Psychiatrist connects handheld consoles to loneliness
Japanese psychiatrist Rika Kayama has drawn some connections between her patients’ sense of isolation and personal devices such as the PSP and DS. Find out what she has to say in the full article.
Japanese psychiatrist Rika Kayama has drawn some connections between her patients’ sense of isolation and personal devices such as the PSP and DS. Here are some excerpts from Kayam’s essay recently published in the Japanese newspaper Mainichi Shinbun:
TodayÂ’s youth immerse themselves in worlds of their own right before our eyes, where they can live secluded from the rest of us. Feeding into these one person worlds, personal devices such as mobile phones and handheld game systems like the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS come on to the market one after another.
The ‘make your own world anywhere’ idea has gone too far, to the point that even on the train one sees people shamelessly putting on makeup or eating cups of instant noodles as though the train carriage was their own room. …
I feel that an increasing number of people are coming to my office saying, ‘Even when I’m in a crowd I’m lonely.’ Even when they are at a popular singer’s concert or when reading a best-selling novel, these patients can’t feel any solidarity for those next to them or those reading the same book.
What do you guys think? Do handheld games lead to a sense of isolation even though online gaming has already penetrated the handheld market? Sound off in the comments section. To read the piece in full, click on the Via link.
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Via Mainichi Shinbun
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