OTTOMH the difference is that it causes harm. This is the case with most mental health diagnoses. You can drink without being an alcoholic, for example.
I’ve only pulled the plug on someone once. Tetris had just been introduced, and a lot of us played it at the office Christmas party. (On corporate PCs, that was before there were rules about that kind of thing.) And as the party cleared out, one guy, a friend, was still playing. His eyes were glazed over and he looked tense. I said, “hey, Joe, the party is over, time to go home.” He replied, “in a minute”. Five minutes later, i reached over and hit the “off” button on the PC. He startled, then he looked at me, said, “thank you”, and gathered his stuff to go home. We walked out together. I think i made the right choice.
But in general, i ask someone playing a game to reach a good stopping point, and then wait for them to do so. I didn’t know anyone with a serious gaming addiction, though.
I would say that when gaming takes priority over other responsibilities, when one has great difficulty stopping once starting (especially if they have tried to ration their gaming time), when there is emotional dependence on them, when there is harm with their relationships – some combination or all of that is verging into addiction rather than simply heavy gameplay. Like other addicts, I believe you can be a functional, even highly functional, gaming addict, but there is some combination of the above involved.
I agree completely with this post.
That’s pretty much how I do it, but with the implied consequence that if they don’t, I’ll switch off the Xbox/PC right away when I find out.
Haven’t had to do that more than once now. Usually my kids play Minecraft, Valheim, or stuff like Halo Infinite and Star Wars Battlefront II, so little of that is very dependent on interacting with other players.
World of Warcraft had a multi-month $20 cosmetic for sale that just ended as a tie in. Theoretically (I have historically had concerns) 100% of the funds went to CureDuchenne. It was a cute fox pet and sleeping fox backpack. 
Why yes, I got it.
Absolutely true.
A less serious case: when we moved from California to Florida some years ago, my wife & I were very busy working on setting up the new house, and I must confess we used a TV as a sort of electronic babysitter for our younger daughter, then on the cusp of adolescence.
But after a while she started to parrot sassy snarky crap she was picking up from sitcoms where that seemed to be the theme.
We decided this was not a good influence, and the TV went to the dump. We have not had one since.
Sick! Sick!
This is not happening! This is not happening!
This sounds like a reasonable description of a gaming addiction to me.
I’m confused?
Our daughters are capable adults now and make their own decisions of course.
We talk as educated equals, which is how I wanted them to grow up.
We had TV and video games.
DS, phones, laptops.
My kids grew up. Are functional adults and can talk about most anything with some authority. (Son-of-a-wrek will fake you out, tho’).
These electronics didn’t harm them. That I can see.
They went thru phases of copying snark they heard on shows or YouTube.
They’re fine.
I have a Facebook friend (high school classmate) whose young-adult son has Noonan’s syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that has affected all of his organ systems, primarily causing orthopedic problems, but he has normal intelligence. He’s had gamers come to their small town to meet up with him, and I think that’s great!
This is not the same as, for instance, someone who quit their job and neglects their children in favor of a video game. I don’t know anyone personally who did anything like this, but I know it was not uncommon in the World of Warcraft era. I did work with a woman whose teenage son would literally not sleep on weekends to play WoW.
p.s. I’m going to see if my local library can order that movie. Thanks!
That is something known as “humor”. Specifically, he was playfully suggesting that the concept of the lack of television ownership is a tramatizing anathema.
What channel(s) did she like? I have heard of more parents banning Disney channels than everything else put together! MTV, Spike, FX, etc. wasn’t blocked, because their programming was not aimed at children.
I do not allow Youtube app on any of my TVs. If I need to play a video on the big screen I can broadcast from my phone, or add the app temporarily. Youtube on a phone is carefully curated, and I have it edited to remove all Shorts (Google’s version of Tiktok) content. Tiktok itself is not even on my phone. Kids are smart though, they can find Let’s Play content even on Amazon Prime now…
The hierarchy of horribleness for content goes
Tiktok and other shorts < Youtube and other mobile content = trash freemium mobile games (also have to monitor these, I don’t like multiplayer) < regular TV = video games including paid mobile games. Minecraft single player or with each other is good, Roblox not so much.
This photo is from 2007.
I heard my neighbor cursing and making a racket, and I went out to find that she had hauled her son’s (expensive) gaming computer into the street and beat it with a hammer.
I’m not sure how that turned out for her, though.
There used to be a very popular YouTube channel where the dad would take various electronics out in the yard and demolish them, while his wife pleaded with him not to do it. It was all totally staged, and the thing that proved it to me was when their teenage son was tied to a lawn chair with a garden hose. The neighbors knew what they were up to, and sometimes even participated.
They would get non-working equipment through Craigslist or even word of mouth, and the dad was quite creative in his destruction methods. If they’d been Finnish, they might even have made a trip to see Lauri on the Hydraulic Press Channel LOL.
My dad did that once with a book I was reading. I was about nine, give or take, and we were driving back from somewhere. It was dark, and I was in the backseat, reading with a penlight. We stopped at a rest area, and my dad came back to the car, saw me trying to hold the book within the light from the parking-lot lights, and exploded. Grabbed the book out of my hands, flung it away so hard it bounced off the wall of the building and landed who knows where. I ran after it, frantic for fear that they would take off without me, found it, got back in the car, and we drove off. Never discussed again, ever.
All I can figure is, he was worried about me Hurting My Eyes by trying to read with insufficient light. But there’s no way that reaction was justified. Still, he was always very big on throwing things. Living with him was like living with a toddler, who was big enough to beat the crap out of me.
IKR? I tried once, just once, telling a teacher about something really bad (not SA; that’s not the only bad thing that can happen to a kid) happening at home, and their reaction boiling down to, “Oh g’wan! Everybody feels that way at your age. It’ll get better. Meanwhile, try not to give your parents a hard time.”
@Q.Q.Switcheroo~Perfect! Thank you, just what I needed, when I needed it. Is it ok if I send it to my daughter, who, in spite of her brilliance as a lawyer, doesn’t seem to realize that I’ve raised children myself and might in fact know a thing or two about it?