Many teenagers are falling victim to an addiction to modern video games. The popular YouTube video “The Greatest Freak Out Ever!!!” highlights the dangers of excessive gaming.

The average U.S. teenage boy spends about 14 hours per week playing video games, and the average girl spends about eight, according to a 2007 online poll by Harris Interactive. Modern advances in technology and graphics have made gaming seem more “real” than ever, allowing gamers to escape from reality for hours upon hours. What used to be just a source of entertainment is now becoming a lifestyle, and it sickens me. Computerized games should never replace the real-life experiences that every human being needs. In short, excessive gaming is unhealthy. Let me give you an example.

I’ve never been so disgusted. At least that was my first reaction. Now, I can’t even think about it without bursting into uncontrollable laughter. I mean, I was just sitting at the dinner table with my parents, talking about school. All of the sudden, bam! A scene from the video popped into my head, and I was cracking up for a solid 20 minutes. Not an exaggeration.

The video, “The Greatest Freak Out Ever!!!” uploaded by YouTube user “wafflepwn,” features a teenage boy who hides a video camera in his younger brother’s room. Their mom had just canceled the younger brother’s World of Warcraft account. The end of the world, right?

Anyway, this kid comes storming into his room huffing and puffing, with a facial expression that would lead you to believe someone had just put ants in his oatmeal. Then he flings himself repeatedly onto his bed, crying and screeching in a way that a human being should never be able to.

There are some definite highlights in this video that I want you to watch out for. Once he is finished throwing himself onto his bed, he gets under the covers for a mere second. Then when he pulls them off, most of his clothes are magically gone. It’s actually really amazing. Houdini-esque, even. At one point, he looks up at the ceiling, flails his arms into the air and screams “I hate my life!” as if he had been deceived by the World of Warcraft gods.

Maybe the whole video is staged and they’re both geniuses, as some of the comments suggest. I have a hard time believing this theory, though. Either this video is completely legit, or that kid deserves an Oscar for his performance.

I guess the moral of this story is not to let video games take over our lives, which so many people do in this day and age. I’ve watched so many of my closest friends become addicted to the alternate reality that video games provide, wasting countless hours in front of a computer screen or pounding buttons on their Xbox controllers. Just think of all of the more productive ways that you could spend your day. I personally don’t play video games, mostly so my wailing “freak out” won’t end up with 10.5 million hits on YouTube.