No single government can simply prohibit access to a digital product.
For four years, Madhya Pradesh has promised to regulate online mobile gaming while children have continued to die by suicide — their final acts often tied to stolen money, virtual purchases, and the psychological machinery of games engineered to compel spending. The silence of governance is not an absence of decision but a decision in itself, and experts now warn that without education woven into the fabric of schooling and family life, addiction will deepen into something far harder to reverse. What is at stake is not merely policy, but the question of how a society chooses to protect its most vulnerable from systems designed to exploit them.
- At least three children in Madhya Pradesh have died by suicide since 2021 in circumstances directly tied to online gaming addiction and the shame of secretly spending family money on in-game purchases.
- Despite a public promise made in 2022 after an 11-year-old's death, the state government has produced no law, no regulation, and no framework — four years of institutional inaction while the crisis has spread beyond state borders.
- Psychiatrists warn that outright bans are futile in an era of VPNs and proxy access, shifting the burden of intervention toward schools and parents rather than legislation alone.
- Experts are calling for a digital wellbeing curriculum spanning Classes 1 through 12, one that teaches children how games are psychologically engineered to manipulate behavior and drive spending.
- Warning signs — withdrawal from family, falling grades, secretive phone use, unexplained bank deductions — are often visible but go unrecognized, leaving children to spiral without intervention until a crisis point is reached.
Four years ago, Madhya Pradesh promised to regulate online mobile gaming after an 11-year-old boy in Bhopal took his own life while playing Free Fire. That promise has never been kept. No law has been passed. No framework has been built. And children have kept dying.
On February 3 of this year, 14-year-old Ansh Sahu died by suicide in Bhopal, his family saying he had grown deeply addicted to Free Fire and had secretly withdrawn 28,000 rupees from his grandfather's bank account to fund in-game purchases. In August 2025, a 13-year-old in Indore ended his life after losing 2,800 rupees in an online battle game. In 2021, a sixth-grader in Chhatapur left behind a note apologizing to his mother for the money he had taken from her account before he died. The pattern is unmistakable.
The crisis is not confined to Madhya Pradesh. In Ghaziabad, three sisters recently died by suicide in circumstances experts link to the same underlying dynamic — addiction, secret spending, and the psychological collapse that follows when access is severed or discovery becomes inevitable.
Dr. Satyakant Trivedi, a consultant psychiatrist, argues that bans cannot solve what education must address. Games are accessible through proxies and VPNs, making prohibition largely symbolic. What is needed, he says, is a digital wellbeing curriculum from Class 1 through Class 12 — one that teaches children how these games are designed to exploit psychological vulnerabilities, manufacture urgency, and make spending feel both rewarding and necessary.
Parents are not powerless, but they must know what to look for: sudden withdrawal from family, declining grades, secretive phone habits, late-night sessions, and unexplained deductions from bank accounts. The games themselves apply sustained psychological pressure — artificial scarcity, status tied to spending, shame when a child cannot keep up. When a phone is taken away, the withdrawal can be severe.
The state government's four years of inaction is not a passive failure. It is a choice, made repeatedly, while experts have called for both legislation and a deeper cultural shift in how schools and families approach digital life. Without that shift, the deaths will continue.
Four years have passed since Madhya Pradesh announced it would regulate online mobile gaming. The law has not materialized. In that time, children have continued to die.
In January 2022, the state's Home Minister at the time, Narottam Mishra, promised legislation after an 11-year-old boy in Bhopal took his own life while playing Free Fire, a battle royale game played on mobile phones. The announcement seemed to signal urgency. It signaled nothing of the sort. Years later, the government has produced no law, no regulation, no framework. The crisis, meanwhile, has only deepened.
