A 17-year-old boy died after reportedly playing an online computer game for 22 days straight. The teenager had broken his leg and was bored at home, using video games to pass the time.
The teen, known as Rustam, only stopped playing “Defence of the Ancients” when he had to sleep and eat, and must have spent more than 2,000 hours playing the game!
Rustam lived in the town of Uchaly, in Russia’s Southern Republic of Bashkortostan. As he played video games for roughly six to seven hours every day, his parents told investigators that they usually heard him pounding at the keyboard and reacting to the screen. But after a while, his parents no longer heard their son playing video games in his room. They rushed him to the hospital, but he was DOA (Dead On Arrival).
Doctors say that Rustam may have died from second class syndrome thrombosis. This occurs when people stay still for a long period of time without moving around to keep blood flowing.
Russian representative for children Pavel Astakhov, explained the importance of making sure children do not develop addictions to video games as they can be extremely dangerous, while advising parents to pay more than the usual attention to their kids. She said:
It is important to follow what your kids are doing. In the case of the 17-year-old, it is suspected he spent what was the equivalent of 83 whole days online out of the past year-and-a-half. A dependence on computer games is one of biggest dangers for the kids nowadays.
