‘Free fire, PUBG mobile games engulfing youth’s future’

“Rahul (pen name), a 15 years old boy, student of class of ten playing free fire mobile game on his mobile for a long time.

Amid playing he needs a credit card to pay some money and to open the security of the game. Then he came to his elder brother and looking for credit just like a mad”. Imagine how much addicted he is to free fire. This is an example of one boy. But there is a huge number of boys around our country like the above example. Most importantly, they are your young generation.

Though there is no specific data on the total number of addicted teenagers in Bangladesh. But it is assumed that a huge number of teenagers are addicted to free fire and PUBG mobile game. As the COVID-19 forced us to stay home and closed school for a long time, this brings a disaster in the life of youth.

Closing school means the study is almost out of mind. Teenagers do nothing amid this pandemic. Due to the high accessibility to smart devices and the vast amount of time, our teenagers use it negatively by playing free fire and PUBG mobile game.

Most of the time in a day, they are busy with playing free fire and PUBG. This continuous process recycling for 4 months after closing school. For this reason, they have become fully addicted to this game. Without this game they cannot think anything, even whenever a group of teenagers come to each other they only discuss about the free fire mobile game that I witnessed in last month. After that I was observing the teenagers of different villages of my district, unfortunately, they are also addicted to this game.

So it is crystal clear to us that, the situation is very alarming for our country. Except addiction, there are many demerits of playing those games. They are-
• These games are extremely violent. Excessive violence can trigger aggressive thoughts, emotions and behavior that can ultimately affect the mental health of the young generation. That is why many of our youths are frustrated.
•    It makes the young people unproductive. As they are always busy with gaming so as time goes up their learning capability will decrease and ultimately they will be unproductive.
• These games make them unsocial as they are busy with gaming and don’t interact with people. 
•    It also hampers the physical health of the teenagers. While playing games they are sitting in place for a long time. That means they have no physical activity. It is well established that inadequate physical activity can cause various diseases such as obesity and many other diseases. One the other hand, staring at the mobile or computer screen for a long time can hamper eyesight which will turn into headaches later.
•     Playing this game changes the lifestyle pattern of the teenager. They lost regularity in their everyday life which is deleterious for their health and well-being.
•    Kills the valuable time of teenagers.

The above discussion reflects the life-threatening effect of playing free fire and PUBG. Thus free fire and PUBG engulfing our youth’s future. Youths are the most valuable wealth for any country. Proper counseling and nurturing can transform the youth into resources. Abstaining them from playing free fire and PUBG mobile games is our responsibility.

If we make them conscious about the hazardous effect of playing the game, they will try to come back. Any types of addiction need proper guidance and counselling to come back in normal life. Our parents can play a crucial role in counselling teenagers. They can teach their children about the dangerous effect of gaming. In this way, an integrated and multisectoral approach is necessary to build gaming free young generation. Let’s act from your own family and make sustainable Bangladesh through youth engagement.

(The writer- Md Billal Hossen is MS student of Faculty of Biological Science
Islamic University, Bangladesh).