While serving aboard a forward deployed naval forces ship assigned to Seventh Fleet in 2016–2017, I witnessed 15 cases of mental breakdown among my sailors. In some instances, the reasons were beyond the sailor’s control, such as changes in operational tasking. Other cases were due to poor habits, including video game addiction, developed in high school or earlier. My concern is for the safety and well-being of sailors aboard high OPTEMPO ships, particularly in situations where extreme lack of sleep affects the mission. With that in mind, video games should be limited in all barracks at Navy training commands, especially A-schools. This will break the habit of video game addiction, foster realistic underway work tempo, and result in better preparation for the rigors of life at sea.
Navy training pipelines do not fully prepare sailors for sea duty, especially for arduous sea duty. Some sailors report that A-schools have too few instructors and too many students. While Recruit Training Command–Great Lakes (RTC-GL) does an adequate job of preparing most sailors to join the underway fleet, A and C-Schools hold sailors to the shore 0700–1600 schedule, which gives them at least six to eight hours of free time each day. Poor free-time habits, such as video gaming (including on smart phones), are reestablished from high school or begun post-boot camp—usually out of boredom.
A-school should be used for more than merely training a sailor in his or her rate. A-school should maintain the conditions of arduous sea-duty life in order to produce time management skills and screen sailors who are not ready for such duty and the watchstanding it entails. For example, the Marine Corps re-creates combat conditions for their new recruits through their 54-hour Crucible event. The Crucible simulates the rigors of war: grueling nights in the field, very little sleep, meager MRE nutrition, brutal hand-to-hand combat training, the jolting and realistic sounds of battle, and the necessity of teamwork to accomplish the evolution. Just as every Marine is a rifleman, so should every sailor be a firefighter and damage controlman. Every sailor should be fully prepared to fight an exhausting fire or other damage control situation—just as we have seen on USS Fitzgerald, USS McCain, and USS Cole—before they are assigned to the fleet.[1]
It is essential that the Navy re-create the conditions of high OPTEMPO underway life through A-school and into the fleet. The Navy drops the ball in A-school, where sailors do not learn to manage their time effectively. While RTC-GL conducts battle station events, which are effective in preparation for underway life, A-school laxity can result in sailors reverting back to shore-duty or civilian habits. Poor watchstanding underway is the unintended consequence. Sailors need to be better trained in the underway lifestyle of watchstanding, maintenance, and studying for qualifications before joining the deploying fleet. Underway, these are the three primary work cycles sailors experience and they drive a typical 12-to-16-hour workday.
The greatest change from high school to boot camp to A-school and finally to the fleet is the length of the working day. At A-School, sailors are given six to eight hours of free time per day. Underway, they may receive only one to four hours. Sailors used to working six hours a day in high school are expected to work 12–16 hours a day while underway. While they were previously used to 10 hours of free time per day, underway they will now have one to three hours of free time per day. Their minds are not conditioned for such long work days, and it mental breakdowns can occur if they do not adjust well to more hours of labor. However, if sailors condition their minds to resist the addictive impulse by prioritizing mission tasks that need to be done, these kinds of mental breakdowns can be avoided
Psychological research indicates that the maximum healthy time per day to play video games is two hours.[2] In some cases aboard Navy ships, sailors attempt to maintain unrealistic and unhealthy high school habits of playing more than six hours of video games per day. This can disrupt their sleep schedules, result in poor watchstanding, and potentially lead to the tragedies we have witnessed in Seventh Fleet.
Sailors are burning the candle from both ends. They are trying to maintain their high school free time habits, playing more than six hours a day, while also adjusting to working twice as many hours per day as they did in high school. These two variables usually result in them getting one-quarter of the sleep they are used to. To maintain their video game addiction and work twice as many hours per day, some are getting only two to three hours of sleep per night.
There have been reports of sailors sleeping on the decks in their watch centers due to playing video games the night before and not getting adequate sleep. Lack of sleep can lead to mental breakdown, the inability to perform crucial work, maladjustment to Navy life, and, sometimes, to suicidal ideations. Indeed, any addiction that causes lack of sleep can lead to one or more of these consequences.
Many video games, particularly role-playing games, social network, and smart phone games rely on a “compulsion loop” or “core loop”—a cycle of activities that reward players and induces them to continue another cycle, retaining them in the game. The anticipation of such rewards creates a neurological reaction that releases dopamine into the brain, so that once the reward is obtained, the person will remember it as a positive feeling.[3]
Video game addiction is real. Dr. Karen Pierce, a psychiatrist at Chicago’s Children’s Memorial Hospital, regularly treats children affected by excessive computer and video game play, and she treats their problems as she would any addiction. She said of one of her addicted-gaming patients, “[He] hasn’t been to bed, hasn’t showered . . . he is really a mess.”[4] Additionally, addicts “play many hours each day, neglect personal hygiene, gain or lose significant weight due to playing, disrupt sleep patterns in order to play, resulting in sleep deprivation, playing at work, avoiding phone calls from friends, or lying about how much time they spend playing video games.”[5] I have observed all of these behaviors onboard my ship. As a result, the Navy may be in a serious predicament with regard to operational readiness.
