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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.
"So the Perkinses turned to Jaysen's therapist, Kim McDaniel, for help."
Uh, he's already got a therapist? Oh boy...
Wasn't it just a few years back that people who played games all day and neglected the rest of their lives were called 'lazy'?
I'm so glad that we now have a label for this kind of behaviour that helps show that it isn't their fault.
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These are breasts; this is source code.
Why do you have a problem with those two things belonging to one person?
I have argued many times that kids who are addicted to video games and play them all day are diagnosed as having ADD these days. Honestly, I know there were kids 15-20 years ago being diagnosed with ADD, but the number has skyrocketed. I have a friend who is a teacher (4th grade) and she says almost 1/4 of her class "has ADD".
These kids just need to get out more, and experience the wonders of being outside, and using their imaginations to play games. When I was a kid my mom only let me play games for a short time after dinner in the evenings. When it was nice out, I had to go out and get exercise. Kids these days are (on average) heavier, lazier, and play more video games. I honestly think most kids who are misdiagnosed with ADD are just not getting enough exercise because they're addicted to games. The 30 second attention span is gone, screw that now we have a 2 second attention span. You see it in games, TV, movies...
Let's get these kids outside and have them exercise and use their own imaginations to have fun, and not make them go on ritalin or some other drug (not sure if they still use ritalin) just because they aren't getting exercise.
I grew up with the quake world generation. In college I remember playing 8 hour stretches on CTF servers. Now that i'm an adult 29y/o with a job, bills, kids I just can't have the fun I used to. sometimes it's depressing. My 11 y/o however would willingly mutalate himself for an extra hour of warcraft. The way I solve this is simple turning it off and kicking him out of the house to get an hour or two of ruff housing sun and fresh air. Now that he is in junior high he joined the football team and has learned the fun of interacting with others. He also uses that same competitive spirit that his games once satisfied on the field. so it's all about focusing that energy.
Tell me about it! And once you find that server where the people are around your skill level and has fun maps/game options...you are doomed!
I've managed to peel myself away for a little bit last night to play Doom 3, but I know I'll be back on that WolfET server soon!
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
I don't think it's a coincidence that the most fucked up kids (due to shitty parenting skills always) you see on Dr. Phil all have "unique" names. Just look at the names of all the kids in the "Family in Crisis" series as an example.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Poor sap. He has three accounts. That's right. Pays for three seperate accounts, spends LOTS of bucks buying weapons, scrolls etc. on ebay, and even payed for three months on another account to try and hook me into it. I played the game when it was first released, but since they patched the cool die-in-someones-house-get-ressed-loot-their-stuff bug it got kinda dull, IMO:) He plays every night at least three hours straight. If he misses a night he gets depressed and call in sick to work. Sometimes he'll call me to talk about his expoits. Oddly enough, he quit drinking almost exactly the same time he started playing the game. UO is almost the only thing he uses his computer for, besides email and ebay. He upgrades once a year. Guess I can;t complain there as he donates his old one to FreeGeek, a local non-profit. If this ain't addiction, I don't know what is.
_____ "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." -- Orwell
From kindergarten through 12th grade, my mom yelled at me until my homework got done. I got pretty good grades and ultimately got into Cornell (with my mom also yelling at me to get the applications done all the while).
I went as a physics major since I got a 5 on the AP and aced the regents. Within one year I got so molested by engineering calculus that I was asked to leave for a while. At the same time I was getting sucked into playing the early network games (early 90's, on Macs... Spectre, in case anyone recalls). It got to the point where my friends had an intervention and removed the hard drive from my computer! I still ended up leaving for awhile, joining the USAF, living it up in California for 4 years while traveling the world, coming back to Cornell as a Psych major, and did OK.
My point is- Even though she meant well and I know she loves me, my mom didn't know the first damn thing about how to instill discipline in me at all! All she taught me how to do was to work in response to a very negative stimulus, and when that stimulus was removed (and suddenly), I was completely unprepared. To this day I struggle with motivational issues (and I verge on game addiction, but only when a cool new game comes out for OS X, which fortunately is not that frequently, heh).
So don't be so quick to blame the parents, unless you also have a plan to train them on how to instill motivation/discipline in their children. Unfortunately, there is no "parenting class", and as parents like to joke among themselves, "you are the best parent your kid will ever know." Most parents care a ton about their kids, but the natural skill seems to vary...
