IN B’LURU, DIGITAL ADDICTS REACH ‘SHUT’ FOR A NEW LIFE

BENGALURU: For the 15-year-old boy, being paradropped onto a remote field where he battles other players to be the last survivor, had become a way of life.

Of course, the boy (name withheld to protect identity) isn’t fighting a real-life battle and isn’t part of a real-life survival game. He is addicted to the popular game Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds or PUBG (pronounced pub-g). Created in December, the game was an instant hit and according to the website Superdata, which collates information on the revenues of gaming platforms, PUBG was the third most popular game even in June, seven months after its introduction.

The Class 10 student was so immersed that he stayed up until 2-3 am playing the game, woke up late and often missed school. It was at this point last month his parents, worried over his future, took him to the SHUT (Service for Healthy Use of Technology) Clinic, located at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), which helps people deal with technology-based addictions.

It didn’t take Manoj Kumar Sharma, who runs the clinic, long to diagnose that the teenager suffered from gaming disorder.

World Health Organization recognised gaming as a disorder in June. The boy showed all the symptoms — putting gaming over other activities and continuing with it despite the negative consequences it could bring.

Visiting Sharma was not as fruitful as his parents had hoped, though. “In the two sessions I had with the patient, it was clear that he was unwilling to recognise that he had a problem. As a result, it was difficult for us to proceed,” Sharma said.

Beyond gaming, even social media usage is being recognised as highly addictive, prompting Facebook and Instagram to introduce a new dashboard that will show users the time they spend on the apps, according to ANI news agency.

With the increased accessibility of internet-enabled devices, chances are more people could be affected by this in one way or the other.

According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), there were 1.18 billion wireless subscribers in the country, as of March 2018. And, there are 493 million internet or broadband subscribers in the country.

In the four years since it was opened, the SHUT Clinic has seen a steady increase in the number of patients showing signs of addiction to the internet, social media, gaming and pornography. “When we began, we got maybe one patient every week.