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Dangerous Online Games

Dangerous Online Games
Background Social media has been criticized to have caused people to become lazy and ineffective, but one of the most alarming concerns regarding the ills of social media is the influence of dangerous online games, especially on millennials. Young people are naturally more drawn towards ‘challenges’ and interesting games on social media and can quickly fall prey to such dangerous games, which lead to a large number of reported suicides. The very nature of these games is so discreet that it is very difficult to recognise and ban them. Suicide games have seen an alarming rise since 2013 and have caused many deaths all over in the world. Why are young people drawn to such games? •Any kind of ‘challenge’ on social media comes with a particular thrill and excitement. •The zeal to show-off works to a great extent, where teens prove that they are tougher than the rest. •Inefficient adult supervision causes young people to explore more. •Mental illnesses, such as depression force them to do activities that will make them forget their loneliness. •Suicidal tendencies in young people can cause them to play such games. What are the dangers of playing such games? •Harmful and extremely toxic addiction. •Isolation from society and family. •Incentive to perform criminal activities. •Violent and erratic behaviour. •Such games are usually played with the objective of committing suicide at the end, hence they can result in mass suicides by young people. What are the most dangerous online games? •The Eyeball challenge: Eyeballing is an extremely disturbing teen trend that involves taking a shot of hard liquor in one's eye socket. This can cause partial or total blindness. •The Salt and Ice challenge: This involves holding a mixture of ice cubes and salt in one’s fist. The person who holds the mixture the longest and endures the most pain wins. This can cause severe second and third-degree burns. •The Car Surfing challenge: This involves riding on the outside of a moving vehicle being driven by another person, mostly on the roof. This has led to uncountable deaths and many fatal injuries. •The Choking Game: Also known as flatliner, space monkey, blackout, the knockout challenge and the fainting game, this involves kids either strangling their friends or themselves till they pass out to get a rush of euphoria as soon as they regain consciousness. This has caused many deaths. •Blue Whale: The most infamous online game, it dares players to participate in a series of tasks which are detrimental to their health and can also cause them great harm. They are required to inflict self harm and psychological and emotional trauma. The highest level of the game instructs players to commit suicide either by jumping in front of trains or from buildings. The Blue Whale challenge has caused many deaths in India as well as in foreign nations. •The Cutting challenge: This instructs players to cut parts of their skin with sharp objects and then upload pictures to social networking sites to gain more fame and popularity and also to show their toughness. •The Cinnamon Challenge: This involves swallowing a spoonful of ground cinnamon in a minute without drinking water and trying not to choke. This has caused poisoning and burns in a lot of teens. •Momo challenge: This involved communicating with a stranger, but this was later found to be a hoax. How to protect oneself from such games? These dangerous games come with in-built persuasive techniques to make even the most rational of people consider playing them. They usually appear on people’s social media handles and fake news or in the form of ads and once people get hooked on them, it goes downhill. They may start off as quite harmless and funny challenges but the repercussions tend to be very detrimental. •One must use an efficient malware detecting system so that games cannot be opened through spam and virus mails. •One must make effective use of cookies on social media sites to block out ads and fake news. •One should not open any strange emails or messages and always read up on challenges. •Teens should be given proper counselling against playing such games. •Family members must supervise the activities of young children on the internet. •Immediate and effective psychiatric treatment should be done if someone is caught playing such games.
Source: https://www.brecorder.com/2017/09/19/370068/pakistani-develops-an-anti-blue-whale-game/



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