Gaming is a good indoor hobby that has a number of positive aspects. It helps people to have better analytical skills, learn their body coordination, and teamwork through multiplayer games. Video game is a hobby for some people and have become a passion or even livelihood for others. The extreme passion for gaming leads to sitting in one place for hours and that puts stress on multiple vital organs of your body that is not good for the health.
Like every other thing excess gaming also has its cons and disadvantages that should not be ignored at any cost. Especially the damage it causes to your body and other routine tasks should be eliminated. However, at certain times, gaming enthusiasts are unable to understand the disturbing patterns and see the clear signs that are telling it is too much and you should stop gaming.
Before we start with the signs that you need to understand to know your gaming routine is getting the best of you, you need to understand the basics of gaming addiction and how it is bad for your life and health.
Gaming Addiction
The phenomenon “Gaming Addiction” is real and a number of individuals, most of them teenagers are getting addicted to video games. Gaming Addiction is the same as any other addiction as you are attracted to gaming over any other thing and have strong cravings for it. It refers to preferring video games over your routine task and often neglecting your own self while playing video games.
Video games let us dive deep into an immersive, yet virtual world where we can get the feelings of achievements and make things happen that are impossible otherwise. There are also other interesting factors that lead to gaming addiction and those are.
Causes of Addiction
The gaming addiction is caused due to several psychological factors that make us feel hooked up for hours and even days and that is not good at all. To understand if you are addicted to gaming and it is causing damage to your health and social life, it is eminent that you comprehend the reasons behind it and eliminate those. The most common reasons are:
- Achievements: There are achievements and goals in every video game that make you have the sense of achieving something and feel the appreciation that you are doing great. Continuous victories in games can make you hooked up to the game and you just can’t get enough of having those victorious movements.
- Challenge: Some games are too challenging to play and you might feel that you are so close to victory. Yet, you lose every time just an inch away from winning the game. That makes you keep trying again and again and you can lose track of time for that.
- Escape: While most of the gamers play video games as a profession, for relaxation or to have a healthy time pass for their mind. There are some people among us, who find peace and escape from the outside world in Video Games. Such people make video games their comfort zone and cannot stop themselves from playing video games all day long.
Noticing the Signs of Addiction
We all have the idea of what factors contribute to causing the video game addiction that can have severe effects on our social life, routine, and health. However, you can start noticing the signs if you are gaming too much and need to cut down on your gaming routine. These signs are also the signals that you are investing too much of yourself in gaming and its time to stop or cut the time and focus on more important things in life. Some of the most prominent signs are:
- Laziness/tiredness: You feel lazy and dizzy at all times and you have no energy left for the rest of your routine tasks. You find yourself unfocused in real life all the time and your mind is stuck in video games all day long. Sleep deprieveness is also one of the major factors that can cause laziness as you may start compromising your sleep over games as well.
- Body Aches: The human body does not perform well if it is kept for extended periods at the same time and in the same position. Video games require you to sit still at the same place for longer periods. Video Gaming addiction makes the situation worse and if you are sitting for more than 4 hours in one place, you may start having back pain and other body aches. These are a clear sign that your gaming routine is getting the best of you and you need to stop.
- Stressed Muscles: With video games requiring all your focus and looking at the screen for hours, it can result in stressed muscles that have a major impact on your overall health. You need to start getting proper sleep and relax between the gaming intervals if you feel like you are getting your muscles stressed.
- Losing the will power: Once you are hooked up to something to an extreme extent, you lose the willpower of doing anything else and cannot think about other things. If you start losing focus on the other important things like study, work, family or friends and are getting anti-social in the real world, that means you are too much into gaming and you need to cut down your gaming time and spend some more time in the real world.
If you are feeling any of the signs, you need to take a thorough look at your gaming routine and start cutting down on your gaming time. You need a relaxed mind and body to perform well in any field of life and gaming is no different. To give your optimal performance in gaming, you need to have a healthy sleeping and eating routine, give your body proper workout needed and focus on your social life as well.