Tamil Nadu Chief Secretary Launches Awareness Campaign Against Online Games

Chennai:Children up to the age of 16 or 18 should not have access to mobile phones as it had been found in a 2023 survey that 5 percent of school student, who were provided with phones during the Covid pandemic to enable them attend online classes become internet addicts, State Chief Secretary N Muruganandham said.

Speaking after launching an awareness campaign on the ills of online games, which was undertaken by the Tamil Nadu Online Gaming Authority, he said Internet Gaming Disorder or Pathological Gaming Disorder was a Mental Disorder that required treatment.

Urging the school and college students - scores of them took part in the campaign - to refrain from becoming addicted to the playing of online games, he said that they went against human nature.

Man was a social animal and always lived in groups but online games alienated the player from other human beings and that was why they are harmful, he said.

Though the State had made several efforts to do away with online gaming like the bringing in of the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Online Gambling and Regulation of Online Games Act, 2022, the craze for online games was spreading among the youth, he said.

The Tamil Nadu Online Gaming Authority was formed to regulate online games and eradicate gambling on the basis of the Act, the Chief Secretary told the students to play outdoor games, which were being promoted by the present government that hold tournaments and events regularly, he said.

Online games provide no scope for children to ‘run and play’ or ‘play in groups’ as the great Tamil poet Bharathiar had exhorted them to do, he said, adding that online games would retard the mental and physical growth of children.