In a qualitative analysis of online gaming addicts, Marta Beranuy, Xavier Cabonell, and Mark D. Griffiths, discussed the source of gaming addiction. One interviewee described it as a way of stress relief: “I played just to forget almost everything; it is like a second life. I was stressed but I found a way out to forget all my problems.” Another person described gaming as a form of relief: “It was medicine for me. I was a bit depressed and left my job because I thought I was ill.”[6] Moreover, in 2008, Deborah Taylor Tate, one of the five Federal Communications Commissioners, stated that online gaming addiction was “one of the top reasons for college drop-outs.”[7]
The issue of video game addiction may not be unique to the U.S. Navy. Some Finnish Defense Forces conscripts were not mature enough to meet the demands of military life and were required to interrupt or postpone military service for a year. The lack of needed social skills was caused by overuse of video games or the internet.[8] Forbes termed this overuse “web fixations” and stated that it was responsible for 13 such military deferrals over five years from 2000–2005.[9]
Potential Solutions
Electronics-Use Policy: New scientific research suggests that quality of sleep enhances athletes’ performance.[10] Our sailors perform a far more important function to the nation than athletes do. Underway commanding officers should institute a policy of no electronics use during sleep time (six-hour period for each sailor per day). If sailors are caught using electronic devices in their racks when they should be sleeping, commanding officers should award non-judicial punishment for this infraction as it undermines operational readiness. Sailors who are multiple offenders of the no electronic devices rule should have their devices permanently taken from them.
Sea-Duty Experience: For training purposes, sailors should experience a four-day (96-hour) arduous sea duty before coming to the fleet. Sailors should experience the most intense Fifth or Seventh Fleet 12- to 16-hour underway work day while in RTC-GL or A-school. This includes overwhelming maintenance, exhausting watchstanding, and rigorous studying for a comprehensive oral examination at the end. Sailors should receive only three to four hours of free time (half of what they are used) and a maximum of six hours of sleep per night during this event.
Damage Control Tour: After RTC-GL, sailors should spend six months serving as a damage control petty officer (with a focus on firefighting and flooding control), food service assistant, or deck seaman onboard underway Navy ships so that they can experience arduous sea duty before the Navy invests multi-million-dollar A and C-School training in them. Sailors unable to withstand 12 to 16-hour underway work days as a food service assistant or deck seamen, or comparable billet, should not receive expensive A or C-School training.
Questions for Further Research
- Statistics from Seventh Fleet (and others) on reasons for administrative separation (mental health, etc.) and investigating the possible role of video game/free time addictions in these cases.
- More research on how much free time and sleep sailors receive underway aboard Seventh Fleet (and others) ships.
- More statistics and research on contributing factors to mental health breakdowns, such as the sailor’s rate, number of underway watch sections, underway routines, number of port visits per quarter/annum, and number of days away from homeport, etc.
**I appreciate the excellent feedback given to me on this essay by an enlisted sailor, RP2 Sebastian Peralta.
Endnotes
[1] This point was made by CMDCM Patrick Otis.
[2] Mohamed K. Khan, “Emotional and Behavioral Effects, Including Addictive Potential, of Video Games,” Report of the Council of Science and Public Health, 2006, http://psychcentral.com/blog/images/csaph12a07.pdf.
[3] Bill Davidow, “Exploiting the Neuroscience of Internet Addiction,” The Atlantic, July 18, 2012, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/07/exploiting-the-neuroscience-of-internet-addiction/259820/.
[4] Lindsey Tanner, “Is video-game addiction a mental disorder?” Associated Press, June 22, 2007, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19354827/.
[5] S.M. Grüsser, R. Thalemann, M. D. Griffiths, “Excessive Computer Game Playing: Evidence for Addiction and Aggression?” Cyber Psychology & Behavior (April 2007) 10 (2): 290–292, http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cpb.2006.9956?journalCode=cpb.
[6] Marta Beranuy, Xavier Carbonnell, and Mark D. Griffiths, “A Qualitative Analysis of Online Gaming Addicts in Treatment,” International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction (2014); Geir Scott Brunborg, “Is Video Gaming, or Video Game Addiction, Associated with Depression, Academic Achievement, Heavy Episodic Drinking, or Conduct Problems?” Journal of Behavioral Addictions, (2014). http://www.akademiai.com/content/u526021p73464716/fulltext.pdf.
[7] “Statement of Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate at Practicing Law Institute on Telecom Policy and Regulation December 5, 2008,” http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-287221A1.pdf.
[8] Ashlee Vance, “Internet Addicts Sent Home from Finnish Military,” The Register, August 3, 2004.
[9] Lea Goldman “This Is Your Brain on Clicks,” Forbes, September 5, 2005.
[10] G. Romyn, E. Robey, J. A. Dimmock, S. L. Halson, and P. Peeling, Sleep, Anxiety and Electronic Device Use by Athletes in the Training and Competition Environments. European Journal of Sport Science, (2016) 16 (3), 301–308; and N. S. Simpson, E. L. Gibbs, and G. O. Matheson, “Optimizing Sleep to Maximize Performance: Implications and Recommendations for Elite Athletes,” Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, (2017) 27 (3), 266–274.