And that's where the problem comes in. We've blurred the use of addiction in society until the abstract definition of addiction - the need to perform some behavior compulsively - determines the connotation of the word. The only meaning of the word addiction that applies to physical reality is that version that arises from biological adaptation to the ingestion of substances, which some people (alcoholics, for one) are much more prone to. Continued use develops continued need, and soon, their bodies (literally) depend on the substances for normal functioning, as they have stopped producing sufficent amounts of affected neurotransmitters on their own.
The other connotation of addiction is the one we refer to in common speech - when a person repeats behaviors, regardless of the consequences or his/her own inclination to do so. So we speak of those addicted to shopping, grooming, sex, or any other behavior a person focuses on for what others would deem an unhealthy period of time (this behavior is almost always a vice, or capable of becoming one in excess). This is where our definitions overlap and the problem first appears. Any thought or behavior is necessarily biological. What's more, for all of human history, people have tried to resist pleasure, such as eating or sex, that is innately tied with both biological reward and negative consequences. And in this way, the reward and the strong drive to perform the behaviors that bring about this reward are abstracted on the basis of their biological similarity (the same brain rewards both behaviors) and the strikingly similar behaviors of those deemed addicted (when you want to do something, you do it). But when we do this, we overstep the bounds of the word addiction, and soon we start regulating all human behavior associated with pleasure, negative consequences, and an obsessive quality (games, sex, etcetc) into the category of addiction. Now, if you think that a reasonable definition of addiction is one that can apply to any pleasure-deriving activity, including every vice, that's your opinion. It just happens to be a very wrong one.
Listen, it's hard not to do the things we like. They make us feel the same (happy) as heroin makes heroin addicts feel (happy). And for all of human history, we've been trying to figure out how to supress the human tendencies towards pleasure that can hurt and destroy us. But when we talk like this, we cheapen the real meaning of addiction and blur the only real use of the word, and we replace deeper understand of human action with trivial and shallow definitions we read in magazines. I used to smoke cigarettes, I occasionally smoke pot, and I love math. When I quit smoking, I felt nuts, like I was losing something that my body depended upon. When you're a smoker, you can't remember what it was like to be a non-smoker - to go a day without thinking of a cigarette. It was the hardest thing I've ever done, and if you non-smokers could imagine that suffering, you'd know what we mean we when talk about addiction (and why we get angry when this pop psychology bullshit shits on our plight). But when I stop smoking pot, I feel upset that I'm not doing what I like to do, I feel urges to smoke, and very often, I will smoke once or twice again before starting my real month off. But I don't feel like I can't think, that my head is being smashed, or that I can't register anything other than my shaking and desire for a cigarette. There is a biological reality to real addiction. The rest is human behavior and the same old virture and vice discussions we've lived with for years. While this is necessarily biology, it comes naturally from human behavior, and is not caused by physical adaption to external agents and chemicals that act upon the biology of the body. This is a critical distinction, and not one easily understood by half-rate scientists, people who read magazines, and those who've never wanted a cigarette.
I played Dark Age of Camelot for two years straight. Every time I tried to quit, one of my friends would find some new hunting ground or discover some way to do something solo that normally takes three or four people to do, and I'd get curious enough to get sucked back in. In the span of four months I burned all my vacation time at my job for the whole year just because I'd call in sick so I could stay home and do one more quest or gain one more level.
Eventually got to the point where I just cancelled my accounts and sold my computer. That was six months ago, now I can safely say I'm rehabbed. So in answer to your post, yes, taking the games and the computer away worked.
You joke, but this exactly what I did.
Not that he can't play games, but think of the evil that is me logged in the kid's computer from work with "top" running...keeping ol' Dad apprised of everything that kid is doing:
*phone rings*
"Hello?"
"Hi, Nick. It's Dad. Tell me why you're running Galeon."
"Oh, I'm looking up info for my natural disasters report."
*clickety-clickety-click* --Dad brings up the proxy log--
"Hmmmm.... so why did you go to games.yahoo.com?"
"Uhhh... what?"
*clickety-clickety-click* ps auxw | grep nick | grep -v grep | cut -c10-14 | xargs kill -9; passwd -l nick
"Well, you're grounded from the computer for 2 weeks. One for goofing off, and one for lying to me. Any questions?"
*silence*
(Cheerfully) "bu-bye then!"
Needless to say when I see things like "smacx" or "wine dotwine/fake_windows/Program Files/Starcraft/starcraft.exe" running when he's supposed to be working on homework assignments he's complete toast.
That's not addiction. It's compusive behavior, but it's not addiction.
Consider the difference between the alcoholic and the compulsive gambler.
The alcoholic is actually experiencing a change in brain chemistry. If he doesn't drink, he suffers actual physical symptoms: he gets the shakes, DT's, gets sick, etc.
