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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?
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
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.
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!
Actually, people with ADD are able to hyperfocus on tasks as long as that task has a dynamic nature, like a video game for instance. Or TV.
What they CAN'T do is focus on something they find boring or have to put serious effort into thinking about. Nor can they focus on more than one task at a time. Ever try talking to an Everquest-addicted buddy while he's playing? His sentences just trail off....and he doesn't even realize it.
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