Video games can trap kids subtly, act early
The deaths of three sisters in Ghaziabad, aged 12, 14 and 16, force a reckoning with a form of addiction that families and the State still struggle to recognise. These children did not die because they were suddenly reckless. They died because their minds had probably shifted into a reality where life outside a game felt unlivable. Such deaths are often described as ‘self-harm’, but the term is misleading. It assumes free will. What happens here is a gradual change of mind shaped by dependence. These games trap children through tasks, rewards, secrecy and rules, until school, sleep and family slip away. Over time, the game stops being entertainment and becomes identity, companionship and purpose.
Loneliness could be a unique fuel of this addiction. A child does not fall in love with a screen unless it offers something missing elsewhere. The togetherness of the Ghaziabad sisters in their action only underlines how isolated they must have been within their crowded home. To step onto a balcony together and jump is a shared thought that there is nowhere else to belong but in a world they created for themselves. Parents often intervene late, when exam marks fall or schooling becomes irregular. The response is usually confiscation of consoles and scolding. By then, a game may have already rewired emotional responses, so unplugging feels like suffocation. Ensuing panic, rage and despair are withdrawal symptoms, not tantrums. Scores of deaths across India in recent years follow the same pattern: access is cut, the child is angered and the ending is irreversible.
The state’s response has so far focused on bans. Banning a game but allowing unregulated social media ecosystems is, at best, a partial answer. Regulation matters, but it treats symptoms, not causes. We need a clearer public understanding of how digital addiction begins, how it deepens and how dangerously fragile a child can become inside it.
This tragedy asks uncomfortable questions. Do we truly know our children’s online lives, or just the version we prefer to believe? We say we love them, but do we hear them withdrawing, or notice them only when they stumble? Prevention depends on early attention, fearless conversation and seeing addiction as an illness, not misconduct. Or else, affection by itself may fail in the end. Silence, denial and delay are the real accomplices in such deaths.