A report from the Bureau of Advancement of Informationization of Korea showed that the rate of internet addiction among children of multicultural households, 37.6 percent) is three times that of children of normal households, 12.3 percent. Considering that 65.2 percent of all internet-using teenagers use the internet to play games, almost two out of ten multicultural children can be said to be addicted to games. This is a very alarming fact, as multicultural children make up a sizable part of our population; gaming and internet addiction can ruin their futures.
Why do multicultural children have such a high rate of game addiction? The addiction can be accredited to the extra time that children have on their hands. Due to financial problems, most multicultural households cannot accrue enough money to send their children to after-school academies, as Korean parents are so fond of doing. This lack of supplementary education- desperately needed, as many such children are not fluent in Korean- make the children social outcasts, and their dejection is vented through games. A third-grader confessed that due to his sub-par Korea, he was ostracized at school and would come straight home afterwards to play games non-stop well into the night.
Another, possibly more substantial, reason that multicultural children are attracted to games is due to their loneliness. They are regularly ostracized- or in worse case, bullied- at school due to either their “funny Korean” or the negative reactions some people have to mixed lineages.
Others live in constant fear of such problems; a 9-year-old boy confessed to his Uzbekistanian mother that he could not play outside with other kids and played games instead as he was “frightened of being bullied if [he] mingled with them for long.” A fifth grader has testified that “in games, nobody knows that I am of mixed heritage, or that I have a strange accent. I don’t have any friends at school but a lot online, and those are the people I confide in.”
In a world where only levels, items and rankings matter, multicultural children find the companionship that they have always desired.
Unfortunately, gaming addiction is not only a vice of multicultural children. Others in the lower socio-economic range are also showing signs of game addiction due to: ostracism at school, loss of hope about academic success due to their lack of outer-school education and in the case of North Korean defectors and disabled children, disapproval and vehemence from fellow classmates and sometimes even teachers. Efforts are being made to rehabilitate the affected teenagers, but the future remains unseen. It is unfortunate that these conditions, along with other influences, drive the future of Korea into the drug of unproductiveness.
This is a really strong article! It introduced a fresh new perspective to the gaming addiction that everyone knows of – Most people assume that students play games because they don’t have anything better to do, I guess. Your article really helped open my eyes to the problem. Good article!