Is PUBG obsession driving children addicts?

PUBG is undoubtedly one of the most popular games of the year, but young gamer has taken the obsession to next level that some schools plan to issue advisory to parents on PUBG addiction.

NP NEWS 24 ONLINE – A day back, Google released their annual list of Android’s best applications and ‘games of 2018′ and PUBG Mobile took home the award in the ‘Best game’, ‘Most Competitive Title’ and ‘Fan Favourite’ categories.

Where on one hand PUBG is winning awards, on the other hand, people are been warned about the ill-effects of playing the game for hours at a stretch after cases of addiction.

World Health Organization (WHO) has recognized ‘gaming disorder’ as a mental health condition in the International Classification of Diseases and has placed it in the same category as substance abuse and gambling addiction.

It has even proven to be problematic, in such cases where a 15-year-old from Bengaluru, is receiving treatment for his addiction to online game Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) after his worried parents then took him to SHUT (Service for Healthy Use of Technology) Clinic, located at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), which helps people deal with technology-based addictions after they observed that he would stay up late night till 2am-3am playing the game and often miss school because of waking up late.

After which, the Associated Management of Primary and Secondary Private Schools Karnataka plans to issue advisory to parents to keep a tab on the hours spent by their kids on the multiplayer game.

Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds or PUBG created in March last year has been downloaded over 50 million times. It was the third most popular game in June, even seven months after its introduction. It is available on PC, Android and iOS. PUBG is based on the epic 2000 movie Battle Royale. It starts with 100 players parachuting from a plane onto a large island, where they then search for weapons and gear up for a brutal fight to the death as surviving players edge closer to the centre of the island. The players can choose different Mods to fight the enemy and turn out victorious. The game is extra hard and the winner of PUBG is the last man standing.