WHILE being promoted as a harmless entertainment, online money gaming is destroying the lives of our youth, students and middle-class families. In Pakistan, increasing cases of financial loss, addiction and psychological distress are linked to online gambling-type games. Some young people, burdened by heavy losses, have even attempted to take their own lives.<\/p>\n
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has recognised gaming disorder as a serious health issue which could surpass the harm caused by drugs. Unlike e-sports and educational or recreational games that encourage creativity and skill development, money-driven gaming feeds greed and despair. Attempts at self-control or private regulation have failed, making government intervention a necessity.<\/p>\n
The government should take immediate and strong legislative measures to ban such exploitative money-based online games while simultaneously promoting positive aspects of the gaming sector, such as e-sports, game design, and technology-driven creativity. Protecting our youth, families, and middle class must remain the government\u2019s top priority. <\/p>\n
If timely action is not taken, online money games will become a far bigger social and national problem than drugs.<\/p>\n
Muhammad Faizan Ali
Karachi<\/p>\n
Published in Dawn, September 15th, 2025<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WHILE being promoted as a harmless entertainment, online money gaming is destroying the lives of our youth, students…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150394,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[49,48,84,393,394],"class_list":{"0":"post-150393","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-mental-health","12":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}