Addiction is a term that is tossed around quite frequently. A lot of parents say that their kids are “addicted” to video games. When does a hobby actually become an addiction? Do you believe that playing video games can be a real addiction, akin to caffeine, or is it just someone’s over-exaggeration of a child’s excitement for video games?
At first, you might think that it would be easy to determine whether an activity is for fun or for pathological needs. However, how can you really know whether someone is playing just to entertain themselves or for deeper reasons? The line between the two can be very hazy. At first I thought that a certain number of hours could qualify a person as addicted, but then I realized that the same parameters would in all likelihood classify me as an addict to computers. Never! (Perhaps I should rethink that.)
In an article presented on ScienceDaily (read the full article here), it was revealed that 8.5 percent of gamers between the ages of 8 and 18 were definitively addicted to video games. Over 1,000 children were observed by Iowa State University’s Assistant Professor of Psychology Douglas Gentile to determine these results. The children qualified as addicted if they exhibited at least six of the eleven symptoms established by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (a handy manual is it not?) for pathological gambling. An activity can be measured as addictive if it harms daily functioning, either within a family or a broader social atmosphere such as school or work.
So, now we have a survey to tell us that nearly one in ten children truly have a real addiction to video games, yet I still have trouble believing that something completely noninvasive could cause addiction. Then again, maybe I am just afraid of being classified as an addict if they broadened the spectrum to include computer use. I wonder if the ten million World of Warcraft subscribers would agree with me; do you?
There are so many factors to take into account with this: upbringing, environmental conditions, financial situation, etc, that it seems difficult to really assess if addictions do occur, or what it is. Time will tell.