What this Infograph suggests to me is that the mental state and maturity of 85% of American population ranges … on the scale of psychological imbalance … between infantility, pathological addiction to video-gaming and advancing mental retardation.
One can understand below 18 and under and 65+ year-olds hooked to play-station video-games … but to see 35% of Americans in the sample between the age group of 35-54 year olds is reflective of the signs of a retarded psychology afflicting a third of the population.
All Games are healthy robust fun … and it is human nature to sport and be sporting too… no doubt about it. And no one should or can grudge a child or a teenager enjoying games and sports. But then play-station video-games are not anywhere like physical outdoor game or sport in the true sense of the term.
Virtual Video-games are themed by deliberate design and designed to be subliminal.
Their themes range from extreme and macabre violence at one end of the spectrum to the other extreme of banal escapism and imbecilic farce.
When a play-station junkie spends a couple of hours at a video-game, day in and day out, it’s impossible to gauge or measure the true impact its designer-theme has had subliminally on the mind and sub-conscious. The impact could range from mildly delusional behaviour setting in to slow creeping conditions of psychotic pathology.
This Infograph is no doubt only a sampling finding. Statistically and realistically it is not intended to and can never be held to characterise a whole nation-wide population. But nonetheless it is a statistical sample and does have a semblance of validity. It does point to the serious possibility of correlational if not causal link between video-gaming addiction with all sorts of attendant mental-health disorders well known to be afflicting the American psyche and culture —- viz. violence, guns, crime, racism and self-centric individualism.
Today there is hardly any proven scientific literature available in the field of social psychology and behaviourism revealing anything that could be said to be insightful or actionable about the problem of video-gaming addiction as a problem across the world …. Nothing that I have come across, at least.
The world of techno-virtuality is slowly eating away into and destroying the insides of the human world of real virtue… one that for long we were so accustomed to and which we perhaps took so much for granted. That real world is in peril and we don’t seem to be even aware of it. But that’s not surprising since the unseen and undeclared war between human Reality and Virtual Reality is not an equal one—- it is one between dumb masses (of whom 4000 are a sample population in the above info-graph) and the imperial powers of Big Business.
The worldwide video-gaming industry is Market is expected to Reach USD 53.44 Billion by 2028!
And guess who are the market players?
Microsoft Corporation, Facebook LLC, Nvidia Corporation, HTC Corporation,, Magic Leap, Inc., Firsthand Technology Inc., Apple Inc., Sony Corporation, Ubisoft Entertainment SA!
Against such a formidable galaxy of Big Business giants arrayed against Real Virtue what chance does the latter have to win the psychological warfare with Virtual Reality? I would say , virtually none .
Sudarshan Madabushi