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Videogame Lobbyists Join Scientists To Fight 'Gaming Disorder' Classification (vice.com)
Remember when the World Health Organization moved to define a new disease called "gaming disorder"? An anonymous reader quotes Motherboard:
Multiple video game lobbying groups from around the world have banded together to push back against the classification, and 36 academics, scientists, doctors, and researchers have drafted a paper that called the WHO's methodology and motives into question. The professionals will publish the paper, titled "Weak Basis for Gaming Disorder," in an upcoming issue of Journal of Behavioral Addictions. The article is a collection of well reasoned arguments against classifying "gaming disorder" as a disease, complete with references to extant research...
"We agree that there are some people whose play of video games is related to life problems," said the article's abstract. "However, moving from research construct to formal disorder requires a much stronger evidence base than we currently have"... To be clear, the article doesn't argue that something isn't going on and that gaming addiction isn't real and isn't a problem. It just thinks that rushing to define it and put it in the the ICD is a bad idea.
"We agree that there are some people whose play of video games is related to life problems," said the article's abstract. "However, moving from research construct to formal disorder requires a much stronger evidence base than we currently have"... To be clear, the article doesn't argue that something isn't going on and that gaming addiction isn't real and isn't a problem. It just thinks that rushing to define it and put it in the the ICD is a bad idea.
I've known people who have been pretty savagely hooked on WoW or other MMOs, but I strongly suspect video game addiction isnt a disease, its a symptom of something deeper like social anxieties (Easier to grind dungeons than make IRL friends), poor executive cognitive function (Ie being garbage at making life priorities and staying on task) or depression.
But a stand-alone mental disorder? How do you even define that, whats the cut off point and why. Seems spurious to me.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
It should more accurately be called escape disorder syndrome. Where the individuals find so much difficulty in interacting with often delusional and disorderly beliefs within society, that they prefer to escape to comic books, paper bank novels, binge watching TV series, surfing the internet and computer games, no necessarily exclusively but often a combination.
That there are individuals, especially minors that want to lose themselves in video games, the video game is not the driver, what they are trying to escape from is and the video game is just the means of escape. You need to solve the reason for the escape. A lot of it can be tied down to the disruptive nature of capitalistic society, where they know, factually that their life is worth less than other people's wealth and that their life is forfeit when it comes to preserving the wealth of others. That is a pretty solid reason for escape, you are not paranoid about people being out to get you, when there are people out to get you ie the 1% vs the 99%, the 1% will kill as many of the 99% as they can get away with, to feed greed and ego.
Capitalist society will kill and consume you to feed it's greed, now who sanely does not want to escape that, well of course the psychopaths don't but I did say sanely.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Meanwhile, videogame publishers are filling their games with gambling mechanics, eventually validating WHO's classification. Good job, guys. Good job.
That is when you suck at gaming, right? Anything else would not make much sense, because otherwise a lot of the human race would have a "TV disorder".
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I forgot it was unusable and was surprised again every time. This must either mean I do not have that addiction or I have a memory disorder in addition.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
This reminds me of a joke I read last year on facebook about smoking and its associated costs.
GF: You know if you've never smoked in that 15 years you would have enough money to buy a Ferrari?
BF: Do you smoke?
GF: No!
BF: Where's your Ferrari?
I spent way more time than I should on playing games. I know it. But I can't help but wonder what kind of life I would have achieved if I never gamed. Probably the exact same life because I know more people who don't game and just as mediocre as me. We just have different "addictions".
they are the same kind of people that could/would be addicted to gambling, or spending all day everyday at the beach neglecting everything else in thier life, or all their time on craigslist or facebook, collecting pets, or toys of a certain genra or collecting clothes/shoes,or if they had a smartphone gaming addiction to angry birds or candy crush, its not the game, its the behavior they have become severely infatuated with something and cant let it go, isnt that obsessive/compulsive disorder?
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
You play too much video game.. here your prozac...
The important thing is we're talking about this and not pesky gun control laws that might introduce waiting periods into gun buying.
A friend of a friend walked into a gun shop the other day to buy a pistol for target shooting and defense. Walked out with a $500 "assault" rifle and a bunch of ammo and accessories. If he had 7 days to contemplate that purchase he'd have cancelled the order. That's what the gun debate's about in nut shell.
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I was addicted to computer games and I quit playing them for 5 years. But I needed help to be able to do that. I couldn't do it on my own.
We now have so many disorders that any three letters floating up in your alphabet soup are likely to represent some disorder. Perhaps it is time to simply classify problems that are obsessive behaviors as simply mental illness. It doesn't matter if its duck hunting or sticking heroin in your veins, if you are doing things that are against your best interests you have a problem. Problems tend to cascade into larger problems. If a person is absurdly attracted to video games you can bet that things like social interaction are effected and as the person becomes more and more isolated becomes some kind of social menace. Values and function tend to be locked together thus we see young people obsessed with cars getting a hold of way too fast cars and causing wrecks that effect many others. Questioning the value system of a young male who is car crazy is not likely to reset the values that cause the behavior. What we consider as normal is often an indication of lousy mental health. That means that since most people have such issues that society as a whole is a bit of its nut.
SWATing other players and getting people killed....over a damn game.