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Is online gaming consuming your life?

Approximately 20 million players have spent 17 billion hours on Xbox Live. That's more than 2 hours for every person on the planet.

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Here is what Wikipedia reports in Gaming Addiction

Video game addiction

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"EverCrack" redirects here. For the video game frequently known as EverCrack, see EverQuest .

See also: Internet addiction disorder  and Computer addiction

Video game addiction , or more broadly used video game overuse , is excessive or compulsive use of computer and video games that interferes with daily life. Instances have been reported in which users play compulsively, isolating themselves from family and friends or from other forms of social contact , and focus almost entirely on in-game achievements rather than other life events. [1] [2] [3] There is no formal diagnosis of video game addiction in current medical or psychological literature. Inclusion of it as a psychological disorder has been proposed and rejected for the next version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). [4] [5] [6]

[ edit ] Possible disorder

Video game addiction is not included as a diagnosis in either the DSM or the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems .

However, some scholars suggest the effects (or symptoms) of video game overuse may be similar to those of other proposed psychological addictions . [7] Video game overuse may be like compulsive gambling , an impulse control disorder . [8] [9]

According to Griffiths [10] “all addictions (whether chemical or behavioural) are essentially about constant rewards and reinforcement”. Griffiths [10] believed that addiction has six components: salience, mood modification, tolerance, withdrawal, conflict, and relapse. Some scholars suggest that psycho-social dependence, if it occurs, may revolve around the intermittent reinforcements in the game and the need to belong. [10] . Some scholars claim that the social dependence that may arise from video games occurs online where players interact with others and the relationships “often become more important for gamers than real-life relationships” [11] . However this is not a view which is generally accepted among all scholars.

In 2007, the American Psychiatric Association reviewed whether or not video game addiction should be added in the new DSM to be released in 2012. The conclusion was that there was not enough research or evidence to conclude that video game addiction was a disorder. [3] [4] [5]

[ edit ] Public concern and formal study

A report by the Council On Science And Public Health to the AMA cited a 2005 Entertainment Software Association survey [12] [13] of computer game players and noted that players of MMORPGs were more likely to play for more than two hours per day than other gamers. In its report, the Council used this two-hour-per-day limit to define "gaming overuse", citing the American Academy of Pediatrics guideline of no more than one to two hours per day of "screen time". [14] However, the ESA document cited in the Council report does not contain the two-hour-per-day data. [15]

In a 2005 Tom's Games interview, Dr. Maressa Orzack estimated that 40% of the players of World of Warcraft (an MMORPG) were addicted, but she did not indicate a source for the estimate. [16] She may have derived the estimate from the informal survey managed by Nick Yee at The Daedalus Project , [17] who notes that caution should be exercised when interpreting that data. [18] Other critics have satirized the idea of MMORPG addiction, illustrating that the genre has built-in mechanisms for burning-out players, which is contrary to the concept of addiction. [19]

A 2006 lecture reported by the BBC indicated that 12% of polled online gamers reported at least some addictive behaviours. [20] [21] The lecturer, Professor Mark Griffiths of Nottingham Trent University , stated in another BBC interview that addicts are "few and far between." [22]

In 2007, Michael Cai, director of broadband and gaming for Parks Associates (a media/technology research and analysis company), said that "Video game addiction is a particularly severe problem in Asian countries such as China and Korea ." [23] Results of a 2006 survey suggested that 2.4% of South Koreans aged 9 to 39 suffer from game addiction, with another 10.2% at risk of addiction. [24]

A 2007 Harris Interactive online poll of 1,187 US youths aged 8–18 gathered detailed data on youth opinions about video game play. About 81% of youths stated that they played video games at least once per month. Further, the average play time varied by age and sex, from eight hours per week (responses from teen girls) to 14 hours per week (responses by teen boys). " Tweens " (8–12-year-olds) fell in the middle, with boys averaging 13 hours per week of reported game play and girls averaging 10. Harris concluded that 8.5% "can be classified as pathological or clinically 'addicted' to playing video games", but did not explain how this conclusion was reached. [25]

