Video Game Addiction

I have noticed a significant increase of compulsive behavior towards video games in the past few years. It doesn't seem to only affect adolescents, but many adults as well. I met my first video game addict four years ago. This 18 year old played “Halo” for almost 50 hour, while consuming nothing but “gaming fuel”, a.k.a. Mountain Dew. During our first session, the young man presented as if he had been using meth—His eyes were blood shot, his teeth looked black and his skin was a yellowish mountain dew.

Since that first session with the “Halo” addict, I have meet with dozens of clients who suffer from similar addictions, or compulsions towards video games. Lately, I have met with married men whose relationships are significantly impaired because of hours spent on “World of Warcraft”. This has prompted me to do a deeper investigation on the issue.

I have found that some children and adults who play video games may be as hooked on gaming as gamblers are to cards and slot machines. And what they see as an enjoyable hobby can negatively affect school work, employment and social interactions.

Researchers say they found in a national Harris Poll survey that 8.5% of youths 8 to 18 who play video games show collective signs of addiction that psychologists know exist in pathological gamblers, says Douglas Gentile, PhD, an assistant professor at Iowa State University.

“I think it’s analogous to gambling addiction, but not to the same exact form -- some play horses, others poker, others the slots... They’re all the same underlying type of problem, even though they look different if we just look at the mode of play.”

Video addicts among the 1,178 youths surveyed played much more often than casual gamers, made worse grades, fired up their computers to escape from reality, had more trouble paying attention in school, got in more fights, and were more than twice as likely to have been diagnosed with attention deficit disorders.

This study, which used an online questionnaire, is the first to document video game addiction among young people using a nationally representative sample.

Researchers used an 11-item scale based on accepted guidelines for pathological gambling, outlined in the latest edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, also known as DSM-IV.
Gamers were classified as pathological if they exhibited at least six of the symptoms.

The findings are published in the May 2009 edition of Psychological Science.
The most commonly reported symptoms of pathological game use included skipping chores to play video games, playing to escape problems or bad feelings, spending more time thinking about or planning playing, skipping homework to play video games, getting a poor grade because of playing video games. It’s still not known which youngsters are most at risk.

Signs of addiction include indications that kids need to play and feel pulled toward computers, a decline in interest in school work or a drop in grades, increased boredom when engaging in other activities, a tendency to skip household chores, and adeptness at coming up with excuses to avoid doing homework. And this can be attributed to adults as well.