Baby starves to death while parents play

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Not sure if this is news anymore, but...

Baby starved to death due to parents' game addiction

I'm sure I have had my periods where I played waaaaaaay more than what should be considered healthy, but still I've made sure the only one suffering from it is myself. Sleep deprivation, dehydration and starvation aren't all that bad when it's voluntarily self-inflicted and in mild doses.

But to expose ones BABY for that for several months.. WTF?

 

Words fail me.

 

This isn't the first story i've heard of gaming being taken to an extreme in Korea. On a game I used to play, someone was stabbed to death over a sword ingame.

 

Any time I hear of kids being neglected, for any reason, it makes me so angry.

 

I agree with HB, and I suspect there's a connection. By that I mean, I suspect gaming was just the addiction of the moment, and that this would have happened even without gaming, they'd just be doing something else while their child starved to death.

 

I've seen this one before (might have even been here at BoM). This is an example of the ultimate low in internet culture. The parents will have to live with their complete failures as, well, human beings, for the rest of their lives....

Tragedy doesn't begin to sum it up.

 

One of the reasons this made the news is because it is, thankfully, rare.

That said I know not to use drugs so I don't. Video games don't have that warning so I'm more likely to loose myself in one than let my life disappear down a beer bottle or crackpipe.

That said the reason they don't have that warning is because they aren't as dangerous.

The question could be how to you balance so that you have fun (videos games are supposed to be about that) without going to the excess too often. And there are times when I played Alpha Centuri: Alien Crossfire (a Civ like game made by at least some of the same people) overnight (started evening before and only realized the time as the light from dawn started to arrive.

I didn't die or kill anyone from that. It wasn't as hard on my body as going 50 hours straight and my responsibilities weren't such at the time that it had a major impact on my or anyone else's life as far as I can remember.

 

And now they're getting yet another baby, it seems.

Regret, redemption and.. retry?

I know, I know.. easy to judge as an outsider, but this is just too fishy.

 

These people are really dimwitted. I know that sounds harsh, but what else can you call this? To think it's OK to feed a baby once per day? To notice that she's getting thinner and not take her to the doctors? Hell, when my son was born we had to go for a checkup at one week, and again at one month. You'd think if they did that, the doctor would have told them it was unusual for the baby not be gaining weight, and in fact losing weight. I know that babies lose a bit of weight over the first couple of days after birth, but after that they should gain weight quite rapidly.

I know that babies don't come with instruction manuals, but this is beyond dumb. I mean, people need to eat more than once per day, so why would a baby be any different? They will live with this guilt and their stupidity for the rest of their lives.

 

Babies aren't people?

 

Why would they not be people? Granted little people, but people nonetheless.

 

You said:

which implies that babies are not a subset of the group consisting of people.

Me try make joke. Me obviously fail.

 

That's a very sad story, but I can't help but think of the irony involved. I hope their second child fares better. I suppose that someone else will raise it if they are sent to prison, for better or worse.

I say for better or worse, because I can't imagine these two people not doing a better job on raising their next child. The shock of their kid dying should be enough to break an addiction like that.

 

To be fair though, it might be a REALLY good game...

 

This made me LOL!

(does that make me evil?)

 

I can't imagine having a baby and then finding *time* to game.

I'd be doting all my attention to my own child and worrying over every single decision to make sure I'm doing the best I can!

Hell, I never left my tamagotchi/cyber pet things alone long enough to start crying, the only reason they died was because the battery life couldn't keep up with me. (I'm hardly saying that's similar to raising a child. I am quite aware in the differences!) Seriously though, if they couldn't fathom out they were doing something wrong they probably weren't mentally aged enough to reach the rating of the game they were so engrossed in.

 

To be immersed in alternate, man-created reality so much that you fail to see and prevent something so basic and instinctual really is quite the feat.

The day this stops being a joke looms closer

 

Should be and is can be two very different things. Especially where addiction is concerned.

 

This just reminds me of something our late president Ferdinand Marcos (yup, the famous Filipino dictator) did when I was still a kid. He regulated video games and showing of cartoons and animes here in the Philippines back in the late 70's. While I hated that regulation back then, I now appreciate what it has done for us. Because whether me and the other kids would want to admit or not, we were simply becoming addicted to them. Now, you see portable game consoles everywhere. My colleagues wants me to install internet in their computers so they can play those free online games in the office. Let's just hope that no more babies have to suffer because of such addictions.

 

nior,

But do you really think many people become addicted to video games? I think there is a difference between really liking to do something, and being addicted to it. While I think the term addiction is appropriate in this specific case we're talking about, the vast majority of gamers I'm aware of go on to live completely normal lives.

When you consider addiction, it implies a sort of dependency. A need to do something that goes beyond our will. But just because you do something daily, does not necessarily make it an addiction. I don't game every day, but most days I do. I don't think I'm addicted. I also work out nearly every day, but I don't think I'm addicted to that either. Is someone who enjoys reading addicted to reading? The point here is I think very few people would actually become game addicts just because they gamed in the youth.