Originally from this site but it went down for some time. Anyway, here it is the article just in case it goes down again:
Moscow: 10-yr-old commits suicide after parental ban on computer games
A 10-year-old school boy committed suicide by jumping from his 19th floor apartment here after his parents banned him from playing computer games.
Andrei Smirnov, a class three student, jumped to his death yesterday after receiving the wrath of his parents due to bad conduct in school and a poor performance in studies.
The boy’s class teacher had written remarks about his bad conduct in the school diary which he had tried to erase to escape the wrath of his parents, according to Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid.
Angered by the teacher’s remarks and their son’s attempt to deceive them, Andrei’s parents banned him from playing games on his computer.
Local experts here have expressed concern over the unhealthy dependence of children on computers.
According to Director of Centre for Legal Psychological Assistance Mikhail Vinogradov, children who are banned from using their computers could easily resort to suicide, since they do not realise the consequences of taking the extreme step.
Comment: The child was banned from playing computer games and took his life. As parents and as societies, do we provide our children with reasons to live for, for oppurtunities to be creative and enhance their self-worth, their self esteem? The answer for the vast majority unfortunately, is No. It is the price all humans pay under pathocracy, since some of its characteristics are the
1. suppression of individualism and creativity
2. impoverishment of artistic values
3. impoverishment of moral values; a social structure based on self-interest and one-upmanship, rather than altruism.
And make no mistake. The world currently is ruled by pathocrats.
The comment attached to the article is worth noting. Is the cause of his suicide really dependence over computers? Why?
Computer games are like TV shows, movies or books. They provide entertainment, may tell stories, and give simulated experiences that may never be possible in real life. Aside from being ‘time wasters’ and stress relievers (well, there are also games that are just so frustrating that they cause stress…hahahahaha!), they are also a form of escape from the real world. One can’t drive at 2000+ km/h in real life but it can be done in computer games. The same can be said with many other illegal acts done in the virtual world. At the end of the day, nobody gets hurt until a kid brings a real gun to school.
I digress. Was it that the kid found a better life in video games than in the real world? If he was addicted, what drove his addiction this far? Can society provide the “anti-drug” to the addiction?
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