If you are a young man living in the year 2021, chances are you’ve either played a video game before, or it is perhaps a daily hobby of yours. Maybe you go through phases of time where you do a lot of gaming, and then stop playing for a few months. Either way, many people across the world turn to gaming nowadays for personal pleasure. However, when it comes to games, it is a riskier hobby to pursue than others. While it can be a great hobby, it can also be a drug at the same time. Why is this all so important, and why is it being discussed on a men’s mental health blog? Well, around 60% of gamers are male, and men are more prone to getting addicted than women are due to alterations to the brain in an area of the brain that handles impulse control. But why do men tend to gravitate more towards games than women? Well, it ties into what we talked about in our previous post: men tend to avoid opening up about their feelings. When you don’t talk about your problems to others, you fail to find solutions that you would get from someone else’s comfort or advice. Failing to find solutions makes you feel stuck, and when you feel stuck and that you have no control over your life, where do you go? Into the gaming world. Video games are different from other types of media as they offer control over what you do. That’s why they are addicting. They give you that dopamine rush, that feeling that you can actually be powerful during hard times where you aren’t in the real world. While women turn to other people for mental help, men feel stuck, and can’t do that. So they turn to computers as a way to cope, since computers are not people that can judge them for feeling down.
Along with being easily accessible and being a great way to escape the letdowns of our daily lives, this practice can become downright dangerous in the long run. No, I do not mean that video games cause mass shootings: they don’t. What I mean is that video games have such a nature that makes them a preferable activity to going outside, playing sports, finding a job, etc. These are all factors at play in our physical health, as there are reasons behind the stereotypical gamer being either underweight or overweight. Having video games as the sole purpose of waking up in the morning can render us completely sedentary, with a normal diet being enough to send us at an overweight body mass index because of the lack of exercise. On the other hand, other people tend to overcompensate their potentially high caloric intakes, rendering them underweight. Both of these conditions carry significant health hazards on their own, from a higher risk of heart disease to joint pains, brain fog, etc. In addition to this, fitness gurus do have a point that a healthy body creates a healthy mind, as young men suffering from the physical conditions above experience a lack of drive, dependence on video games, social reclusiveness, depression, anxiety, anger issues, general lack of impulse control, a sense of being in what Warren Farrell, Ph.D. calls a “purpose void”, etc. All of this is from playing video games too much. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not some kind of Christian Mom against video games type of extremist. Hell, I have been playing video games for most of my life as well to varying extents. One thing I can tell semi-jokingly to help your mental health as a young man is to steer clear away from League of Legends. The Netflix series Arcane is good, the game it is from isn’t, full stop. On a closing note, what can you do to avoid the pitfalls of video game addiction? Well, finding purpose is of utmost importance and yet it is probably the single hardest feat for a young person nowadays. Here is my advice: read books, work out, keep away from the media, and do not pay too much attention to social media. Following these steps will make you feel like a new man in a matter of weeks.
As always, if you need anyone to talk to, that’s what we’re here for. You can leave a comment on our blog or contact us on Instagram or Facebook if you are seeking help. Feel free to share this blog post so that we can further spread the word about men’s mental health.
Bibliography
https://foundationsasheville.com/blog/are-video-games-a-coping-mechanism-or-problem-behavior/
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