After the recent Ghaziabad triple teen suicide, allegedly linked to a ‘Korean love game’, we ask: What are young girls trying to escape in the murky world of online games?
For many girls, gaming has become the third space. It is the social world that playgrounds and parks once provided. Representational pic/istock
In the days since three sisters — aged 12, 14 and 16 — died by suicide after jumping from the ninth floor of their Ghaziabad housing complex, public grief has curdled quickly into judgement. Headlines zeroed in on a phrase that felt both foreign and convenient: “Korean love game.” As details emerged, the narrative hardened into a familiar one, where teenage girls were cast as reckless, impressionable, or dangerously obsessed.
Researchers studying interactive “love simulation” games have long warned against this simplification. A 2021 academic study on the popular game Mystic Messenger found that such platforms are designed to convert players’ time, attention and emotional labour into currency, creating bonds that feel intimate, demanding and difficult to walk away from.
The uncomfortable question, then, isn’t why the girls played, but why the digital world became the place where their emotional needs were most consistently met?Cyber psychologist and user behaviour analyst Nirali Bhatia cautions against viewing these platforms as sinister from the outset. “No game starts as something scary otherwise it would immediately drive children away,” she says. Instead, they begin by offering attention. For a young girl who may already feel lonely or unseen, Bhatia explains, “this emotional hook becomes magnetic.” The danger emerges later.
“By the time the game starts asking for more, the child has already invested trust and built a bond,” she says. The moment a girl feels anxious about quitting, or scared of disappointing someone online, “that’s when it stops being entertainment.” Choice simmers into air. Fear takes its place. “At that point,” Bhatia adds, “we are looking at dependency and anxiety and everything except gaming.”
On Wednesday, February 4, three sisters aged 12, 14, and 16 died by suicide after jumping from the ninth floor of their Ghaziabad apartment allegedly due to their addiction with a “Korean Love Game”. FILE PIC
Stuti Sharma, psychologist and founder of The Bleu Helpers, says the question shouldn’t be why girls play these games, but what they’re seeking when they do. In her clinical work, she’s seen young girls gravitate towards online gaming spaces to “build a sense of self-esteem” — to feel competent, capable, and validated in ways they may not feel at home or in school. “If they’re doing well in a game,” she explains, “it feels like proof that they can compete, even with adults.” Crucially, Sharma stresses that excessive gaming is rarely the problem itself. It’s a symptom of loneliness and underdeveloped coping skills. At that age, she says, impulse often overrides consequence. The action comes first; the weight of it arrives too late.
Nirali Bhatia and Madhura Pathare
Game designer Madhura Pathare, 29, is careful to resist easy villainy. She grew up playing games from Barbie dress-up worlds to age-old racing games like Midtown Madness, and still plays today. “For many girls, gaming has become the third space. It is the social world that playgrounds, parks and unsupervised hangouts once provided,” she says. Unlike physical spaces, Pathare points out, digital ones are shaped by monetisation, hypersexualised design, and engagement loops that reward spending time and money. Women often hide their identities online to avoid harassment, while young girls absorb ideas about beauty, popularity, and worth at accelerated speed. “Games nowadays are only optimised for attention with no reflection. Especially the ones targeting children,” Pathare says. “They teach urgency and immediate rewards.”
Stuti Sharma, psychologist and founder of The Bleu Helpers
When harm begins to take root, it rarely announces itself through screen time alone. Sharma and Bhatia both stress that the earliest warning signs are emotional, not digital. Sleep patterns shift. Irritability creeps in. A previously open child becomes secretive, withdrawn, or unusually anxious. “These changes happen gradually, which is why they’re easy to miss,” Bhatia notes.
Ashish Javeri, a Mumbai-based parent to a 12-year-old daughter Mishka, says attentiveness matters more than surveillance. “Kids can’t hide distress the way adults can,” he says. Restlessness, sudden anger, or social withdrawal are cues meant not for punishment, but for conversation, intervention, and, when needed, help. His parenting in the digital age isn’t about watching every move. “I’ve restricted a few games like Roblox and Battlefields for Mishka. It’s basically about discipline from an early age.” His daughter has screen limits, age filters, and app restrictions, but those are scaffolding, not the core. “The moment a child is not comfortable talking to you,” he says, “you’ve already lost the game.” Javeri and his wife prioritise conversation over control, making sure their daughter feels trusted enough to ask questions and admit mistakes. “You can restrict apps,” he says, “but if your child can’t come to you when something feels wrong, no filter will save you.”
Ashish Javeri has maintained an open relationship with his 12-year-old daughter Mishka and is always aware of her online activity
From the inside the gaming ecosystem, Gagan Gupta is blunt about where the danger lies. “Though, I wouldn’t count these as games per se, but there are some predatory gamified apps out there made by people who just want to monetise these things,” he says, adding that this problem “mainly plagues mobile as a platform.” According to him, PC and console gaming operate differently because “there are quality checks in place that don’t allow these kinds of things.” He is unequivocal about intent. “The developer is very aware of what they’re creating.” If a game has addictive value, “it definitely is not coming to them as a surprise, no matter what they’re saying.”
In this vacuum, temporary bans acting as emergency brakes simply pauses the harm, not long-term fixes. What happened is not girls’ weaknesses or a parent’s failure, but the outcome of emotionally vulnerable children navigating an immense digital world alone.
Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest news!" Click here!
