Playing VideoGames 24/7 Ruins Your Sleep and Dreams

My experience after playing First Person Shooter (FPS) games like call of duty, for 3 months every day for 6 to 8 hours.

Photo by Fábio Silva on Unsplash

Video games can be exciting if you’re aching for thrill and challenging tasks to become a part of a team or a squad. But too much of playing violent video games can affect your brain and your mental health. Detoxifying can even take a few weeks from the after-effects of such games on the mind.

I played video games avidly more precisely FPS, that are indeed really loud and violent during the start of the pandemic. Games like of call of duty, where you need to pay attention to perhaps various in-game factors. Sounds of gunfire and aggressive patterns connected to a kill shot when either your squadmates fire on your or the enemy.

I sometimes played the entire day, during the early days of the pandemic and at night with my friends. In what ways longer exposure to such sounds, can do to your brain. I have enough experience to say that even while you sleep, your brain works as if it’s still in the game. So even if I was asleep my brain was still imagining the sounds of the gunshots in the game. I would feel that sensation in my mind, even though there was no sound in reality.

As the brain was on hyperdrive during playing those games, my mind was affected very dearly. Even my dreams were affected by playing the games, I would keep on running in the dream, and gunning from fire. Sometimes, it would be unbearable as the sounds broke my sleep countless times. This effect on my mental state affected me a lot. Longer exposures can do that.

I used to play RTS(Real-time strategy) games professionally back as a teenager. This state is true and happens often to people who dream of their gameworlds even in their sleep as I would even be playing and coming up with newer strategies in my dreams during my sleep.

Sometimes, it can be a good thing but overall it’s a very bad experience. It has a lot of adverse effects on your mental health. Video games when played in moderation can be really good. Not all video games are violent, examples can be Rocket league for argument’s sake.