When online gaming turns deadly

Posted By Deniz Ozdemir Tuesday, September 18, 2007 - 11:53 AM Share

Cancan Chu/Getty Images News

Think Internet games are just an innocuous, childish pastime? Think again. For one serious online gamer in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, it became a matter of life and death. The 30-year-old man dropped dead from exhaustion in a cyber cafe on Monday after an intense three-day gaming marathon. Unfortunately, he isn't the country's first ill fated victim of online gaming. Earlier this year, a week of non-stop action claimed the life of an "obese young man" who couldn't seem pull himself away from the computer screen to find time to sleep.

China is expected to overtake the United States in Internet users within the next few years, and many of those users will be of the hardcore variety. According to one report, as many as 14 percent of China's estimated 20 million Internet users under the age of 18 could be classified as computer addicts. But we shouldn't lose hope in this young generation quite yet. There's always a trip to Internet-addiction boot camp.

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