Are video games bad for your health? Virtual worlds cause us to ignore symptoms of illness and make us care less for others.

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Spending too long in a virtual world could bad for your real life health, warns a new study.
Researchers found computer games and simulations may be duping players into ignoring their own vital health signs.
A series of experiments by researchers from Melbourne University showed playing immersive games can actually dampen someone’s response to pain and lead to them potentially caring less about others.

Research carried out by Melbourne University found that video games have become so advanced they are leading people to be 'detached from their bodies.' It adds the lines between human and machine are becoming blurred, which in turn leads to people becoming less aware of their own body, potentially missing health issues

Experts claim it is because virtual characters in role-playing video games and online services have become so advanced they are leading people to be detached from their bodies and have less empathy.
The artificial nature of virtual avatars, with their 'mechanistic inertness, rigidity and a lack of emotion and warmth', means extended periods of exposure to them numbs game players.

 

Experts say as people take on the role of virtual characters during immersive video games and begin identifying increasingly with the non-human characters on the screen, it leads them to forget about their own important body signals in real-life.

Experts say as people identifying increasingly with non-human characters onscreen, such as Trevor from GTA V pictured, it leads them to forget about their own body signals in real-life

This is down to the 'human-machinery' boundary being blurred, either by people putting themselves in virtual environments with avatars or adding human-like features to inanimate physical objects like toys and gadgets, claimed the study’s lead researchers.
Psychologist Dr Ulrich Weger warned of the profound effect the virtual world could be having on human nature.
He said: 'We see this blurring as a reality of our time, but also as a confused and misleading development that has begun to shape society.
'We believe this should be balanced by other developments, for example, by working on our awareness of what it really means to be human.
'We should also look into how we can best make use of the beneficial applications of robotic or artificial intelligence advances, so as to be able to use our freed up resources and individual potentials wisely rather than becoming enslaved by those advances.'
Along with Dr Stephen Loughnan from Melbourne University in Australia, Dr Weger used a simple pain-threshold experiment to see if playing the games had a measurable effect on someone’s ability to recognise their own vital signs.
Volunteer gamers were asked about their playing habits and took part in a pain tolerance test that involved retrieving paperclips from a bucket of iced water.
In a second experiment they played either an immersive or a non-immersive computer game before repeating the paperclip test.
Their results, published in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, showed the immersive gamers could remove 'significantly' more paperclips from the bucket, while they were also indifferent to other people’s unhappiness.
The researchers said this suggested the immersive gamers were acting from the perspective of an automaton-like avatar and were desentised to both their own feeling and others’.

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