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How to strike a perfect balance while playing video games

Dubai - The craze for video games peaked among children and young adults last year due to Covid-19 outbreak

In November 2005, Xiao Yun, a 14-year-old girl, Yun, left her family home in a town in eastern China and never came back.

The Chinese authorities searched her for years and investigated all possible angles, despite a lack of credible lead.

Eventually, they took the difficult decision to issue a death certificate against her name to bring a closure to the mysterious case.

However, there hangs an incredible tale.

A pleasant surprise awaited the authorities concerned, as she was found playing a video in an Internet café in the same area from where she had gone missing. Yun, (24), had spent a decade doing nothing but playing video games. In her spare time, she worked as a waitress at a café. It helped her earn a livelihood and, well, play video games to her heart content. There are many similar tales from the surreal world of video games that go beyond our imagination. You may remember the story of a Korean couple, whose baby died of hunger as they were engrossed in playing video games. These macabre stories lead us to the conclusion that video games are a social evil and its fallout must be addressed at the earliest.

No wonder, many parents have taken a firm stand in curbing the time their children spend in the virtual world. Nonetheless, the last decade belonged to the video games. The craze peaked last year and coincided with the novel coronavirus disease (Covid-19) outbreak. The sector outperformed other forms of entertainment such as cinema and sports, which has a combined estimated value of $180 billion (b) (Dh661.18 b) amid the lethal viral outbreak across the world. Video games, akin to other modern activities, have several pros and cons.

On the one hand, excessive playing may lead to complications such as obesity, eye strain, spine curvature and sleep disorders, isolation, and accompanying psychological and social maladies.

On the other hand, studies have consistently shown that preventing a child from playing video games deprives h/her from enhancing h/her imagination, out-of-the-box thinking, enhancing storytelling skills, solving complex problems and developing proactive thinking amongst others.

However, there must be a happy blend of playing video games in a bid to maximise its benefits and lessen damage to its overkill. An absolute rejection implies abject surrender from an academic and social perspective. Watch out this space for its economic implications.

Hamad Obaid Al Mansoori is the Director-General of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) and the Head of the UAE Digital Government