Video & Online Gaming: Refresher or a Distraction?

Contributed the following article to the November 2011 issue of VANAMUTHAM,

a Tamil Christian Monthly magazine published by Serve India Mission,

that attempts to connect the world (with its events and practical issues) to God's word.

Entertainment is supposedly a leisure time activity, to provide some diversion from the monotony of work.  You will be familiar with the adage “All work and no play make Jack a dull boy.”  In fact, God gave man Sabbath so he is able to turn from six days of hard work and rest on the seventh day.  Sabbath was intended to be a renewing, rejuvenating experience for him, resting from hard labor and enjoying fellowship with his creator.  At thy right hand, there are pleasures for evermore, says the Psalmist (Psalms 16:11).

The good Lord who provided Adam and Eve with the fruits of the different trees that man could enjoy has also provided man with good diversions.  Reading is one and physical activity is another – one stimulating the mind and the other toning the body.  Pure pleasure brings one within the reach of God’s voice.  C.S.Lewis in his satire ‘The Screwtape Letters’, has Screwtape (senior devil) chastising Wormwood (junior devil) for failing to keep the patient (Christian) from crossing over to the Enemy’s (God’s) camp, as follows.  “You first of all allowed the patient to read a book he really enjoyed, because he enjoyed it and not in order to make clever remarks about it to his new friends.  In the second place, you allowed him to walk down to the old mill and have tea there – a walk through country he really likes, and taken alone.  In other words you allowed him two real positive Pleasures.  Were you so ignorant as not to see the danger of this?”

Pleasure is God’s gift to man.  We again have this insight in the following words put into the mouth of Screwtape. “Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on Enemy’s ground.  I know we have won many a soul through pleasure.  All the same, it is His invention, not ours.  He made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one.  All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden. Hence, we always try to work away from the natural condition of any pleasure to that in which it is least natural, least redolent of its Maker, and least pleasurable.  An ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula.”

For most folks, pleasure and entertainment go hand in hand.  People entertain themselves by catering to their senses. There are those that are outright recognized as evil and most people have no problem calling them so.  However, when it comes to modes of entertainment that appear to be harmless or that have both goodness and evil to offer, we are often not sure how to deal with them. Movies were a popular entertainment for the masses right from the turn of the 20th century until it was superseded by Television by the middle of the century. By 1962, 90% of U.S. households had a television set.  In India, television sales picked up in early eighties when Doordarshan introduced color telecasting and rapidly installed transmitters nationwide to coincide with the 1982 Asian Games.

The Television set came to be called the Idiot box, because people idled and idiotised themselves in front of it, for long hours.  Once entertainment was used to pass leisure time but slowly it became the default way to fill time so much so that it started eating into productive time.  While children before the eighties had good diversions like outdoor games, the TV got them glued indoors, making a fool of themselves in front of the box.  The latest to join this string of technological advancements to produce pleasure is the Electronic Game system. In 2000, Sony estimated that one out of every four households in the United States had a Sony PlayStation. Since then the numbers have only increased, with systems like the Nintendo Wii luring the casual gamer.

Electronic games have been around since the early 1970s.  Initially they were available on huge Coin-operated devices inside Game Arcades.  Some might remember the game ‘Space Invaders’.  Very soon their poor cousins comprising a hand-held console that could be plugged to Television, producing simple graphics and requiring custom plastic overlays to be taped on the TV screen, became available.  In mid-eighties, full-fledged Home Video Game consoles with high quality display and choice of games through pluggable cartridges, became available.  By mid-nineties, games became available on mobile phones.  All along, games that were originally developed for Arcade or Home Video Game system were also available for PCs through porting and subsequently they were also developed specifically for the computers.

Eminent neurologist Baroness Susan Greenfield told attendees at a Dorset conference that although certain technologies can encourage creativity, overall the effects are negative stemming from an unhealthy addiction to technology.  She was the Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain between 1998 and 2010 – the oldest independent Research body in the world.  In her speech ‘The Future of the Brain and The Brain of the Future’, she said “Screen technologies cause high arousal which in turn activates the brain system's underlying addiction. This results in the attraction of yet more screen-based activity.  Connections in the brain can be temporarily disabled by activities with a strong sensory content - effectively 'blowing the mind'. Or they can be inactivated permanently by degeneration - i.e. dementia. Other symptoms could include shortened attention span and a tendency for reckless behavior.”

Professor Mark Griffiths, a psychologist and Director of Nottingham Trent University’s International Gaming Research Unit, while disagreeing on overall effect being negative, acknowledges that when played to excess, video game playing can in some extreme cases be addictive, especially online video game playing where the game never pauses or ends, and has the potential to be a 24/7 activity.

With the turn of the twenty first century, advanced technologies such as online gaming over internet, use of motion as input, Infra Red tracking and support for wireless controllers, have come to be employed. This allows people to play virtual Tennis wielding wireless controllers strapped to wrist or held in the palm – not on real court outside but through a simulation indoor.  Susan Greenfield is worried that spending time online gaming could pose problems for millions of youngsters.  “There is a need to be outside, to climb trees and feel the grass under your feet and in your face.”  Experts opine that overuse injuries such as carpal tunnel syndrome, bursitis, and tendonitis once reserved for long-time computer users could impact these youngsters.  They also fail to develop socialization skills as long hours of being caught up with video games leave no desire for one-on-one human company.  This is normally accompanied by a decline in verbal memory performance.  In the case of children, loss of physical activity and excessive eating that accompanies gaming often lead to obesity and neglect of studies leads to drop in academic performance.

Most importantly, the Home Video Game consoles tend to suck individuals into addiction.  Such an addiction leads to gross wastage of precious time, distracting the individual from life’s greater purpose.  John Wesley’ mother Susanna Wesley had cautioned her young son against anything that took off his relish of spiritual things.  God asked Gideon who was leading an army of 10,000 for battling the Medianites to separate out folks who cupped water in their hands and lapped it up like a dog while stopping at a river for a drink, and send away the rest.  These were folks who kept an eye for potential approach of the enemy unlike those who were distracted from their purpose, being immersed in water literally while quenching their thirst.  Any pleasure to be legitimate must refresh us without distracting us from, diminishing or destroying our final goal.