Now, this week our lecture was about "addiction".
When we think of addiction, straight away we think about the most obvious things such as smoking, gambling and drinking. Another type of addiction which was brought up in the lecture was internet addiction. One of the factors of this could be online gambling. Now there are millions of people out there that gamble, but online gambling has become extremely popular over the past couple of years with the introduction of new online poker sites and online casinos. I have had a few experiences with playing poker online, and I have to say that it can become very addictive. Especially at times where you have nothing to do and decide "I might aswell deposit ten pounds into be betting account and play for a couple of hours". Its as easy as it sounds. In some ways it can be thought as monopoly money as there isn't any real money actually leaving your hands going to a cashier. You can understand how this can become addictive.
From looking on the BBC news website, I came accross an article about a case of online gaming in South Korea last month. The website states "South Korea is one of the most wired societies in the world". Apparently there are over 25,000 cyber cafes in South Korea that are open 24 hours a day accross the country. This alone tells you that online activity is widely available all accross country. In fact, the number of broadband subscribers are exceeding 10 million.
What drew my attention to the article in the first place was the fact that a 24 year old named Kim Kyung-jae collapsed and died after a crazy 86 hours of continuous online gaming. Now my first thoughts about this let me in disbelieve as, personally, I cannot believe that someone could sit in front of a computer screen for 86 hours playing a game. This may be because I'm not one for online gaming and dont understand the obsession with it. I'm not saying it cant be done, because it blatently can as this has proved, but I still dont understand the obsession.
I can imagine that an addiction to the internet could leave your social skills depleeted, as with any addiction, but feel that help should be widely available for those who may have the problem, or for those that dont know they have the problem of addiction. If this help is not available, or the message is not put accross, we could be seeing alot more cases like Kim Kyung-jae.
Until next week.
When we think of addiction, straight away we think about the most obvious things such as smoking, gambling and drinking. Another type of addiction which was brought up in the lecture was internet addiction. One of the factors of this could be online gambling. Now there are millions of people out there that gamble, but online gambling has become extremely popular over the past couple of years with the introduction of new online poker sites and online casinos. I have had a few experiences with playing poker online, and I have to say that it can become very addictive. Especially at times where you have nothing to do and decide "I might aswell deposit ten pounds into be betting account and play for a couple of hours". Its as easy as it sounds. In some ways it can be thought as monopoly money as there isn't any real money actually leaving your hands going to a cashier. You can understand how this can become addictive.
From looking on the BBC news website, I came accross an article about a case of online gaming in South Korea last month. The website states "South Korea is one of the most wired societies in the world". Apparently there are over 25,000 cyber cafes in South Korea that are open 24 hours a day accross the country. This alone tells you that online activity is widely available all accross country. In fact, the number of broadband subscribers are exceeding 10 million.
What drew my attention to the article in the first place was the fact that a 24 year old named Kim Kyung-jae collapsed and died after a crazy 86 hours of continuous online gaming. Now my first thoughts about this let me in disbelieve as, personally, I cannot believe that someone could sit in front of a computer screen for 86 hours playing a game. This may be because I'm not one for online gaming and dont understand the obsession with it. I'm not saying it cant be done, because it blatently can as this has proved, but I still dont understand the obsession.
I can imagine that an addiction to the internet could leave your social skills depleeted, as with any addiction, but feel that help should be widely available for those who may have the problem, or for those that dont know they have the problem of addiction. If this help is not available, or the message is not put accross, we could be seeing alot more cases like Kim Kyung-jae.
Until next week.
posted by Boka at 5:02 AM
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