- The title was released in 2017 and since then it has become one of the most popular in the world.
- The classic version allows up to 100 people connected through the internet and without the need to be in the same place, they must face each other on an island until there is only one left.
- Since 2019 Fortnite has been accused of causing an addiction just as severe as narcotics and now for the first time a judge in Canada authorized the complaint to go to court.
Video games have become one of the most lucrative and popular forms of entertainment in the world. The first titles were developed half a century ago but at the beginning their success was minimal. On the other hand, today it is quite different and games have even been created for didactic and educational purposes. In the midst of this panorama, now Fortnite faces a severe problem due to various complaints that accuse it of causing addiction in the youngest.
account of what happened
These types of situations are not new because It has been mentioned in the past that video games can affect children’s mental development. To date it has not been verified but it is one of the main complaints that are made.
For its part, the problem increased in 2019 as a result of a class action by parents in Canada. Specifically, the company Epic Games, developer of the Fortnite title, was accused of causing a severe addiction in infants. Although at that time the conflict could never reach the courts.
Instead, now the issue has been taken up again thanks to the fact that Sylvain Lussier, a judge of the Superior Court of Quebec, authorized the complaint. Therefore, it will eventually reach the courts as a formal complaint.
According to the parents, the minors have developed symptoms similar to those caused by narcotics. In fact, a mother mentions that her son invested 7,781 hours in the video game in less than two years. By converting you get more than 10 hours a day.
Due to the above, children are completely isolated from the outside world to stay all day in front of a monitor. They also abandon basic activities such as eating to focus entirely on the video game.
Video game addiction is already recognized as a mental disorder
For its part, it is necessary to remember that in 2018 The World Health Organization (WHO) included video game addiction as a mental disorder for the first time. Since then it appears in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD).
According to the official document, three fundamental conditions must be met to be able to diagnose a person with this mental disorder: that video games are a priority with respect to other activities carried out by the patient; that there is no real control of the patient towards the use that he makes of video games; and that significant impairments are observed in the patient’s personal, family, social, educational, or occupational functioning.
While in 2021 the Provincial Hospital of Castellón, the Universitat Jaume I and the General University Hospital, all from Spain, announced the first case in the world of addiction to videogames.
According to the clinical case, the patient is an adolescent from the province of Castellón and the diagnosis is that he suffers from a serious behavioral addiction to video games. Among his symptoms are isolation at his home, rejection of social interactions with refusal to go to health services, persistent personal inflexibility, little interest in his environment and very selective in his tastes and restrictive activities.
Therefore, the minor had to be hospitalized for two months. The indicated treatment required an intensive multidisciplinary approach, from a cognitive behavioral approach, working with both the patient and her family and, at the same time, the implementation of intervention strategies such as cognitive restructuring and development of personal skills.
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