Game Over
A baby starves to death while its parents play online.
South Korea is a warning of what lies ahead. It's a digitally networked country in which 71 percent of people use the Internet, many of them at 24-hour broadband cafes. At least two Korean men have died of exhaustion after round-the-clock video-game marathons. Another man, nagged by his real-world mother for disappearing into video games, allegedly resolved the dilemma by killing her. The dead baby is just another casualty of this war between the worlds—a war increasingly dominated by the world in which you're reading this.
So get the hell out of here. Go kiss your spouse, hug your kids, or walk down the hall and say hello to your colleagues. There's a beautiful world out there. Live in it.
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Will Saletan covers science, technology, and politics for Slate and says a lot of things that get him in trouble.