She added that adolescents don't have a fully developed prefrontal cortex that is responsible for complex, high-level cognitive processes, including decision-making, personality expression and impulse control.

"The addiction level is high in this age group because they are still under development. They can't differentiate between reality and perception," she said.

Another angle that emerged out of initial police reports was the sisters' obsession with Korean popular culture.

Kumar also said that the girls would often say they wanted to go to Korea.

According to Sharma, the fascination for Korean pop culture in young children arises out of the emotional unavailability of parents.

"Usually, people are not going outside now. Parents don't have time. Emotional availability is definitely not there. We are providing children with all the facilities without understanding whether they are able to handle it or not. So, that emotional need is not getting fulfilled.

"In Korean culture, if you see any series, any game or whatsoever they are making, they are made mostly on the basis of friendship, love and belonging," she said.

Sharma's argument found an echo in an incident from 2024, when three school girls from a village in Maharashtra decided to travel to Korea to meet their favourite Korean band BTS.

The Class 8 girls, without passports and money, were readily returned home before any untoward incident could occur.

"For them, that was their reality. And you are actually trying to attempt, or you are separating them from their real world. For them, it is more real from the actual reality. For them, the real versus reel is a basic challenge," Sharma added.

The experts noted that regulating phone usage with transparent conversations among family members should be some of the steps towards creating a healthier setup for children of this age group. PTI MAH KRS AMJ AMJ