A study carried out by the University of California found that the more time children spend in front of a screen playing computer games the higher the risk of them developing OCD. OCD, also known as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, is a condition in which a person’s thoughts are fixated on one idea which then translates into a repeated behavioural pattern. For example, if someone is a clean freak, their thought process will be that something they’ve just cleaned is still not clean, or clean enough, so they keep cleaning it over and over again.

Children who are said to develop this condition from playing too many computer games for too long develop uncontrollable behaviour such as wanting to play more and for longer periods. Other behaviour include trying to stop playing but not being able to, not wanting to eat, not tidying their rooms, not moving in general and having a complete meltdown which may sometimes involve the use of profanities and fisticuffs towards the parent when the source of the video or computer game is removed.

Researchers found that OCD did not develop when watching movies or being on social media but surmised that this could possibly be because children are not really that active on these platforms nor do they spend as much time watching movies.

A young mind can be very impressionable and, these days, some computer games are so immersive that even seasoned adults can get lost in the alternate reality they create.

The problem with a lot of video games is that many are violent. They involve gun-toting good guys and bad guys and the player gets to choose their avatar and which character they want to play. I’ve never played a video game but from the screen recordings I’ve seen, most are just violent and this cannot be good for children.

Moreover, the more time children spend playing computer games, the less control parents have over the content they are exposed to. At some point the child’s mind will no longer be able to distinguish between the two realities, ours and those of the gaming world. That virtual gun may become so enticing that the child might one day want to try a real one.

But you know, not all adults play computer games yet many are still adversely affected by the amount of time they spend on social media. They can get depressed, influenced or angry, depending upon what they’re looking at. A posting made by someone might annoy them. Another might influence them into doing something they otherwise would not do, another might adversely affect their self-esteem and another still might depress them.

To be honest, it’s not just children who are adversely affected by this new medium. Depression, OCD, violence and self-harm are all too common among some adults, even in their advancing years. They develop these conditions from being obsessed with what they encounter on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Even though children may spend two to three hours playing video games, adults have social media apps on their phones so they spend whatever free time they have in their day scrolling through posts.

Who hasn’t looked at someone’s photo on Instagram and felt upset that they couldn’t look as good? Who hasn’t seen a post from someone about how well they’re doing at work and felt less accomplished? Who has not felt like a failure when they see they have far fewer Instagram followers than another similar account? Who’s not seen the thousands of likes and retweets of someone’s post about a hot topic and felt irritated that they get none even though they might have tweeted about the same thing? Who’s not seen how skinny a famous model looks and then decided to go on a hunger strike, hoping they’ll look the same in a few days? Who’s not fallen prey to a catfisher only to find out he was a scammer from an African country? Who’s not seen other people’s artwork on social media and concluded that their art sucks?

It is clear to me that, no matter what age you, or what you are exposing yourself to online, you, and those far younger than you, are affected in pretty much the same way. Obsessive thoughts that often lead to obsessive behaviour or to extremes of reactions to achieve the same thing that you are seeing online. At least when there was no social media or online gaming, or access to numerous games, our exposure to the outside world was limited to how often we bought a game from a gaming shop or managed to get outside to meet people to find out what they’re up to. In those days, no one socialised all day and parents didn’t always buy the new game their child was after. The degree of our exposure was limited by our capacity. No money, no new game. No money to socialise meant staying in and being blissfully oblivious to what anyone was up to. To some extent that was a better time.