VIDEO GAMING ADDICTION AMONGST SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS : IS IT TIME TO TAKE ACTION ?

The video game industry has evolved as one of the hugely popular in the entertainment
industry. owing to its wide usage which is increasing multifold rapidly it becomes a focal point of
researches to study how video gaming is affecting the physiological, sociological and psychological
domains especially of young children and adolescents as this group is maximally reported to be
indulging in video games. Global trends reveal that the researches one hand advocate the potential
detrimental influence of video gaming including aggression and violent tendencies, the other set of
researches vividly put forth the potential benefits in cognitive as well as psychosocial arena.
However different stakeholders namely students, teachers and parents to be aware of the impact of
video gaming on young minds. The present researches focusses on questions like -What are the
trends shown by secondary school students regarding video game playing? How does video gaming
affect their cognitive and psycho social well-being of students? What are their overall perceptions
and experiences of students regarding video gaming? Results reveal that video gaming is a very
common and popular leisure activity amongst the secondary school students. There are gender
based differences in terms of extent of playing and the category of games. Many of the respondents
accepted that video gaming has harms relating to physiological, psychological, academic effects and
aspects related to time. The physical forms of playing are being slowly eroded by digital ones and
social migrations are following it. What needs to be seen is transitions in children’s psychosocial
development in near future on account of video gaming and its indulgence or addiction.