A recent study, conducted in the United States of America, revealed that children, on average, spend about four and a half hours a day in front of a TV or mobile phone screen. The habit of devoting most of our time to our amusements, and in particular to entertainment, is certainly the result of an extremely peculiar historical conjuncture, of a very complex period in which people, also for reasons of force majeure, have been forced to spend most of their time at home, enclosed forcibly within their own four walls without the possibility of going out. The health emergency, in a way, seems to have legitimised the fact that young people (and not only) spend many hours of the day glued to their screens, with little or no interest in their personal hygiene, their appetite and their social life, which especially in the last two years has been severely curtailed. For many people, spending hours and hours in front of bright screens is an easy and convenient way to get away from a reality that is too unpleasant to be accepted serenely, to transcend it completely, immersing themselves in a parallel dimension where only fun, intense emotions and strong adrenalin rushes related to the various genres of entertainment, especially that offered by console or mobile video games, find their place.
The risks to be aware of
When one overdoes it, however, there is a real risk of completely alienating oneself from reality and even losing the ability to distinguish real from fictitious situations. When spending several consecutive hours in front of a screen, in fact, the body seems to completely forget its own needs, such as dietary requirements, the need to wash or even simply the need for physical activity, perhaps going out in the street and indulging in a healthy walk in the woods. Many video games, moreover, also offer the possibility of real-time dialogue with other players from all over the world, thus generating in the player the conviction that this kind of interpersonal relationship, i.e. the one governed by the rules of an online chat, with a screen dividing people, is the only possible, or desirable, one in a present in which young people seem to have completely forgotten the real meaning of friendship, community life, and authentic relationships between people, i.e. those established when two human beings look each other in the eye.
Creative breaks
To avoid all the unpleasant consequences of excessive use of our electronic devices, especially video games, all we need to do is find some fun diversions to take between games, pausing our games for a moment to devote ourselves temporarily to something else. With two or three breaks a day, gamers can also begin to appreciate more clearly and consciously the value of the gaming experience, which with continuous, prolonged and uninterrupted use inevitably risks being lost. One of the best ways to fill these breaks is with another kind of game, a very old-fashioned kind of entertainment that does not require bright screens or internet connections: we are of course talking about board games, the ones we regularly indulge in during the holiday season, but which unquestionably deserve more consideration during the other times of the year as well. A game such as Risk, for example, can help the most hardened players to rest their eyes and devote themselves for some time (the games can last for many hours at a time) to a game that stimulates the intellectual and strategic capacities of everyone, pushing them to give their best and to measure themselves against a game that is extremely popular in every corner of the world. When you then resume playing your favourite video game, you will feel much more lucid and aware, and in this state of mind you will be able to appreciate the dazzling emotions generated by the video game even more.
Another historic game that is extremely popular worldwide is Baccarat, invented in North America and subsequently spread to virtually every other nation. Nowadays, some of the best online gambling platforms offer the chance to experience and play Baccarat online with their bonuses, capable of providing unpredictable thrills to any player. As is the case with all other casino games on the platform, the sites offering Baccarat have been carefully selected by a team of experts at the platform’s disposal, who have assessed their reputation, punctuality in payouts and reliability. For this reason too, this game is therefore a guarantee of absolute security.
The quality of our leisure time, in the final analysis, is also linked to the activities we decide to indulge in between entertainment, between one gaming session and the next, to all those pastimes that help us appreciate our leisure moments even more.