We all know
that feeling. You know, the one where you get that new game that you’ve been
waiting months for. You load it up, get out your Doritos and bucket of Mountain
Dew sit back and play through as much of it as possible before your friends and
family become worried and start planning your intervention. But after that initial
binge you go back to your life, job and disgruntled partner and back to regulating
how much you play. At least that’s what usually happens. However some people don’t
do this, they continue to play that game, continue to play until it starts to
affect other aspects of their life and then that intervention isn’t just some
snarky comment made by a uni student.
Said university student also says that ‘video game addiction’
isn’t as bad as the media says it is. Anyone can properly say they’ve heard the
stories about people dying from spending too much time playing video games and
then it seems like video game addiction is a rabid dog attacking the youth of
our world. However looking at causes of
death per year in America, more people die each year from vending machines than
they do video games. In saying that though, video game addiction (in its most
base form) is an actual thing and should be taken seriously. But again calling
it an addiction to video games isn’t right either. In order form something to
be called an Addiction (from a medical view) it must check out the following
criteria
1. Tolerance (using or doing more over time)
2. Withdrawal
3. Having limited control over using or
doing
4. Continued use after significant negative
consequences
5. Neglecting of other activates
6. Significant time/money spent on using
or doing
7. Experiencing a need to cut down
These criteria are taken from the DSM-IV and the
ICD-10 (1) and are what health professionals look to when diagnosing someone
with addiction and while a lot of these things can apply to someone
experiencing ‘video game addiction’ saying the addiction is to the actual video
game is what doesn’t sit right. It’s also worth noting that while video games
can affect our brains, it can’t affect it in the same way as traditional
addictive acts can (drugs, alcohol and sex being the most obvious) that is, on
a biological-chemical level, and unlike other acts video games take a long time
to take this affect or don’t leave a long lasting affect to change the
chemicals in our brain so that we become addicted. In fact, video game addiction is not a recognized disorder and that’s because it’s not an addiction to video games. Let me elaborate
on this point, while what people experience when they have ‘video game
addiction’ is addiction the underlying reasons as to why they play so much is
what the real addiction is. These reasons are usually connected to social and
socio-economic issues in that person’s life and these issues aren’t just linked
to this idea of video game addiction. In Japan, this form of addiction has been
going on for years in the form of people becoming ‘Otaku’. The word (unlike its
western adaption) actually refers to someone whom doesn’t have a job, doesn’t
socialize and rarely leaves their own home, more often than not these people
also engage the cultural entertainment of Anime/Manga. People who become an ‘Otaku’
in Japan have the same underlying problems as those who experience ‘video game
addiction’.
The point of
all this is to show that when talking about ‘video game addiction’ it’s
important to not blame all on video games themselves, if video games didn’t exist
that person would still become ‘addicted’ to something else as long as it
filled the void of what he underling issues left. So rather than someone being addicted to video
games, a broader look at their life and own personal problems needs to be taken
into account, for the best hope of living a happy and healthy life.
Again, Extra
Credits has a good video on this topic
Some games
are designed to be addictive
No comments:
Post a Comment