There are a lot of words flying around today about how game addiction is suddenly being recognized for what it is. My goal is to challenge that statement. While I’m not disagreeing that video game addiction does in fact exist, I’d like to changes some conceptions that the current media would have us believe.

I’m not disagreeing that addiction is a problem. Merely that we shouldn’t apply a broad scale application to the issue.

Yes, Computer [game] addiction can often have tragic consequences, let us not label all people who play games as addicts, rather saving that special label for the few that need it, rather then suffer the problem to become commonplace.

A simple way of looking at this – The majority of us used to go home after a hard day at work and hit the couch and watch hours of TV each night. While that was socially acceptable, those of us who choose to forgo the TV and instead spend those hours playing video games are suddenly at high risk of addiction.

The world has changed since the majority of us have passed childhood. No longer do we go outside and find something to occupy our time, today, many of our children turn to video games as a source of enjoyment. Indeed many of us ourselves change to various forms of games as a recreational activity.

Suddenly the world is at risk to video games. I’d like to challenge the statement of addiction and have people think about what we’re saying.

So often the word addiction makes people instinctively think of drug users. That gritty grungy world that most of us only have the slightest definition of from the media formats that we associate with.

The direct definition of an addiction is
1) A state of physiological or psychological dependence on a drug liable to have a damaging effect,
2) Great interest in something to which a lot of time is devoted

A better definition of addiction comes from real love

“Addiction is the compulsive use of any substance, person, feeling, or behavior with a relative disregard of the potentially negative social, psychological, and physical consequences”

I’d like to put my definition of addiction forward.

*Any habit that becomes the driving need of one’s behavior.*

Driving Forces

Instead of saying that any person spending large amounts of time at any one activity is an addict, we should rather look for symptoms of addiction before crying foul.

Just saying that a person is addicted over sheer quantity of item doesn’t quite qualify by today’s standards.

(if that were the case, I’d be addicted to work, writing, surfing the net, and hey, various life factors in general)

We should look for key signals of a forming addiction rather then applying a blanket statement.

I’ll be the first to admit. When we talk about video game addiction it’s far easier to see the effects in adults, then it is in children – The example below is taken out of context of a full article.

• Most of non-school hours are spent on the computer or playing video games.
• Falling asleep in school.
• Not keeping up with assignments.
• Worsening grades.

It wasn’t that long ago that this could be attributed to TV, or even other things – Just because that these problems are cropping up in children, we should look beyond the game before we start crying addiction.

Instead of saying crying Addiction – perhaps we should look deeper into the problem, is the child happy? Is there problems at home that are driving them into the world of video games?

Applying blanket statements is often a way to generalize a problem, and since video games won’t go away anytime soon (If ever) we really need to be far more clear.

Closing Statements

Several years ago, I had made the statement (In ironically an article about game addiction) that by 2005 there would be 15 million online game accounts in the world
(Massive Online Gaming, 1st edition)

By today’s figures there are at least 30 million accounts worldwide

A simply astounding figure

In fact, when you look at It in one way – there is 1 person playing world of Warcraft for every 1 million people in the world. There are better odds of meeting a person playing wow then winning any lottery.

The problem we had, and now have isn’t going to go away anytime soon – Instead of applying blanket statements for the future we should be educating people instead of causing needless worry and panic.

I’m not going to go into key signs and signals of game addiction; if you follow my source material you’ll find ample enough warning signs and blanket statements.

The only thing I can really say to this is to educate your-self on game addiction – recognize it for what it is, instead of what the masses want us to think.

-Sources-

City News : Recognizing gaming junkies – US Doctors

China – Money – Online games

Massive Online Game magazine – print edition – Moral Grounds: Addiction

Real Love