Game addicts who play games more than just for their hobby, consider the game as a tool to express themselves. When a child is addicted to games, a change in their life cycle occurs, lack of sleep, irregular life rhythm and so on. With ambiguous boundaries of reality and the game happening, game addicts continue to live a life centered on the game than the reality. Due to this addiction, efficiency in life is reduced and reality is neglected (Games> reality) and finally leads to a change of personality.

The Ministry of Information and Communication announced that half of teenagers in Korea are already addicted to gaming or exposed to becoming a potential game addictive. In the United States, more than 90 percent of American kids play video games for an average of two hours a day.

If children become addicted to the games, they enjoy more meeting online friends than friends in reality. But game friends are just temporary friends. At a later day, they could be left with no friends around them. Furthermore, game addiction can cause a mental disorder called schizophrenia, which is often characterized by abnormal social behavior and failure to recognize what is real. For example, a picture of spider seems like one of game characters or monsters to game addicts.

The symptoms of addiction in children are mental and physical. Because life itself is a series of games it will be devastated by mental confusion and exhaustion. People could have nutritional deficiencies and headaches due to prolonged exposure to electromagnetic waves, a lack of sleep and exercise, memory loss and so much more physical signs of illnesses. Also, their personality becomes closed and violent and they become impatient and less motivated.

Furthermore, people playing the game for more than three hours a day get irritated easily without any reason. Even when they are not playing any games, thoughts of games are dominant in their head and they get trapped in the world of fantasy.
Another definition of addiction is “Not doing what we need to do”. Game addiction can ruin kids’ life at school and disturb them from studying. Usually so punctual and mild-natured person addicted to games could suddenly turn violent. In more extreme situations, violence and killings in cyberspace can cause murder in reality.

In fact, many children themselves are aware of downsides of computer game addiction, but they have difficulties having control over their behaviors. To save these children, it’s important that parents pay attention to their children and make efforts to have communication and interaction with them. Because the game itself isn’t bad and it can be very entertaining and imaginative if we use it properly.