The gambler just gets pissed off when he can't gamble. He suffers PSYCHOLOGICAL symptoms. He gets antsy, annoyed, tries to get to the track. He's unhappy. NOT PHYSICALLY ILL.
Hence the difference. One is a physical phenomenon. One is a psychological phenomenon.
Addiction is not the same as a compulsive behavior.
Now, to games: What you're describing is a little bit obsessive-compulsive, but it's certainly not an addiction. And, sure, you can get yourself in a whole lot of trouble being obsessive about something. Maybe if you find out that you literally can't stop playing a game, you've got a bit of a problem and you should back off (or maybe talk to a good therapist).
BUT, it's not addiction. No matter how often people try to frame it as such.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
This has been going on for years. Thing is, it was those who read extensively that were neglecting ttheir social life and/or their schoolwork. Since reading extensively for long periods of time takes patience and brainpower. Thus generally people who read a lot were classified as nerds and were considered an estranged group already. They had found their escape from reality and were happy with it. Now that there is a way to escape reality that doesn't take intelligence or especially in the case of D&D, great imagination, it is showing itself in those considered "normal". Suddenly, the fact that these kids are not satisfied with this oh so joyous and friendly reality of ours is a major problem because these kids were POPULAR. Quite funny really.
"Well, you're grounded from the computer for 2 weeks. One for goofing off, and one for lying to me. Any questions?"
Bloody hell, good grud on greenie...
** I'm having a vison..... **
Nick leaves home at the earliest possible legal age to achive freedom from his controlling parents. He looks back on his childhood with unhappy memories, grows up to resent his controlling parents (even if it's just the father that's the controlling one, because he'll end up resenting his mothers complicity too) - who he rarely talks to about real issues because of distance created by them in establishing such an oppressive parent/child relationship. Unhappy/oppressed teenager grows up to be unhappy and angry young adult.
Suggested xmas gifts: Trenchcoat, shotgun, Prozac.
I've seen parents who give their kids way to much freedom (not many though) to the extent they have really nasty mean kids (who at least usually grow out of it eventually) but far more instances of parents who are too controlling and where the damage done is irreperable. Without a doubt, all the families I know of that have controlling parents - none of whom consider themselves controlling, just 'looking out for their kids' - have turned out really screwed up kids.
To pick some personal examples that spring to mind, one kid (a really nice kid by all accounts) punched his father in the nose and left home that day, just before his 16th birthday IIRC (and so hasn't spoken to either of them in years). Another family (who's parents are/were notoriously controlling amoung the people I know who also know them) has two children (a girl and a boy) that were really nice kids (at least the _seemed_ nice as kids) but have grown up into abusive angry resentful teenagers who again, left home at the early possible age (struggling for work to support themselves because they've crippiled their education as a result). I know a son from another family who, very sadly, killed himself because he was unable to tell his controlling parents he was gay (they refused to acknowledge it).
If you don't push your kids enough they might not achive what they otherwise could have, they might be critical of you for it later, but they almost certainly won't grow up to resent you because of things like that you didn't do. However, if you push your kids even just a little bit too hard I think you'll find they will resent you for doing that.
After combining the above post and the vitrolic abuse I see makes up your Journal entries I can't say I have much faith in your ability to look after other human beings, you seem to have a tough enough time of it managing yourself.
Disclaimer: I'm 15, and am supposed to be doing Geography coursework, while instead I'm on Slashdot. I wish I could show my dad this thread, but I can't any more, because I've posted a reply when I was supposed to be doing Geography coursework.
:)
I personally believe that people about my age do have a basic gauge of when they need to start working for any particular assignment. For example, I have 1 week until I hand my Geography coursework in for the second round of comments, then I get about 2 weeks before I hand it in for my final mark (which is about 40% of my GCSE (14-16) qualification in Geography).
Basically, I have time to do other stuff, including this.
Why must you assign times for "doing homework" and times for "playing games"? The correct way (when you really have to work at something) is to do work for 50 minutes and browse the net for 10 minutes (careful not to start those long replies...) and to slowly increase the browsing time against the work time if you feel you need to. I've done this. It's easy when you need to hand something in soonish.
It's far easier than spreading the work out over the summer holidays.
The control of computer time is simple at my household - allowed on only on odd-numbered days, except for work or DDR, with a system to make sure people don't hog the computer.
It works. If I were to be browsing Slashdot now, I would be grounded from the computer for a week.
That's why I'm going to selectively delete stuff from my history.
PS Check the proxy log before you call him.