We’ve already acknowledged that no good can come from playing too much PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, best known as PUBG. From the teenager who suffered a cardiac arrest after playing PUBG for six hours straight to the World Health Organisation declaring gaming disorders as a disease, the quest to win the chicken dinner is taking a serious toll on the health of PUBG players. Now, a teenager in the district of Wanaparthy in Hyderabad has suffered a stroke after playing an excessive amount of PUBG.
Turns out, gaming for too long can cause a condition called thrombosis or a brain blood clot, according to doctors at the Sunshine hospital in Hyderabad, who diagnosed this 19-year old student on August 26 after his right hand and leg went numb. While such brain strokes, which cut off the oxygen and blood supply to the brain, usually occur among older people, they rarely happen to someone so young, and in this case, doctors are attributing it to the teenager PUBG addiction.
The doctors also say that because his entire focus was on winning the game, he would often skip meals, which lead to acute weight loss, nutrition deprivation and dehydration.“ The condition led to thickening of venous blood in the brain and few clots were developed,” Dr K Vinod Kumar, senior Nutri-physician at Sunshine hospital told The Times of India.
The teenage gamer mother also opened up about her son undying love for PUBG, saying he would start around 9 pm and play endlessly till 3-4 am, pausing only when he had to go for his part-time job as a newspaper delivery boy. He is a student in his second year of a Bachelor programme but would find time to play PUBG during his college breaks as well.
While this teenager has now recovered and been discharged from the hospital, he is yet another victim on a long list of people growing mindlessly addicted to the game. In fact, an alarming number of young people are playing competitive killing games, that are leading to symptoms like headaches, vomiting, stiffness, listlessness and irritability. Psychologists even say that taking away these teenagers’ mobile phones to prevent them from playing PUBG has also lead to aggressive withdrawal symptoms, including reports of suicide.
While PUBG was briefly banned in the Indian state of Gujarat, countries like Nepal and Iraq have taken severe steps to keep it banned because of all the negative effects linked to it.
However, some studies, including one by Oxford University, found that playing such games can be cathartic and aren’t directly linked to a long-term tendency of anger or violence.