i found a very scary news on the net.... Mon Jul 16, 8:09 AM ET RENO, Nev. - A couple who authorities say were so obsessed with the Internet and video games that they left their babies starving and suffering other health problems have pleaded guilty to child neglect. The children of Michael and Iana Straw, a boy age 22 months and a girl age 11 months, were severely malnourished and near death last month when doctors saw them after social workers took them to a hospital, authorities said. Both children are doing well and gaining weight in foster care, prosecutor Kelli Ann Viloria told the Reno Gazette-Journal. Michael Straw, 25, and Iana Straw, 23, pleaded guilty Friday to two counts each of child neglect. Each faces a maximum 12-year prison sentence. Viloria said the Reno couple were too distracted by online video games, mainly the fantasy role-playing "Dungeons & Dragons" series, to give their children proper care. "They had food; they just chose not to give it to their kids because they were too busy playing video games," Viloria told the Reno Gazette-Journal. Police said hospital staff had to shave the head of the girl because her hair was matted with cat urine. The 10-pound girl also had a mouth infection, dry skin and severe dehydration. Her brother had to be treated for starvation and a genital infection. His lack of muscle development caused him difficulty in walking, investigators said. The Straws have been given public defenders. Jeremy Bosler, head of the county public defender's office, declined to comment to The Associated Press on Saturday. Michael Straw is an unemployed cashier, and his wife worked for a temporary staffing agency doing warehouse work, according to court records. He received a $50,000 inheritance that he spent on computer equipment and a large plasma television, authorities said. While child abuse because of drug addiction is common, abuse rooted in video game addiction is rare, Viloria said. Last month, experts at an American Medical Association meeting backed away from a proposal to designate video game addiction as a mental disorder, saying it had to be studied further. Some said the issue is like alcoholism, while others said there was no concrete evidence it's a psychological disease. Patrick Killen, spokesman for Nevada Child Abuse Prevention, said video game addiction's correlation to child abuse is "a new spin on an old problem." "As we become more technologically advanced, there's more distractions," Killen said. "It's easy for someone to get addicted to something and neglect their children. Whether it's video games or meth, it's a serious issue, and (we) need to become more aware of it."
Re: Bewear of Games Beware actually. I've seen stories like this before. The other most recent one being about a couple who got divorced because they were both addicted to video games and went into massive debt. It was on cbsnews.com and in the comments the two people the article was about were commenting and fighting. It was rather funny.
Re: Bewear of Games But still people loose their minds and life to games...GAMES! what the hell? People dont know how to enjoy life or something that they waist it on games like that?
W.O.W. has been known to have a very big addiction on people its hard for me to get my brother to stop playing so we can go out side hes stabbed be before with a fork cause i tired to get him off, its scary thts why i dont want to play w.o.w. anymore.
WoW is the Ultimate birth control. "Wanna climb into bed with me honey?" "NOT NOW! MY NIGHT ELF IS MINING!"
I actually read of some people who died from playing videogames for like three days straight in Korea. Guess what game it was? Anyways, that's really sad. How much of a loser do you have to be to neglect your kids for videogames?
well, if only people were more responsible. its not really the games' fault. it's the people who play them. they play games so much that they are forgetting the better things in life.
i hear china has the worse WoW death counts. it's so common that individual incidents arent even reported on the newspapers
Here's an example http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4137782.stm haha here's the clip to whoever has not see it ^_^: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6303919808619388457
It irritates me that the few deaths resulting from mixing stupidity with games are more openly publicized than the countless deaths involved with mixing stupidity and... just about everything else What about the 11 or so vending machine oriented deaths per year? The ones where people go out and purposefully harass nests of killer bees? It's not the game's fault they're morons.
my old roommate was/is addicted to DotA we'd play with our friends in our suite from 10pm-4am, at which point I'd go to sleep I'd wake up and he would still be in the common room, playing
Well thats odd China has a program that forces anyony who plays an online game more than 3 hours a day to stop by basicly suddenly making your character very weak and slow upgrading (you could stab something for 1 million years and nothing would happen) untill the next day.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4137782.stm You may wish to take a look at this. Aparrently this guy played starcraft non stop for 50 hours. And died of heart failure. edit:never mind someone already posted this link
i heard one of the stories that 2 brothers were playing games and the other one stabbed the younger(?) one with a knife for not giving up his turn
