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Studies on Gaming Addiction?

Posted by Cliff on from the similarities-to-other-addictions dept.

twigles asks: "Every gamer I know worthy of the title has logged 8+ hours straight on their favorite game. But I've seen several people become so hopelessly addicted to gaming that they cease to function in the real world. After having witnessed two married couples deal with alcoholism (one made it, one didn't) the symptoms are strikingly similar. Has anyone actually dealt with this with any success? I've seen occasional articles mention this problem, but are there any studies?"

14 of 28 comments (clear)

  1. I'd comment... by uits · · Score: 5, Funny

    If I wasn't about to level in a couple hours, I'd write up a resounding rebuttal.

  2. Maclean Hospital by gcatullus · · Score: 5, Informative

    Maclean Hospital in Boston, affliated with Harvard Med School, has a department devoted to computer addiction http://computeraddiction.com/

    1. Re:Maclean Hospital by gcatullus · · Score: 2, Informative

      damn those pesky links try http://www.computeraddiction.com/

    2. Re:Maclean Hospital by crazyphilman · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Before I comment, let me say that I completely accept that there are people who get WAAAAAAY too involved with their online activities (the "EverCrack" phenomenon for instance). I don't believe they're truly addicted to it, but I do believe they've got some kind of obsessive/compulsive thing going on that's not healthy for them.

      BUT,

      I find that the people talking about "computer addiction", particularly psychiatrists and psychologists, cast their net far too wide (and do so ON PURPOSE to drum up business). The symptoms they describe are too common to be useful in considering an individual's behavior.

      For example, one of the symptoms they list is someone who gets involved with a game at night, and suddenly is surprised by dawn. This has happened to many people, not just gamers. People doing movie marathons, having sex with their girlfriends, dancing, bar hopping, etc, all have had this experience. When you're having fun, it's easy to lose track of time. This doesn't imply ANYTHING except that you were having fun, and listing it as a symptom is sneaky at best. It's designed to make you think "Oh, MY! Maybe I need to see a psychiatrist too!"

      Psychiatry is a business, remember -- sites like these are often commercials designed to drum up business, in particular roping in naive parents who don't know what to do about little Junior's online activities and who tend to jump to conclusions.

      This entire area of "study" should be taken with a grain of salt, I think.

      --
      Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
  3. From experience by sdirrim · · Score: 3, Informative

    While it is not a biological addiction (debatable), gaming can force the gamer to do outlandish things, including the expenditure of inordinate amounts of money for the sole sake of entertainment. However, addiction is defined as "A behavior that causes the performer to continue the behavior even with obvious negative consequences that would otherwise cause the person to not perform the task in the first place." So according to that, the addiction of gaming is debateable, but from personal experience, it is.

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  4. Just don't ask Garcia about this by sithkhan · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Change a few words, and his post is as appropriate here in the gaming section as it is in the pr0n section! http://books.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=161288&c id=13492184 What the fuck is this garbage? I've been with the same woman for nearly five years and just married her this weekend. If anything, porn/videogames has STRENGTHENED our relationship through mutual viewing. Are they trying to say that porno searching online/gaming online is a "gateway" to become some sort of "sexual/gaming deviant"? Give me a fucking break. Just because people's conservative sexual/gaming knowledge and behavior is the prevailing behavior (and IMHO negative) it doesn't mean that "graduating" to a different behavior is heinous. Mod -1 Flamebait/Troll I'm sorry, but 100 people aren't going to tell the tale of ALL those that enjoy porn/gaming either in solitary viewing or in group situations. I'd like to read this pile of shit and actually give a true account of the book/non-existant study rather than an obviously biased and conservative viewpoint on it.
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  5. Easy to get addicted by payback451 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Its quite simple to get addicted. I almost got trapped in an addiction with Anarchy Online (MMORPG) back in Februaryish. I would easily log 10 hours on the weekends and 4-6 hours on school days. Luckily I caught myself after a about a week and a half to two weeks and stopped playing all together.

    Its a crappy situation and you dont even realise that you're getting into it. You start playing, set goals, and before you know if you you're eating every meal infront of the computer (I do that now sometimes anyway.. hmm.. /. addiction? :) just to get whatever level super-laser-expresso-cannon.

  6. I managed to break my gaming addiction by dtfinch · · Score: 2, Funny

    I needed more time for Slashdot.

  7. What? by alan_dershowitz · · Score: 2, Funny
    Shit, I was playing Warcraft. What are we talking about? Whatever he says, don't do it.

