“I was three and a half years addicted to this game … I could be someone who I couldn’t be in real life … I started to cancel appointments with my friends and I stopped playing sport”. My friend Sander from Holland told the story of how he became addicted to an online game in his teenage years and how it prevented him from building meaningful relationships and hindered his walk with God.
Young people in Sri-Lanka are becoming increasingly engrossed in the online world. A place where social interaction is often cheap and shallow and true relationship is lost. In this unique youth event the ship’s younger people gave a challange to those visiting the ship to spend time apart from Facebook, MSN and SMS and build real friendships and spend time in the Word.
As an ex-gamer myself, I found the event had a powerful challenge whist not being overbearing. Social media technologies were never condemned and neither were online games, but both were put into perspective of a healthy Christian lifestyle.