Read the following text and answer the quiz below.
[1] Inside a video game, all a player might need to do to stay healthy is drink the occasional healing potion or grab a floating heart. Avoiding zombies and killer aliens helps too. But in real life, staying healthy while gaming is trickier.
[2] Some aspects of gaming can be good for you, according to Dr Joanne Donoghue. She is the director of clinical research at the New York Institute of Technology’s College of Osteopathic Medicine. Donoghue has led several studies on professional gamers’ health. Some action video games have been shown to improve reaction time and may help with multitasking, she said. And unlike before, modern gamers can play with headphones and microphones. They can go “live and [interact] with a lot of people at one time, so there is a social component,” Donoghue said.
[3] Dr Jason Nagata, an associate professor of paediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, has studied the effects of screen time, including video games, on children and adolescents. He said digital media is not inherently good or bad: “There are some risks, but also some benefits.” For example, there are only 24 hours in a day. If you sit at home playing a video game all day, that is basically time that you are not outside walking or doing something else that is good for your physical or mental health, Nagata said.
[4] Excessive video game time can also be linked to a lack of sleep and poor nutrition, Nagata said. Players’ heart rates can also soar in unhealthy stress responses to gaming. Combining stress with immobility may raise the risk of a type of dangerous blood clot called deep vein thrombosis, which typically forms in the legs, arms or pelvis.
[5] “Gamer’s thrombosis” has been documented in players as young as 12 years old. In 2004, a 24-year-old South Korean who played a game for 80 hours straight died after a blood clot travelled to his lungs. Prolonged sitting at a computer for at least 10 hours in a 24-hour period, and at least two hours at a time without getting up, has been associated with nearly triple the risk of developing dangerous blood clots. The risk increases with each hour seated without getting up.
[6] Video games can affect your mental health as well. Nagata led a review of data collected by the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study in the United States. The study looked at the effects of screen time and social media use, including video games, on more than 11,000 adolescents. The analysis by Nagata and his colleagues was published in the journal Current Opinion in Paediatrics in April. The study showed that greater screen time is associated with depression, anxiety and other problems, he said.
[7] The social nature of gaming can also expose teens to problems such as cyberbullying. And while video game addiction is not an official diagnosis, Nagata said, psychologists acknowledge that some gamers show signs of addiction. These include withdrawal symptoms when not playing, loss of interest in other activities and “a general loss of control related to video gaming”.
Source: Tribune News Service, June 29
Content provided by British Council
