Young adults addicted to gaming end up with severe bodily, psychological damages, says study

A NIMHANS study has brought to light the familiar ills of excessive gaming among young adults.

The study, conducted among 200 young adults between December 2020 and February 2021, has found that gaming causes musculoskeletal pain and psychosomatic symptoms.

Respondents of the study played internet games for an average of 6.5 hours a day. While a mere 1% of them met the criteria for Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD), a larger number faced health effects.

Among 11 to 13% of respondents suffered from musculoskeletal symptoms like pain in the shoulder, neck, back and limbs; 9 to 17% reported psychosomatic symptoms like nervousness, irritation, headache, and sleep problems. If extrapolated to the adolescent population of Bengaluru, this would be a huge number.

The majority of respondents played MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) games, followed by E-Sports. These included games like Counterstrike and PUBG.

Dr Manoj Kumar Sharma, professor at NIMHANS, who co-guided the study, said: “In any community survey, whether in India or abroad, only 1 to 4% of the respondents meet the criteria for Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD). But the majority fall in the category of ‘problematic users’ who have health issues, dysfunctional lifestyles and whose other work is affected, but they don’t recognise themselves as addicts. The main threat is not IGD, but long screen time, which causes the other issues.”

Gamers now have the kind of musculoskeletal issues that were once seen among IT and medical professionals only, said NIMHANS associate professor Jai Kumar, another co-guide for the study.

“These are collegegoers who are into gaming now and have pain symptoms like professional workers do. They also commonly have depressive symptoms like changes in moods, etc. Studies across the world show this,” he said.

While musculoskeletal problems are often due to poor posture and staying in a fixed position for long hours, reasons for psychosomatic issues can be more complex.

“The person may get a lot of criticism (on long gaming hours) from family members and others, which leads to a solitary lifestyle. This automatically contributes to low levels of well-being, which can then cause anxiety, and depression, among others. Some try to deal with this anxiety by playing games even more,” says Dr Sharma. A player can also get stressed if they feel they are not doing well in gaming.

Exploding cases, none reaching out

At the NIMHANS’s Service for Healthy Use of Technology (SHUT) clinic, Dr Sharma sees 12 to 14 adolescents per week for internet gaming addiction. A large number of them fall in the 14-17 age group, brought in by their parents.

“When we started SHUT clinic in 2014, we used to get only 1 to 2 cases a week. Maybe the problem as well as awareness has increased,” he says.

But amidst an explosion in gaming addiction, the victims are not reaching out for help, Dr Sharma said.