NCSS to fund extra businesses tackling gaming, porn and playing habit

Singapore – The National Council of Social Service (NCSS) is funding extra businesses to assist individuals with behavioural addictions, amid rising numbers of problematic pornography consumption, and extreme gaming and playing instances.

It is spending $5.6 million over three years to fund the Addiction Support Programme for Inclusion, Recovery and Empowerment (ASPIRE).

In 2024, the social service businesses (SSAs) that report back to NCSS noticed greater than 780 new instances of behavioural addictions – a couple of 50 per cent enhance from the over 520 new instances in 2020.

Identifying behavioural habit assist as an rising unmet want, NCSS has elevated its funding to broaden the variety of SSAs from which individuals can search assist and get the proper assist earlier.

It has been funding assist companies at We Care Community Services for substance and behavioural addictions.

Now, ASPIRE will fund one other 9 SSAs to assist these combating behavioural addictions.

The 10 SSAs beneath ASPIRE embody Care Corner Counselling Centre in Toa Payoh Lorong 4, Counselling and Care Centre in Hong Lim Complex, PPIS Family Service Centre (West) in Bukit Batok, Sage Counselling Centre in Jurong Point Shopping Centre and the Thye Hua Kwan Moral Charities in Petir Road.

Besides funding extra SSAs, the NCSS has labored with We Care to coach the SSAs in habit counselling, in order that no less than 4 counsellors at every company in ASPIRE can present early intervention.

Early intervention contains assessing if the particular person has a behavioural habit and directing them to the proper assist. It additionally includes counselling to assist the addict recognise the triggers and sensible methods to manage, amongst different measures.

In a press launch issued on Aug 20, NCSS chief govt Lim Shung Yar stated: “Behavioural addictions often go unseen until they affect relationships, education, work or well-being.

“NCSS is committed to strengthening the sector’s response by bringing expertise closer to communities and better equipping SSAs to help people seek support earlier.”

We Care, which has 20 years of expertise in managing addictions, will deal with the extra complicated instances.

NCSS will even arrange a Community of Practice for the SSAs to collect and share instances and experiences, be taught from each other, and enhance how they assist help-seekers.

Those hooked on gaming and pornography could be as younger as 10, though lots of them are of their teenagers and 20s, and most of them are male, in keeping with the social staff interviewed by The Straits Times.

The social staff additionally stated the habit numbers have risen given the straightforward accessibility to pornography, gaming and playing on-line; the anonymity these on-line platforms supply them; and the rising openness to searching for assist.

We Care govt director Tham Yuen Han stated the organisation is seeing extra individuals search assist for problematic pornography use and playing habit lately.

For instance, We Care noticed near 200 instances of porn habit in 2025 – an 80 per cent enhance from 2020.

Tham stated: “Problematic use of pornography is when it increases in frequency and the type of content accessed, such as more raunchy content, until it affects their (the addicts’) life, work, studies and relationships.

“(For example), they need to seek out porn even at work, and they go to the toilet multiple times during the work day to watch porn. And this also affects their relationship with their partners or spouses, who feel betrayed by the compulsive use of pornography.”

Some of those males have even received into bother with the legislation for voyeurism and upskirt video offences, whereas others have had a number of informal companions to fulfill their sexual wants, she added.

Tham stated that almost all of these hooked on pornography are males aged between 18 and 35, and fewer than 10 per cent are ladies.

Those hooked on on-line playing, akin to taking part in soccer and on line casino video games, additionally are typically males, aged between 18 and 45, she added.

In 2025, We Care noticed nearly 90 individuals for playing habit, greater than double the quantity in 2020.

It offers particular person remedy to deal with the underlying points that led to the habit, which might embody nervousness, childhood trauma and loneliness, and teaches these individuals methods to handle their habit.

The remedy might additionally contain counselling their important different or different members of the family, and group remedy periods, the place the addicts be taught from and assist each other.

Touch Community Services, one of many 10 SSAs in ASPIRE, says additionally it is seeing extra individuals search assist for gaming, social media use and pornography habit.

Andrea Chan, group head of Touch Counselling and Psychological Services, stated Touch can also be seeing a rising variety of what it calls unconventional playing instances, such because the compulsive spending on blind packing containers and collectible buying and selling playing cards, akin to Pokemon playing cards. A blind field is a sealed package deal containing a shock collectible merchandise.

Chan defined how unhealthy the habit can get: “Some individuals may stop attending work or school, withdraw from social interactions, and become increasingly isolated from family and friends.

“The impact often extends beyond the individual, with families facing considerable emotional strain and exhaustion as they seek to support their loved one.”

While Touch didn’t present the variety of instances, she stated that males comprise nearly all of these searching for assist for gaming and pornography habit. Separately, the next proportion of females search assist for social media habit.

Those searching for assist for gaming and social media habit are aged from 10 to 25, and so they come from all socio-economic backgrounds, Chan added.

She stated that getting assist earlier is important as habit rewires the mind, and early intervention can disrupt these adjustments earlier than they turn into hardwired.

Touch has seen the case of a 12-year-old boy who spent $10,000 in a month shopping for gadgets within the video games he performed, and this severely strained his mother and father’ funds.

The scenario received so unhealthy that he ran away from dwelling at one level.

Through counselling and different types of assist for the boy and his household, he progressively learnt more healthy habits and higher management over his gaming behaviour, Chan stated.