Online games are playing with children’s future, strict control is necessary

The market of online gaming in the country and the world is flourishing at a quadruple pace day by day. One of the side effects of the post-Covid situation, especially online study and work from home, has come to the fore that youth and even young children are getting trapped in its trap. Its side effects have also started coming to the fore, while it is believed that its business will grow more rapidly in the coming years. More and more people are becoming victims of fraud in online gaming. In such a situation, it becomes a matter of serious concern. Despite lakhs of efforts, the online gaming market in the country is far from stagnant, rather it is growing at a rapid pace. In the last one year itself, five crore new people have taken entry in the field of online gaming. In 2021, the number of online game players in the country was around 450 million, which has increased to 500 million in 2022. This in itself also becomes worrying because youth and children are getting trapped in the trap of online games and gambling.

If experts are to be believed, it is being speculated that by 2025 this number will reach 500 million to 700 million. The downside of the picture is also that children are increasingly getting trapped in this game of online gaming. Knowing the side effects of online gaming and gambling, new people are getting trapped every day, while full page advertisements are being prominently published on the front page of newspapers, social media is also being used to promote it. In 2016, online gaming in the country had a business of $ 540 million, which has now crossed $ 2.60 billion in 2022, while according to experts, it is expected to reach $ 8 billion by 2027 with a four-fold growth. Has been In fact, it has expanded rapidly after the lockdown period of Corona. While children have fallen prey to it due to online classes, young people have fallen prey to the lure of advertisements during work from home.

If seen, the people of Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Bihar and West Bengal are more in its ambit. In fact, online game app operators claim that they run such games for skill development, but the reality is that most of the gaming portals are gambling. And it has been happening that once one gets trapped in the cycle of gambling or rather gambling, then it is very difficult to get out of it. In most of the games, the money that is claimed to be given to the winner is not received and either there is a technical barrier or the operators of such portals digest the money by blocking the number and in this type of gaming The trapped person feels cheated. Even youth, children etc. not only lose their savings due to this, many people also get trapped in debt trap. It is normal to get depressed and to be frustrated and stressed. This is the reason why most of the state governments are in favor of banning online gaming.

This network of online gaming can be easily gauged from the fact that according to a rough estimate, 900 gaming companies are working in the country. New games are being made and released daily. 15 billion new games will be downloaded in 2022 alone. It can be naturally estimated that how big the business of online gaming is and is expanding at a quadruple pace day and night. It is a difficult task to get rid of the people trapped in the web of online gaming. People associated with this spend more than 8 hours out of 24 hours in this gaming. This in itself is a big deal. It is surprising that even after all this, no meaningful efforts are being made to effectively stop it. However, the government has imposed 18 percent GST on these so-called skill games. But this is not a solution to any problem. However, a lot depends on the will of the governments. The same lotteries were being run by many state governments some three decades ago. Which came to a number as it came and its network was so spread that the sale of tickets used to start from early morning on the tables and chairs outside the government offices which continued till the lottery opened in the day. Crowds of people used to gather. But when it started becoming excessive, the society started getting badly affected, then the government abolished the lottery system from the whole country in one stroke and its positive results were also obtained. Similarly, the central and state governments will have to make concerted efforts to curb the online gaming system. At least the cheating done by such companies and the attempts to woo people by showing them greens have to be banned.

Now online gaming is emerging as a challenge before the governments. First of all, the government will have to form some regulator to crack down on them. Especially such regulatory laws have to be made so that children cannot get trapped in this clutches and it can be controlled. Steps should be taken to monitor the activities of these companies and to form a regulatory body for the same. The government will have to take timely steps for this. Abandoning the temptation of government revenue, concrete steps will have to be taken in the larger interest so that the new generation can be saved from this gambling game of modern gambling i.e. gaming which is going on in the name of skill development.

-Doctor. Rajendra Prasad Sharma