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Game Addiction Clinic Swamped
Via the Gamers with Jobs Press Pass, an article on The Australian site claiming that the Dutch gaming addiction clinic is swamped with fearful parents and glaze-eyed children. From the article: "Although experts are still debating whether excessive game playing counts as an addiction, Mr Bakker has no doubt that the symptoms are the same. 'If we see a car burning outside, we don't sit around wondering what to call it,' he said. 'It is not a chemical dependency, but it's got everything of an obsessive-compulsive disorder and all of the other stuff that comes with chemical dependency.' Tim, a 21-year-old from Utrecht, said he had hardly left his bedroom for five years because he was so obsessed by his computer games. "
You know, a lot of people watch television in excess of 4-6 hours a day. I've never once heard any of them referred to as "addicts."
That's because very few of them have any obsessive compulsion to watch TV. You put them in a room with a TV and they'll watch it... its the path of least resistance to entertainment for a lot of people; for most of them its just lazyness.
If you give them something else to do they won't get all anxious and grouchy until they can sit in front of the TV again. They might have a favorite show or two, or go out of their way to catch specific event... but they don't habitually miss work & school, stay up all night, skip meals and showers, and abandon their friends, just to put little more time in with the TV. If "a lot of people" started doing that then we probably -would- call them addicted.
With video games, particularly MMOGS, however, this is exactly what they do. They'll spend every available waking moment playing them. They will give up their friends, they will skip meals, they will skip school & work.
They aren't "lazy" at all. Laziness requires a certain level of passiveness. "Addicts" aren't passive. Quite the opposite - they will go to great lengths to keep playing as much as possible for as long as possible as often as possible.
Whether or not its a chemical addiction with pysiological withdrawl effects or purely psychological doesn't really matter. Like compulsive gambling, it effects a surprising number of people, and it hits them hard. It is a real problem, and ignoring it or pretending its not real because theirs no obvious chemical dependancy isn't going do anyone any good.