Didn’t they also conclude that people who constantly take selfies are suffering from some addiction?
To narcissism?
What about constant tweeting?
Not even constant: what about people who, when you are having dinner with them, can’t stop talking about what is happening on their virtual social playgrounds? I’d frankly have rather them just use their phone and leave the rest of the table alone.
Mm, this may have been more fit for the nerd rage topic, sorry.
I’m fine with being able to lable some people as being addicted to video games. Once we do that we can get them some professional help.
It’s a real thing, no matter how they label it. Unlike other addictions though it seems possible to go back to the hobby later and not renew the addiction.
I didn’t know I was addicted, but if WHO says so then it must be true.
Dunno. I think once those circuits in the mind are damaged or fried, there’s no real way to going back or being “fixed”. Like other mental disorders or addictions, you can only manage the symptoms and try to live/cope with them.
Speaking as someone who almost flunked out due to EverCrack to what I do today, i disagree.
Yea, I had a similar experience. I spend around 18 month without a job right in front of my screen, just stopping to sleep 6 hours or so and when I had to go shopping. I even skipped eating and only did it every other day while playing WoW. So I had to waste less time shopping. Didn’t waste time to clean the flat much. When friends wanted to meet I was always sick. I was definitely addicted. But after these 18 Month I got a job again and slowly weaned myself off of it.
I still play games intensively for a time but it is not as bad as it was and limited to 1-2 Hours each night. I have a wife, house, job and social life, it is just a hobby now.
It’s a very complex question, yeah. With stuff that has a direct physical effect, things you ingest and which muck with your brain chemistry in a very physical sort of way, it’s somewhat easier to see. Stuff like gaming or porn or whatever that has indirect effects on you brain chemistry (according to some), that’s much more difficult to track I think. It is also vastly complicated by the fact that people are, well, individuals, and no two react precisely the same to anything.
I do know that at the school I work at we have had students who checked out pretty much and spent their time 24/7 just playing whatever online game was in vogue. But when I was in school, they did it with D&D or SCA or whatever, too.
Stephen King has some great essays on addiction, from a POV of deep personal experience, and he says once an addict, always an addict; this pretty much jives with stuff like AA and other twelve-step programs, that work on the assumption that you don’t cure addiction, you just manage behavior. But many folks feel otherwise; there are programs for example that don’t believe total abstinence is the right way to stop being an alcoholic and push for a moderation approach.
Gaming falls into that gray area I think, where it’s not a direct physical thing you ingest, but which clearly affects your brain in indirect ways, and which may affect physical changes in the way you think, in ways similar perhaps to how Google is supposedly rewiring us or the Internet is turning us into potatoes or whatnot. It seems pretty likely to me that video games are so attractive because they elicit particular responses from us that are intense and deeply satisfying; it’s easy to see how we can become addicted, in some ways, to those responses. Whether that is akin to alcoholism or more akin to, say, really liking chocolate cake, is another question.
I tend to agree with the once an addict always an addict sentiment in most cases. Alcohol or Drugs. Personally I feel that way with cigarettes, I know if I only had one thing like it, cigar or e-cigarette, I would be right back at a pack a day. Contrasting to that I can play an MMO, even WoW, without restarting the same behaviour from years back.
I quit cigarette in 1985, after a brief but intense relationship that started in college. I was up to two and half packs a day of unfiltered Chesterfields or Camels or Luckies, mostly. It didn’t help that my first job out of grad school the first time (1984) was a place where everyone smoked, constantly. When my fingers started turning perpetually yellow, I figured, um, time to stop.
Haven’t smoked a cig since, though for a while I was off and on with cigars and pipe smoking, but those went away for good maybe fifteen years ago or so. But nicotine…damn, I still crave it sometimes. Not enough to endure the smell, dirt, and cost, but yeah, it’s a bitch.
Have you ever been around someone addicted to gambling. They can’t… like they’re not eating or drinking anything, but they can’t even go near a Casino. Some of them can’t drive by a casino and they struggle around the easy access to lottery tickets and scratch-its… for life. Like these are people who gambled away their rent, nearly lost their family, and they don’t seem to fully recover.
Now I don’t know too many whales who spent 10k on a free to play game or so, but I know plenty of people who went hardcore marathon gaming in their twenties, probably would have done teens too if it were around… but they have healthy lives today and game, and they walk away from games all the time, in the middle of fights, to do something else… they’re not addicted.
I think gaming is different, but not so different that we should avoid labeling someone addicted. That label makes it easier for people to get help, but just like gambling and drinking, not everyone who does it, who even does it a lot, is addicted.
I mean like me and and ImaTarget, I walked from that behavior willing and just kind of made a life decision there. And when I went back to MMOs for awhile, I was not even close to the same person who was willing to risk a class or a job to do a corpse run or some raid… that’s just gone.
So you spent a bunch of time on something but then had to cut down as you had life commitments?
I am no doctor but I think the technical term for that condition is called “your twenties”.
No. I think it’s different. If you are spending day in and day out playing a game, missing school, risking work… they didn’t’ really have micro-trans like today, so you couldn’t really pump all your money into it easily. I know what it was. I was there, and I was not alone. It’s this need to get up play, stay up, play some more… there is an addiction iin this sphere, but it’s different and should be analyzed not mocked.
Oh I will mock thanks. I used to skip work and school because I went out raving or playing games. Its called being young. Most of us look back on it fondly.
I’m sure someone made a thread about gaming addiction already. …😀
Are you saying that we’re addicted to making threads about gaming addiction?
Shhh. …don’t tell the Belgians.
Just because you don’t / didn’t experience it as addiction doesn’t mean there aren’t others that don’t. Your statements sound similar to ones made by people who denied depression was real.
My friend has a wife who went through a period when she said she just couldn’t work. They needed the money. At the time I just didn’t understand. Why wouldn’t she go to work if they needed the money? Well, she was depressed and she just couldn’t handle it. I’ve experienced some anxiety since then and have a better understanding of those feelings of dread, that sometimes just don’t make sense but you feel them anyways. It isn’t always a matter of mind over matter, which I used to think it was - just a problem of willpower or something.
I feel a stronger than healthy pull towards gaming. So yeah, I think it is possible to have an addiction towards it.