Since the American Psychological Association decision in 2007, studies have been conducted at Stanford University School of Medicine related to video game play. Researchers found evidence that video games do have addictive characteristics. [26] [27] An MRI study found that the part of the brain that generates rewarding feelings is more activated in men than women during video game play. [28] [29]

A 2009 survey by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto, Ontario of 9,000 students from Grades 7 to 12 showed almost 10% get "screen time" for seven (or more) hours a day. A little over 10% also reported having video gaming problems in the previous year. A recent article Pediatrics (journal) found a mild association between watching television or playing a video game and attention issues in more than 1,300 children ages eight to 11 years old. Children who played video games or watched television for more than the normal two hours a day maximum, which is recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics were 1.5 - 2 times more likely to show signs of attention issues, the researchers found. However, the study was further criticized in eLetters to the same journal for failing to use well-validated measures of attention problems or control for other important variables. [30] A more recent study using the Child Behavior Checklist and controlling for family and mental health variables, found no link between video game use and attention problems. [31] Also, a study in Pediatrics [32] found problematic gaming behaviors to be far less common, about 4%, and concluded that such problems were the result of underlying mental health problems rather than anything unique to gaming.

Writing in the American Psychological Association journal Review of General Psychology's special issue on video games, Barnett and Coulson [33] expressed concern that much of the debate on the issue of addiction may be a knee jerk response stimulated by poor understanding of games and game players. Such issues may lead both society and scholars to exaggerate the prevalence and nature of problematic gaming, and overfocus on games specifically while ignoring underlying mental health issues.

[ edit ] Possible symptoms

Excessive use of video games may have some or all of the symptoms of drug addiction or other proposed psychological addictions . Some players become more concerned with their interactions in the game than in their broader lives. Players may play many hours per day, having late baths and regarding personal hygiene as a waste of time, gain or lose significant weight due to playing, disrupt sleep patterns to play and suffer sleep deprivation as an effect, play at work, standing in the middle of nowhere looking into space for a considerable amount of time, avoiding phone calls from friends and/or lying about play time. [3] [21]

Other scholars have cautioned that comparing the symptoms of problematic gaming with problematic gambling is flawed, may introduce research artifacts and artificially inflate prevalence estimates. For instance Richard Wood has observed that behaviors which are problematic in regards to gambling may not be as problematic when put into the context of other behaviors that are rewarding such as gaming. [51] Similarly Barnett and Coulson have cautioned that discussions of problematic gaming have moved forward prematurely without proper understanding of the symptoms, proper assessment and consequences. [33]

[ edit ] Possible causes

Theorists focus on the built-in reward systems of the games to explain their addictive nature. [52] [53] In reference to gamers such as one suicide in China, the head of one software association was quoted, "In the hypothetical world created by such games, they become confident and gain satisfaction, which they cannot get in the real world." [54]

Researchers at the University of Rochester and Immersyve, Inc. (a Celebration, Florida , computer gaming Think-tank ) investigated what motivates gamers to continue playing video games. According to lead investigator Richard Ryan, they believe that players play for more reasons than fun alone. Ryan, a motivational psychologist at Rochester , says that many video games satisfy basic psychological needs, and players often continue to play because of rewards, freedom, and a connection to other players. [55]

Michael Brody, M.D., head of the TV and Media Committee of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry , stated in a 2007 press release that "... there is not enough research on whether or not video games are addictive." However, Dr. Brody also cautioned that for some children and adolescents, "... it displaces physical activity and time spent on studies, with friends, and even with family." [56]

Dr. Karen Pierce, a psychiatrist at Chicago 's Children's Memorial Hospital , sees no need for a specific gaming addiction diagnosis. Two or more children see her each week because of excessive computer and video game play, and she treats their problems as she would any addiction. She said one of her excessive-gaming patients "...hasn't been to bed, hasn't showered...He is really a mess." [3] [