Blog Assignment #3: Video Game Addiction

A while ago a class mate of mine started to skip classes. He used to turn up now and then and the absenteeism, of course, led to poor examination grades. The few times I saw him, he seemed tired, almost depressed, and looked bedraggled. He could be gone for weeks and eventually he quitted school. I guess he was one of them who were not able to strike a healthy balance between his gaming hobby and real life. Instead he played and played, until he was totally lost in the world of video games. I do not know him well enough to say that his video game addiction only was caused by the thrill and satisfaction of playing. I guess something more was behind the behavior, circumstances which made him escape into the fantasy world, a world which at this point obviously seemed better than his real life.

It is really sad to hear about how some people’s lives are ruined by video games. Video game addiction sounds a bit absurd. I have not got any personal experiences of video games and as far as I know, nobody in my circle of acquaintances has been cached in this alternative world. Therefore it is difficult to understand how a video game can have such an impact on people and since I am not especially familiar with the online games, contributing with something to the debate feels rather hard. Spontaneously, I do not understand how people can be so caught up in such things as video games. I have always considered these games as tools for entertainment and not something that can cause an addition. But regardless of my opinions of video games, a problem seems to exist. Otherwise the debate would probably not have aroused. These games can obviously, for some people, compete with real life and even get people to suppress their most basic needs. It seems like I have underestimated the power of video games.

Times are changing. Internet with its many applications, like the World Wide Web, that provides services like forums, communities, blogs, either-way communication online games etc. has become a large and important part of our lives. With all these scopes of use, it is not especially strange that the development has lead to a great usage of this incredible technique. Many persons spend a lot of time in front of their screen, playing or not. It is a part of the development, things people did twenty years ago have partly been replaced by this phenomenon. Most people think interests that do not involve spending time in front of a computer are more appropriate. Mainly because many of them give you physical exercise and fresh air, which are advantages that video games lack. This is of course very important. To stay healthy, people need to be physically active and to be out in the fresh air. Long-hour sessions in front of a mesmerizing screen do not fit into a healthy lifestyle.

I think, or at least hope, that the majority are reasonable people who are able to combine their daily routines with their passion for video games. Online game players hopefully realize that the real world has a lot more to offer than video games. Of course people prefer fun before things like school and work, but most of us know that the latter also is a necessary part of life. Therefore I am not seriously concerned about video game addiction, yet, but you never know. Without knowing the actual proportion of players who creates an addition, it cannot be ascertained that the playing is a severe problem. But the risk for video game addition to become a new public health problem should not be eliminated without an exhaustive check-up.

The Private Diary Gone Public
The ones who read this text know what purpose a blog can fill. In this course we are using blogs to post entries on different topics. In this way we are able to read what our classmates have posted and we can also write and receive comments concerning the content, language etc. With this method we can receive feedback on our work and hopefully improve our English skills.

Those who are not taking a course where it is necessary to create a blog in order to get a passed mark in English for science and technology create blogs for different individual purposes. Which reasons that make people use blogs are probably different from person to person, but something most of them, if not everyone, have in common is that things published in a blog become public. The content in a blog is available for others to read and reflect on. So this ought to be an important reason why people chose to create a blog, they want to share their experience, thoughts, texts, pictures etc. The blog phenomenon is a great and easy way to do this.

The blog revolution has simplified the procedure to create an own website, a place where text, pictures etc. can be published. Within a couple of minutes you can construct a blog and make your views and opinions public in a place where it is reached by a large number of people all over the world. Using a blog you are able to share all different sorts of information and communicate with millions of persons. You can receive comments and discuss different issues. A blog makes it possible to share all sorts of things and get response from other people. This is probably the main reason why the phenomenon has become so popular.