Breaking the habit
Are parents or game developers to blame for gaming addiction? and are Malaysians guilty of keeping too many photos on their phone?
WE’VE seen how technology can improve lives by helping people in different parts of the world stay connected or get info at a click of a button.
But, sadly, it can also do the opposite, and affect one’s behaviour and society in negative ways.
A class action lawsuit has been filed against popular battle royale game Fortnite in Canada and this has raised a big question: could users get hooked on games just like how addicts are dependent on drugs?
The parents of two young children who are obsessed with the game seem to think so. A legal firm in Canada representing the two children (age 10 and 15) described the effect of the game as akin to cocaine because it also triggers the release of dopamine.
According to a report by CBC, lawyer Alessandra Esposito Chartrand claimed that Fortnite creator Epic Games has designed the game to be addictive.
“Epic Games, when they created Fortnite, for years and years, hired psychologists – they really dug into the human brain and they really made the effort to make it as addictive as possible,” she said.
She believes that the company knew that they were releasing “a very addictive game” aimed towards young players and felt that the company has a responsibility to inform users of the risk.
“In our case, the two parents that came forward and told, ‘If we knew it was so addictive, it would ruin our child’s life, we would never have let them start playing Fortnite or we would have monitored it a lot more closely’,” she said.
A separate report by AFP claims if the action is successful, Fortnite developers would have to pay out “tens, even hundreds of millions of dollars” in damages. Game developers in the future may also have to be more mindful about the way they market their products to youngsters. Parents should also play a more active role by observing if their kids have adopted bad online gaming habits.
Talking about bad habits, here’s one that some may need to let go: Malaysians are guilty of hoarding photos on their phone.
According to a global study by Avast based on anonymised data from six million users from 45 countries, Malaysians rank second for piling up photos on their phones.
Malaysians on average have 1,300 photos on their devices, just behind South Korea (1,417).
Switzerland (1,237) and South Africa (1,190) are up there with us, and at the bottom are Russia (442) and Vietnam (397).
Avast advised users to consider deleting bad or duplicate photos to avoid wasting space on their phone, and to make room for “memories that matter”.
The company said users could potentially be wasting up to 10GB of space on thousands of unnecessary high-resolution images.
On the flip side, you could argue that storing too many photos is a habit that harms no one but Facebook’s new plan could according to the FBI.
FBI director Christopher Wray has spoken out against Facebook’s plan to encrypt its popular messaging programs, explaining that the move would be a “dream come true for predators and child pornographers”. Reuters reported that Wray spoke to a crowd of law enforcement officers and child protection officials during the Lawful Access Summit in Washington, saying that this plan could create a “lawless space”.
“We’re going to lose the ability to find those kids who need to be rescued. We’re going to lose the ability to find the bad guys,” he said in the report.
The event by the US Justice Department is part of a larger move to force tech companies to allow it to circumvent encryption designed to protect messages from prying eyes.
In the same event, the Justice Department also criticised Apple, which already has end
to-end encryption for its messaging service, for reporting only 43 tips on child exploitation to law enforcement last year.
On the other hand, Facebook reported 16 million child exploitation tips, which the Justice Department claimed will drop to as much as 70% if Facebook encrypts its messaging programs in the same way as Apple.
“Are we to assume that Apple magically ran platforms free of child exploitation? Or is it that companies with end-to-end encryption cannot see harmful illicit activity that was occurring on these platforms and they choose to avert their eyes by deploying end-to-end encryption?,” deputy attorney general Jeff Rosen said.
Reuters also reported that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended the decision to encrypt messages during a company live streaming session on Oct 3.
He is “optimistic” that Facebook would be able to identify predators in encrypted systems using the same tools the company has used to combat election interference.