Is Excessive Mobile App Gaming a Mental Disorder?

Technology has progressed a lot in today's world. A mobile device is one of the most exemplary instances of progress.

There are many smartphones available these days; even the gaming device is in our hands. With the progress of technology, the gaming device has also become compact.

The most famous method of gaming in the world, overtaking both console and PC gaming, is mobile gaming. Games that are specially designed for a mobile app are mobile gaming.

The adaptability and accessibility of mobile gaming are significant reasons for its success. All age groups of people play mobile gaming, and it's a medium of entertainment and developing skills. Gameplay dominates the market with over 50% worldwide.

Why do people start playing mobile games?

Many people play mobile games for their recreational purpose or just time pass, but some play the internet game to escape something in life.

Either they were humiliated at school and were bullied on social media or have stress in daily life. In such a case, the only viable answer is gaming, which allows them to avoid mental anguish and stable mental.

Even though mobile gaming has many risks such as it affects their daily development growth, affects them mentally, they will not stop playing games and become addicted to mobile gaming.

Effects of Mobile Gaming on Mental Health

Depression

Excessive mobile app gaming and internet addiction tend to increase depression and anxiety. People who are depressed or frustrated are most likely to be attracted to online gaming. If your child is into playing aggressive games on their mobile phone, it establishes negative feelings and aggressive behavior among themselves and ends up being unhappy.

There's a distinction to be made between clinical depression and a bad mood. Some people may be happy in life, but they also have a profound sense of disappointment; that's depression.

For instance, if your child is addicted to gaming apps like Candy Crush, Pub-G, Fornite, etc then they start to think about it all the time. Children prefer to play games more than doing anything else.

They do not think about their screen time and the amount of time spent on their device, all they think about is their game. Your kids start to lack interest in other things except for their games, which will lead them to depression.

Sign and Symptoms

• Always depressed mood
• Thought of death or suicide
• Lack of interest
• Aimless weight loss or gain
• Fatigue or loss of energy

Anxiety

Getting addicted to video games gives us anxieties and mental health disorders. Online gaming has adverse effects on kids and also on college students.

When your kids play games, they neglect stuff or work that they should be doing and keep all their focus on the game. However, their minds can understand the possible challenges. When this skill is out of reach, kids start to feel anxiety.

Social anxiety is common among adolescents and if your kids are addicted to online games, they may start to feel anxious to communicate with people even more. Choosing online games over socializing is common among gamers.

Sign and Symptoms

• Frequently feel irritated
• Lack of concentration
• Sleep deprivation
• Feel tired and feeling of being "on-edge."
• An uncontrollable feeling of worry

Alexithymia

Apart from depression and anxiety, you can also suffer from Alexithymia. When anyone suppresses their feelings for a long time, they develop a disorder called Alexithymia. It is one of the major problems among gamers.

Most people who play games have Alexithymia because while playing online games, they suppress their feelings like happiness, anger, depression which will affect their mental well-being.

As a result, they become addicted and avoid every important aspect of theirs life. Mental health is essential, and especially it comes under parents' responsibilities to see whether kids are in a good mental state or not. There are ways to support kids' mental health right now.

Sign and Symptoms

• Difficulties with expressing emotion
• Lack of impulse control
• Struggle to recognize feelings conveyed by others
• Aggressive or disruptive outburst

Is Excessive Mobile App Gaming a Mental Disorder?

Gaming provides a great sense of joy, happiness, entertainment, and self-achievement. It's also beneficial to kids for their overall development. Internet games play a vital role in enhancing our cognitive skills. Growing better, being bright, and being successful are some of the accomplishments that can get us hooked to mobile games, but everything has its limit.

Mobile gaming provides us with many positive benefits, but excessive gaming is not suitable for our health. Yes, excessive mobile app gaming is a mental disorder. You will become addicted to video games and spend less time with your family and friends socializing. All you think about is games and your mind will only focus on gaming.

Not just that, you start to have eating disorders and sleep disturbance. All your schedule gets messed up and will start to develop an unhealthy schedule. It will affect both your physical and mental health.

For instance, if you play mobile games all night, you cannot have proper sleep which will affect your brain and eyesight.

Symptoms of Mobile Gaming Addiction

In a recent survey, we found that 92.5% of the people who play extreme mobile gaming have anxiety, and around 90% of the people have depression because of mobile gaming addiction. This score indicates that it's essential to know whether their kids and children are also addicted to gaming or not.

If your child plays mobile games a lot, they may be showing some symptoms which you may be ignoring. This will lead to serious consequences in the future, hence it's better to be aware as early as possible.

Here are the symptoms of mobile gaming addiction:

• Lack of interest in other extra-curricular activities
• Spending less time with family and friends, keeping them isolated
• Poor academics performance
• A rapid change in mood
• Unhealthy diet and gaining weight
• Change in sleeping time
• Lying about how long they played games
• Avoiding activities once they enjoyed doing it
• Distracting and Zone out
• Often disobeying their parents and rule

Preventive Ways to Stop Excessive Mobile App Gaming

Setting Parental Control Apps

Parental control apps are the best options to prevent your kids from using their devices a lot. There are many parental control apps like fenced.ai, Bark, Netsanity, Qustodio, etc.

These apps are specially designed for parents to monitor their children's device activities. You can also monitor and track offline and internet actions using these tools.

The best part about parental control is, you can even block gaming apps if your child uses the gaming app a lot. You can also set the time limit in the particular app as per your needs. It's better for you to use parental control apps at least once to know why parental control apps are critical for a family.

Track Screen Time

In Android or IOS, there is an in-built feature where you can see your daily screen activities and keep track of your screen time. If you do not want to use parental control apps, this can be an alternative option for you.

Using the screen time feature, you can check which apps your kids use the most, and then you can add a limit to the target app. The system will send you a notification regarding your gaming app usage.

However, unlike parental control apps, this feature does not provide you with a detailed picture of what your kids are doing or block gaming apps.

Here all you can do is check screen time on your kid's device. If you feel you can keep your kid's screen time under control by tracking screen time and making screen time rules for your kids go for it.

Play Games With Children

One of the best ideas to prevent gaming addiction among your kids is by playing games with them. By playing mobile games with them, you will get to know what kind of games they are involved in. This will help you to prevent them from video game addiction.

Also, you can make them aware of online gaming addiction and how it can affect their mental health. Make them aware of the effects of excessive gaming and its negative impact. Set a positive example for your children.

Be a Good Role Model

Children get influenced by their parents. They always look up to you, how you handle stress, how you talk with others and treat others, etc. If you are mostly busy with a mobile phone, your kids will learn that it's a good habit to use digital devices.

So, as a parent, you should also set boundaries where your kids only get your positive influence and set rules to stop excessive gaming. Instead, you should go out socialize with people, read books, involve in physical activities, by which your kids can have a good impact.

Your child will learn to socialize and involve themselves in other activities which helps to reduce device usage time.

Conclusion

Summing up, the increase in smartphone usage among people has increased online gaming addiction among people. Excessive mobile app gaming is not suitable for the health of kids, teens, and also adults.

Playing mobile games can affect you both mentally and physically. Your kids can have physical and mental health problems like high blood pressure, obesity, depression, anxiety, and so on.

If online games, study materials, social sites, etc., uses are not controlled before it leads to addictions, it can destroy one's life. Therefore, using parental control apps like fenced.ai is the best way to safeguarding your kids while using the internet.

You can't stop children from using the internet because it's part of our daily life now. Just learn how you can make it useful and engage your kids in good ways like motivating them in online learning and many more ideas.