Korea Cuts Continuous Gaming to Curb Addiction

Let's talk addiction for a moment. When I say addiction the first thing that is going to come to mind is the thought of drugs. Heroin, Meth, Crack, stuff like that. Never would your mind think of this guy.

Okay well maybe

As it turns out Korea seems to have a problem with video game addiction. This is South Korea we are talking about here not North Korea. They have bigger problems, like communism, the free world...

and this guy

Maybe once they get that guy to wear something WITHOUT zippers they can start having problems like game addiction. I digress. The South Korean government is in the process of deciding on whether or not to ban underage gamers from the internet after midnight. Supposedly the gamers can choose if the ban goes from midnight to six, one to seven, or two to eight. Either way, it's six hours that those gamers can't be online. I am not completely clear on what video game addiction is so I asked the eternal information god...Wikipedia. What I learned from that was that video game addiction is "the overuse of video and computer games that interferes with daily life." Which sucks because that means I have life addiction because I often overuse daily life and it interferes with my video gaming; I better balance that *poop* out.

Now I still can't really understand how video game addiction can exist, much less be a bad thing. I know addiction is bad.

Bad

That's a heroin addict's arm if you were curious. I digress. I may not understand video game addiction but as a reasonable individual that can make perfectly rational conclusions. I can assume that when a government takes action to curb certain kinds of behavior that behavior must be harmful and dangerous because, to my knowledge, governments NEVER take action against things that might be pointless endeavors.

Prohibition *Cough*

However, I do know that South Korea is home to some of the most "pro" video gamers in the world. They have celebrities whose sole claims to fame are being better than anyone else at video games. They have TV channels that broadcast these games! So maybe the government is taking a step in the right direction by trying to limit the youngsters playing time, because really, any pre-pubescent kid that is staying up past midnight to play games is probably not doing anything to help their health. I think those kids just need to be introduced to the joys of sleep, which is what I'm going to go get right now. It's late. My final word on the topic is that South Korea is doing the RIGHT thing until we start seeing things like

this

at which point more action will be required. Goodnight!