“Rahul (pen name), a 15 years old boy, student of class 10 plays free fire mobile game on his mobile for a long time. Amid playing he needs a credit card to pay some money and to open the security of the game. He came to his elder brother looking for a credit card just like mad.” Imagine how addicted he is to free fire. This is example of just one boy. But there are many boys around our country like this. Most importantly, they are our young generation. Though there is no specific data on the total number of gaming addicted teenagers in Bangladesh. But it is assumed that a huge number of teenagers are addicted to free fire and PUBG mobile games. As the COVID-19 forced us to stay home and closed school for a long time, bringing this disaster in the life of youth.
School closure means study is almost out of mind. Therefore teenagers do almost nothing amid this pandemic. Due to the high accessibility to smart devices and vast amounts of time on hand, our teenagers use it negatively by playing free fire and PUBG mobile games. Most of the day, they are busy with playing free fire and PUBG. This continuous process has been going on for four months after school closing. For this reason they have become fully addicted to this game. Without this game they cannot think anything, even whenever a group of teenagers connect to each other they only discuss the free fire mobile game as I witnessed last month. After that I was observing the teenagers of different villages of my district, unfortunately they are also addicted to this game. So it is crystal clear to us that the situation is very alarming for our country. Apart from addiction there are many demerits of playing these game, such as -
• It makes the young people unproductive. As they are always busy with gaming so as time goes by their learning capability will decrease and ultimately they will be unproductive.
• The games make them unsocial as they are busy with gaming and don’t interact with people. That is how many youths are becoming frustrated due to social disconnection.
• It hampers the physical health of teenagers. While playing games they are sitting in a place for a long time without any physical activity. It is well established fact that inadequate physical activity can cause various physical diseases such as obesity and also emotional problems. One the other hand, staring at the mobile or computer screen for a long time can hurt the eyesight which may turn into headache later.
• Playing games changes the lifestyle pattern of teenagers. They lose regularity in their everyday life which is harmful for health and well-being.
• It spoils the valuable creative and development times of teenagers.
Md Billal Hossen, MS student, Faculty of Biological Science, Islamic University, Bangladesh