Computer games are one of the most popular types of entertainment among young people.
In the virtual world, adolescents sometimes feel more natural than in reality. There is nothing impossible for them, it is easy to imagine oneself as an invincible hero, conqueror of space and time, possessing many lives. Game creators are constantly inventing new things, trying to attract more and more new "recruits" in this multimillion-dollar army. But psychologists say that an excessive passion for virtuality can cause irreparable harm to the fragile psyche of a young person.
The most common type of such violations is the so-called computer addiction, which forces a person to sit at the computer around the clock, forgetting about food and sleep. There are already known cases when in such a situation people literally brought themselves to death. Such psychopathology can develop at any age, but most often it happens to teenagers who are not yet capable of self-control. The more time a teenager spends in the virtual world, the more gray and dull the real world may seem to him. Sometimes the latter is completely replaced by the first, and when trying to return it to real life, the child behaves as if he is being deprived of something vital, becomes aggressive and uncontrollable.
Worst of all, such changes in the child's psyche can proceed completely imperceptibly, and when they begin to catch the eye, the parents are no longer able to correct the situation on their own. We have to seek help from specialist psychologists. At the same time, it is no easier to heal a computer gambling addict than a drug addict or an alcoholic: here is also true the common truth that any disease is easier to prevent than to cure.
With adults, this happens less often, but they sometimes become victims of "iron". In addition to changes in the psyche, excessive enthusiasm for virtuality leads to deterioration of vision, headaches, the development of physical inactivity with all its sad consequences.
However, one should not consider computer games to be a harmful phenomenon. Many of them help the development of intelligence, attentiveness, memory, reaction speed and other useful qualities, and also facilitate the assimilation of various knowledge - from teaching to read to foreign languages. It all depends on the dose: it is she who turns the medicine into poison.
