ONLINE GAME ADDICTION–UNSTOPPABLE TO THE POINT OF VIOLENCE–EVEN TO THE POINT OF DEATH

According to the 2013 research by National Information Society Agency (NIA), 84.3 percent of children under aged from five to nine played online games, while 80 percent of teenagers played them.

Kim Min-a, a manager at iWill addiction-counseling center in Changdong, northern Seoul, warns about teenage addiction.
"Teenagers are not as good at anger management as adults," Kim said. "Addiction can mean they fail in school, they fail at home."
Social factors loom large.

Game addiction is more common among teenagers from single-parent or double-income families, who are often left without parental guidance.
Every Wednesday, Lee Hyung-cho, a psychology counselor, visits Dure Forest Creative School nestled inside a mountainous area, secluded from the outside world. Lee, however, thinks that social factors are taken out of proportions.

"The game addiction rate among teenagers can reach as high as 12 to 15 percent. Up to 5 percent of teenagers were found to be in the high-risk group - a level where teenagers feel anxious when they don't play a certain amount of time or more, so they can't perform their daily routine," she said.

Lee Hae-guk, a psychiatry professor at Uijeongbu St. Mary's Hospital, says that too much gaming causes deterioration in partial brain function for teenagers.
"A part of brain that controls emotion, fun and pleasure develops until the age of 12," Prof. Lee said. "The frontal lobe that controls reasoning and decision making develops around 15."

"If children aged 10 to 14 are exposed to stimulating gaming for too long, their pleasure sense can develop excessively at the risk of dysfunction in the frontal lobe," the professor said.

One of the most bizarre cases he experienced covered a young man's sudden death after playing for three days straight with little interruption. During a
postmortem, Prof. Lee found a blood clot in a vein that blocked blood circulation to the heart.

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/tech/2014/11/134_167345.html