On February 3 of this year, a 14-year-old named Ansh Sahu died by suicide in the Piplani area of Bhopal. His family said he was deeply addicted to Free Fire. He had stolen 28,000 rupees from his grandfather's bank account to purchase upgrades and items within the game—virtual weapons, skins, battle passes, the digital scaffolding that keeps players engaged and spending. In August 2025, a 13-year-old student in Indore ended his life after losing 2,800 rupees in an online battle game. Before that, in July 2021, a sixth-grader in Chhatapur died by suicide after losing 40,000 rupees while playing Free Fire. He left a note apologizing to his mother for the money he had taken from her account. The pattern is unmistakable. The response has been absent.
These deaths are not isolated to Madhya Pradesh. In Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, three sisters recently died by suicide in a case that experts say reflects the same underlying crisis: children becoming addicted to online games, stealing money from their parents to fund in-game purchases, and then facing catastrophic psychological consequences when discovered or when their access is cut off. Psychiatrists and child development specialists now warn that without intervention, gaming addiction could reach epidemic proportions across India.
Dr. Satyakant Trivedi, a consultant psychiatrist, explains that traditional bans will not work. Games can be accessed through proxies and virtual private networks. The internet, he notes, has made the world borderless—no single government can simply prohibit access to a digital product. Instead, he argues, the solution lies in education. Digital wellbeing should become part of the school curriculum from Class 1 through Class 12. Children need to understand, from an early age, how these games are designed to manipulate behavior, how they exploit psychological vulnerabilities, how the mechanics of spending are engineered to feel rewarding and necessary.
The warning signs are often visible to parents, though frequently missed or misinterpreted. A child who suddenly withdraws from family, who stops caring about sports or hobbies, whose grades decline sharply—these are red flags. So too are secretive phone habits, late-night gaming sessions, and unexplained deductions from bank accounts. The games themselves use psychological pressure to keep players engaged: they push children to complete dangerous tasks, they create artificial scarcity, they reward spending with status and power. When a child cannot afford to buy the next upgrade, shame and anxiety follow. When a phone is confiscated as punishment, withdrawal symptoms emerge—irritability, depression, desperation.
The state government's silence on this issue is not neutral. It is a choice. Four years is long enough to draft legislation, to consult experts, to pilot programs. Instead, Madhya Pradesh has allowed the crisis to deepen while experts call for action—not just laws, but a fundamental shift in how schools and parents approach digital literacy and child wellbeing. Without that shift, more children will die.
Citas Notables
From Classes 1 to 12, there should be a chapter on digital wellbeing.— Dr. Satyakant Trivedi, consultant psychiatrist
The internet has made the world one, and no individual government can ban anything. Bans don't work because games can be accessed through proxies.— Dr. Satyakant Trivedi, consultant psychiatrist
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
Why hasn't the government acted in four years? Is it bureaucratic inertia, or something else?
Likely both. But there's also the question of what "acting" even means here. A ban won't work—the games are hosted overseas, accessible through proxies. So the government would need to do something harder: change how schools teach, how parents supervise, how children understand their own relationship to these apps. That's not a law you pass in a session. That's a cultural shift.
The families in these cases—they knew their children were playing. Why didn't they intervene earlier?
Many did try. But these games are designed by teams of engineers and psychologists specifically to be irresistible. A parent confiscating a phone creates a crisis—the child experiences genuine withdrawal. And the spending happens in small increments, often through accounts the child has access to. By the time a parent notices 28,000 rupees missing, the addiction is already deep.
Is this unique to India, or is this happening everywhere?
Everywhere. But in India, the scale is different. Hundreds of millions of children have access to smartphones now. The games are free to download. The psychological hooks are the same globally, but the economic context is different—a child stealing 40,000 rupees from a parent in India carries a different weight than in a wealthier country.
What would digital wellbeing in the curriculum actually look like?
Teaching children how these apps work. Not "don't play games," but "understand that someone was paid to make this addictive. Understand what a loot box is, why it feels rewarding, why you want to spend money on it." Media literacy, but for the digital age. It's not radical. It's just honesty.
And if schools don't do it?
Then we'll keep seeing these deaths. Not because the games are inherently evil, but because children are being left alone with tools designed to exploit them, without any framework for understanding what's happening.