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Coping with Gaming Addiction
Several readers submitted this story in the Washington Post about gaming addiction in adolescents and adults. The main sources of the story are two people who get paid for solving this problem, so they have an incentive to make it sound scary and widespread, but on the other hand, most Slashdot readers probably have a... friend... who spends too much time playing video games.
Perhaps you should learn a little more about addiction before you spew this crap out.
Addiction is based on a genetic predisposition. Some people have it; some people don't. A good test for if someone is addicted is if the consequenses outweigh the benefits, yet the behavior persists.
For example, there are people who drink a beer every day, yet can quit should they need the money, or if their family starts to suffer because of it.
Then again, there are alcoholhics, who are unable to stop even when it costs them their spouse, children, job, and respect of their peers. That is addiction. Is knocking back some booze worth the loss of everything else in your life you hold dear? To an addict, the answer is yes.
The same thing can hold true for an MMORPG. Lots of people play them, and have no problems. In some cases, the game fills a need, and is rather enjoyable (and thus hard to give up, because there is no good reason to.) However, for some people, the game _is_ addictive. People have jost their jobs, and their families, because they could not get away from the screen. That is addiction.
Anything that fills a need can be addictive. Some things are naturally more addictive than others. However, whether you end up an addict is largely based on genetics. Come from a long line of alcoholics? You probably should not drink, as you are predisposed towards alcohol addiction.
Are you out of your mind? Someone who can spend 16 hours in row doing one thing to the exclusion to basic human functions has anything BUT attention deficit disorder.
Tell me how long attention span would regular person has to have if someone with ADD can spend 16h/day 7days/week doing one thing for months at a time?
Damn people who throw around abreviations they don't understand and damn moderators who dare to label it interesting
Look,...
ADD does not mean that you have the attention span of a goldfish.
It means two things:
1. You are easily distracted by environmental stimuli. (making it difficult to focus on boring tasks)
2. You can go into "hyperfocus" mode, whereby you can focus massively intently to the exclusion of everything else on one thing and one thing only - which most people can't do. Most programmers will recognize this "flow" mode. It's a hallmark of ADD.
Attention Deficit Disorder is a very badly named term.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Here is a brilliant article that goes into the genetics of addictions, basically people in the usa have 2 main versions of the dopamine receptor called the a1 and a2 alleles, people with the a1 allele have on average 30% less dopamine in their brains and are more inclined to addictive actions that raise dopamine level (eating, smoking, drinking, drugs, maybe gaming). In the usa the distrubution of dopamine a1 / a2 alleles is 20% to 80% respectively. However when you read many studies of addicts they have the a1 receptor 50%+ of the time (some cases like a study on alcoholics that drank until cirrhosis of the liver its 80%+ that have the a1 allele!). Oh and if your father was a hardcore alcoholic its very likely the gene was passed on to you. Anyways, here is the link to the article. http://www.recoveryemporium.com/Articles/AmSci.htm