Is Video Game Addiction for Real?
I saw this article on video game addiction today and thought that I would elicit your thoughts about whether video game addiction is real. I don't know what to think. I actually do think that it is real and can be a real problem. However, video game addiction is no different than any other activity that someone becomes obsessed with. Here is an excerpt from the article.
The boy stares at the glowing screen as he concentrates. Nothing else seems to matter, and he isn’t aware of what’s going on around him.
He’s not working on an important paper for school or reading an interesting story on the Internet. No, this boy is lost in a video game, and as he gets more involved with the game, he starts to shun the company of friends and family. He spends more and more time playing the game and less and less time out in the real world.
Sound like this boy might be addicted to video games? The American Medical Association isn’t so sure, but it is becoming apparent that video games can be a problem for children and adults.
The article also states that,
90 percent of young Americans play video games, and it estimated up to 15 percent of them might be addicted.
I bet that roughly 15 percent of any group of people that enjoy an activity could be considered addicted to that activity. So why is the media so concerned about video game addiction? I believe that the reason is that the media generally see video games as negative. What do you think? Is video game addiction real? Is it a real problem?
9 Responses to “Is Video Game Addiction for Real?”
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Fred Says:
August 29th, 2007 at 5:47 amLol. I think that all mothers hate video games. When I was a kid, my father hated my Atari 2600 because it meant he couldn’t watch TV.
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Slevi Says:
September 2nd, 2007 at 5:42 pmA video game addiction in 15% is way too high if you ask me, I bet that’s according to the same standards of what defines an alcoholic. If you consume 10 alcoholic beverages a week, you’re an alcoholic. That comes down to over 90% of all college and university students in my country being alcoholics and globally I don’t think there’s much of a difference.
Are they really though? Not really, the figures just can’t be used to determine an addiction or not.
If I’m not mistaking for having a game addiction a figure of over an average of 3 hours a day to be played made someone count as an addict, which of course for most games is absolutely nothing whilst of an addiction there isn’t really any sign yet. If needed a lot of them can simply go without gaming as well.
When you actually begin looking at which amount can’t go without gaming anymore and basically gets similar reactions as people trying to stop smoking, drinking or eating then you can speak of an addiction. The figure though would probably lie more around that of 1% or so then rather than 15%.
Why a game addiction is supposed to be bad though is usually without a good foundation, they tend to come with stuff like:
It is bad for school – in reality though even if they didn’t play games they’d probably do something else anyways, so it’s not like school suffers from games that much but more the student mentality itself.
On a social level it’s killing – do you know anybody with more friends in real life than you’d have in your im list thanks to online gaming? In my “heights” I had about 600 contacts of which I managed to speak with about 200 regularly, people from all over the globe. I learned a lot from them about different cultures, have met quite a couple in real life and it has left me with quite some good friends for real as well and even more than that. It’s just an expansion to your social level.
It’s bad for your health – Well, ok, you move less but it doesn’t directly mean it’s bad for your health by gaining too much weight or anything. Many gamers are thin as well, just like outside there’s differences. And in my own case I actually started gaining more weight as I stopped gaming since I got more time to walk to the refrigerator again
.The main reason why the media probably is so concerned about it is since they don’t understand it, pretty much the entire media is built up of a generation which completely missed the concept of gaming. It’s probably as weird to them as bang buses, LSD and all other hippie stuff would be to us as an example.
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Online Lotto Says:
December 2nd, 2007 at 3:55 pmPeople who have addictive personalities can become hooked on anything; a girl I used to know went to NA (Narcotics Anonymous) because she said she was addicted to sugar. No reason to single video games out, focus on the addict.
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Michael Says:
February 9th, 2008 at 7:18 pmThe fact of the matter is video games have attention because ignorant people tend to fear what they don’t understand. While there are those like the Korean man who died from playing. They give us a bad name. In truth video games can be used to simulate problem solving techniques in ways most feabile minds can’t imagine. If anything TV should get more negative flak seeing as how it is simply an outlet to dull the mind with very little true quality material in terms of education.
Consider this, as virtual worlds such as MMO’s become more developed science will be able to simulate experiments to further technology studies on human surgery and many other important topics. Military simulators are simply Artificilly Intelligent games.
Once society grows up and stops focussing on meaningless things like who won the last superbowl they will come to realize that we need to focus on education. Video games actually help develop this. Gaming technologies created by game developers are constantly changing the world in which we live for the better. We need to promote this change not be fearful of what a few brainless people are doing to abuse it. There will always be those general public who do this to upset the norm. The ends however justify the means.
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Zath Says:
February 10th, 2008 at 9:06 amWhen I was a student it was the time in which I was playing Asheron’s Call and I spent far too much time playing that game – the leveling in that game was generally pure monster-kill-grind.
Looking back on it I can’t believe I kept doing it for over 2.5 years!
I now play WoW and it seems much more balanced with quest xp and doesn’t seem to take up as much of my time – I maybe play for 1 hour a day at most.
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eating disorder treatment Says:
April 9th, 2008 at 5:09 pmAre you kidding me? It’s not only real, it’s lethal. Last time Japan had a national Starcraft contest one of the players died because he sat two days in his seat with very short brakes. He won the contest and got up on his feet. His heart couldn’t take the stress and stopped beating.
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Atari 2600 Games For Sale Says:
May 28th, 2008 at 10:57 pmLack of motivation, personality issues, the list of things that can contribute to addiction is endless. Addiction is addiction, it has to do with the personality. Even when it is a highly physical addiction like drugs or smoking it is a combination of factors that come into play. Look at it this way, someone who manages to overcome a drug addiction does so, most of the time, by taking on a new one. Whether it is of a social circle, a new habbit or a taste in vintage atari video games…it is all the same. At the end of the day however, playing video games wont necessarily kill you 30 years earlier. Thanks for getting me thinking
August 29th, 2007 at 4:58 am
I agree with You Fred… I think it’s like any other hobby/activity.
My guess is media looks upon it as a problem because You don’t get any real exercise… Well this is mostly what I hear at home when my son is playing and his mother keeps telling him to go play outside instead.