    Penny Arcade

  8. Online activities are perfectly legitimate. by crazyphilman · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Although nobody gnashes their teeth or pulls their hair out because JoeBob the Human Blob spends six hours a night in front of his television watching Nascar and idiotic sitcoms, every now and then, everyone freaks out over "computer addiction". Let's put this in perspective:

    Older people are frequently terrified of computers. When they were growing up, their science fiction usually involved some giant mainframe somewhere taking over the world, so for them, computers were big, scary, alien things to be feared and left to the clean-cut, nice government scientists. NORMAL people were supposed to get married, have kids, spend all their time in front of their televisions, and in general, not make waves for the Establishment.

    Along come younger people.

    Younger people get into all sorts of things older people can't understand or participate in. They seem to have their own language, their own way of relating to each other, and their own entirely separate culture that the older people can't penetrate. With each generation, the gulf between the young and the old has widened so that the activities the kids have been into have seemed more and more alien to their parents.

    People from my generation onward (born in the early '70s) grew up with video games and computers. They're simply part of our world, just another artifact. OUR science fiction listed the hacker as a powerful figure who gained power and influence FROM the computer (thus the computer was not something to be feared, but rather used). OUR generation sees computer use and video gaming as simply another side of our culture, just another set of activities that are fun and worthwhile.

    So, while JoeBob the Human Blob sits passively in front of his screen for six hours, Jimmy the hacker spends three hours ownzing his friends in Halo 2, two hours working on his website, and one hour blogging about an upcoming hacker conference.

    Jimmy's parents are like JoeBob, but not like Jimmy. Thus, they don't understand what's going on and they panic. Many harsh words about "computer addiction" will be thrown around. Jimmy might try to bring up JoeBob's widening ass and the ironic similarities and differences between the two activities, but it won't get him anywhere. And poor Jimmy won't be TRULY free until he gets his own apartment (with a cable modem, naturally).

    All this is about generational conflict. Give it a few years, it'll all settle down as the computer becomes more ubiquitous and people start relaxing.

    --
    Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
    1. Re:Online activities are perfectly legitimate. by Rhovanion · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I think this is a perfectly valid point. But I'm not sure it's the whole story.

      For a lot of people, television and video games are fairly equivalent- i.e. you essentially make the point 'video games are the television of our generation.' We'd rather play video games than watch television, presumably because we find them more interesting and stimulating.

      Some people, however, react to video games in ways they'd never react to television. Because video games are interactive, certain psysiological positive-feedback loops can more easily come into existence and create a real addiction. I'm not saying that no one can be addicted to television, but video games press more "psysiological buttons" than television and hence can lead to addiction in a larger subset of the population. Games like WoW press quite a few such buttons.

      I've seen video game addiction. For those who are susceptible to it, it's as real as alcoholism or even cocaine addiction.

      I'm not suggesting you're saying this, but for folks replying to my post, anecdotal evidence that "I've never been addicted to video games, and I play a lot of them, so video game addiction isn't real" isn't a valid argument.

  9. Alcoholism and Computer/Internet addiction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    My wife is a (recently) recovering alcoholic, and one thing I've noticed is that her computer use has spiked waayyy up. Some of the same behaviors, too - underestimating time spent (beers drunk), neglecting other responsibilities, etc. She may be substituting the internet and games for the alcohol.

    My theory is that some people have addiction prone personalities, and they will readily substitute one drug/behavior for another. I also believe that others are susceptible to one form of addiction, but not others - there are people who would be alcoholics but, lets say, gambling does nothing for them.

    I will agree with a previous poster that addiction has become a huge industry, and there is every incentive to overdiagnose addictions of all sorts

    (Posted AC for obvious reasons)

  10. This isn't about addiction, per se... by Evro · · Score: 2, Interesting

    http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/

    Lots of gaming habit info.

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    rooooar
  11. I gave up playing MMOGs... by Norfair · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ... because it seemed to me that they have too much potential to destroy a person's sanity. Of course, 'offline' games can be equally ruinsome, but nowadays you'd have a hard time finding a game without some kind of 'save' function.

    I know that MMORPGs also save your progress (wouldn't be much point playing otherwise), but its just not the same, because theres always the feeling that everyone else is flying ahead of you, and you just have to keep up, which kind of means you aren't in control of the 'world', unlike you are with offline games.

    I think thats what it boils down to, ie. the save option. I bet most people who are addicted wish they could save the progress of the entire server or world or whatever, seems silly, I know, but it would save a lot of people from the desperate situation they are in. Your comments are welcome; I don't claim to have the last word on this, its just my take on things.