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Do you find yourself playing video games for hours on end without realizing it? Does your gaming habit have a negative effect on your daily life and hygiene? Do you keep on grinding instead of focusing on your career or IRL relationships? You may have gaming disorder:
Gaming addiction will become a mental disorder officially recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO) next year.
The WHO, originally founded in 1946 as an agency of the United Nations dedicated to international health, is set to publish an updated International Classification of Diseases in 2018; one could say it's about time since the last revision (ICD-10) was endorsed in May 1990.
There is already a beta draft available online for ICD-11 and we can find gaming addiction filed under Mental, behavioral or neurodevelopmental disorders\Impulse control disorders. Here's the current, work-in-progress description by the WHO:
Gaming disorder is characterized by a pattern of persistent or recurrent gaming behaviour ('digital gaming' or 'video-gaming'), which may be online (i.e., over the internet) or offline, manifested by: 1) impaired control over gaming (e.g., onset, frequency, intensity, duration, termination, context); 2) increasing priority given to gaming to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other life interests and daily activities; and 3) continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences. The behaviour pattern is of sufficient severity to result in significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas of functioning. The pattern of gaming behaviour may be continuous or episodic and recurrent. The gaming behaviour and other features are normally evident over a period of at least 12 months in order for a diagnosis to be assigned, although the required duration may be shortened if all diagnostic requirements are met and symptoms are severe.
Paper critical of the proposal: Video game addiction: The push to pathologize video games. (DOI: 10.1037/pro0000150) (DX)
See also: LAD.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 26 2017, @03:42PM (4 children)
If your “addiction” isn't causing harm to yourself or others then you aren't an addict. To count as having a disorder, your life needs to actually be out of order. Of course, there is a grey area of exactly how “harm to yourself” is defined (e.g. if it's considered okay to have almost no in-person social contact).
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 26 2017, @03:56PM
I'm so fucking addicted to my job, I spend the majority of my waking life building digital widgets! Someone please help me!!! I want to get this monkey off my back so I can live a peaceful life and have time to actually help my community.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 26 2017, @08:35PM (2 children)
Maybe rather than creating all these new addictions, they should start looking at the root cause.
Most (not all!) addictions are caused by stress in life. As a result of said stress people find outlets. Some of these outlets are recreational drugs (booze, cigs, caffeine, marijuana all go here, as well as more serious drugs), some are recreational activities (lot of sex related stuff, videogames, exercise, hunting, meditation, etc), some are violent/criminal (beating on a wife, stealing cars, breaking other people's shit/person), etc.
For the vast majority of people the compulsion comes as an outlet for other places in their life they can't change and they can't vent.
For me, gaming was like that. For one of my ex's gaming was also like that (I didn't find out until we were breaking up she had probably been raped, and then only by piecing together things she had said. She was from a family that while reasonably 'loose' still had religious/social hangups about certain behaviors/actions, even if they weren't your fault.)
Many people are using videogaming as an outlet to get away from the parts of their life they can't change, can't cope with, and can't get out of. This is as true today as it was 5000+ years ago and yet we still ignore the elephant in the room: The addictions are usually medicating oneself for living a life that is untenable to the 'addicted' person. They try and cope how they can, even if it ends up destroying them socially, physically, and mentally, but can't see another way out. Some people get lucky and find another way out. Whether moving somewhere else to live another life, getting counselling that helps them cope or make changes to their life that reduce the need to cope, etc.
While there are some peopel who fall into addictions from other sources, videogames especially tend to not be one of them. If you are gaming it is making up for something missing in your normal life, whether that be experiences, the satisfaction you should get after a hard day's work, or something else.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 26 2017, @09:32PM (1 child)
Like entertainment, which video games can provide? Some people are extremely introverted and have more fun with solitary activities, and there's nothing wrong with that.
"Should," huh? Maybe you should stop assuming that everyone else enjoys the same things you do, or that they are wrong for not doing so.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Freeman on Thursday December 28 2017, @06:48PM
Hard work can be very satisfying. It's a natural thing to feel a sense of accomplishment when picking food from your garden. It's also natural to feel a sense of accomplishment after beating XYZ Game on the hardest difficulty. The difference is that one activity is deemed as beneficial to society and the other isn't. The problem is that, computers are still relatively new and we have lots of old people, that didn't grow up with a computer in the home. So, gaming == devilry, while spending 2 hours watching the news == productive. Never mind the fact that the news could be consumed in 5 minutes on the internet and the rest of the time could be spent gaming. Gaming is too new to be deemed a viable hobby. At some point, we want to be entertained and gaming is a fun activity. Personally, I play games for a good portion of my entertainment time. I also like to dabble in Python and have created useful programs. I'm also working on a game, probably won't ever see any monetary return on it, but I do it for fun. There's something called a Workaholic, which people also say is "bad", but society in general doesn't put them into the same area as the "addicted" gamer.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"