Chinese Sociologist Claims Online Gaming Addiction Destroying Lives, IQs

[Andy Chalk]

Chinese Sociologist Claims Online Gaming Addiction Destroying Lives, IQs

A Chinese sociologist is attacking internet gaming for its role in the decline of civilization.

Tao Hongkai, a professor at Shanghai Daily [http://www.ccnu.edu.cn/english/], he said that number was "easy to understand, given that 80 percent of online videogames have violent, pornographic or fraudulent elements." College students are hit especially hard, according to his numbers; a survey of 13 colleges found that 90 percent of flunk-outs are the result of internet addiction.

Online game companies "are bringing calamity to the country and the people, but some of them end up being held up as outstanding enterprises!" Tao said, adding, "It is a colossal mistake for a few officials from some departments to lend their support to the development of internet games." The article ends by comparing online game publishers to heroin dealers, and says, "Unless these providers are out of their businesses, we should probably be prepared for more tales of studies, careers, marriages and lives being ruined by the games."

Tao had previously been quoted as saying teenagers will lose 10 percent of their IQ after three years of online game addiction, rendering them "abnormal."


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[Bongo Bill]

It would be anatomically inaccurate to call the brain a muscle, but the more we learn about it the more accurate the metaphor seems. Those parts of your mind that you do not exercise will atrophy. In this case, it just seems that dedicating yourself entirely to a monotonous subset of intellectual tasks for three years will result in a diminished ability to do other things. Obvious, in hindsight. The science of addiction is far too immature to hold this as proof that any special properties of addictions (much less game addictions in particular) contribute to it.

 

[Andy Chalk]

Can't you just say "the guy's full of shit" like a normal person?

 

[Capo Taco]

Blame the medium, not the people! All those poor juvinile delinquints, ruined by the uncivilised internet! We should sue the internet!

 

[Arbre]

Online game companies "are bringing calamity to the country and the people, but some of them end up being held up as outstanding enterprises!" Tao said, adding, "It is a colossal mistake for a few officials from some departments to lend their support to the development of internet games." The article ends by comparing online game publishers to heroin dealers, and says, "Unless these providers are out of their businesses, we should probably be prepared for more tales of studies, careers, marriages and lives being ruined by the games."

Tao had previously been quoted as saying teenagers will lose 10 percent of their IQ after three years of online game addiction, rendering them "abnormal."

Maybe the real calamity lies in the poor lives many Chinese experiment 24h/24, and the idea that these people may love to earn more than a couple of peanuts a day.

Of course, hail to Great China! How could one bash the country's flourishing economy? HOW ??!!

That said, I agree on two points:

First, Han Solo rules.

Secondly, repeating the same debilitating moves all the day doesn't help making someone more tuned to the world.

 

[Andy Chalk]

I remember reading how back in the day, three years of Elvis Presley would make you go blind.

Or something like that.

 

[fnc]

Rough translation of what he said : "Give me more money to study this problem!"

 

[John Funk]

Wo jue de ta de naozi bu tai hao.