I think it’s a bad thing that we use addiction to describe physiological and solely psychological repetitive behaviors (which is not to say that I don’t think psychological addictions are “real” or anything.)
But again, this applies to EVERYTHING. Talking about video game addiction when what you’re really talking about is mental illness to moronic.
Perhaps what we need to do here is define “addiction.” To me, addiction is need to take part in some activity or chemical to the point where it negatively affects other aspects of one’s life.
Let’s use going out and drinking every night as an example. Does the person still arrive to work every day on time and perform as expected? Are they still able to participate in family and friend obligations? Do they have healthy relationships with people who don’t drink like they do? Are they open with their alcohol use and don’t lie and/or attempt to cover it up? If the answer to all of those is yes, I don’t feel it’s an addiction.
However, when they start missing work because they’re too hungover, or they consistently don’t attend their child’s soccer games because they’d rather go to the bar, or their spouse has left them because alcohol has caused the person to become abusive or unstable, or they keep a flask in their desk at work and sneak nips of it, then yes, that’s an addiction.
Translating this to video games, they can cause a person to:
[ul]
[li]Consistently miss work because they have a raid or they stayed up too late last night gaming,[/li][li]Skip seeing family or hanging out with friends because they’d rather stay home and play video games,[/li][li]Lose their girlfriend or boyfriend because all they do at home is play video games;[/li][li]Require an “intervention” because their friends don’t see them anymore (it’s happened to me),[/li][/ul]
…then yes, that’s an addiction. It’s not chemical, it’s behavioral.
N.B. - Don’t get me wrong; I’m a huge gamer and am not trying to demonize video games. But I recognize that addiction to them is real.
How do you tell who plays videogames all day because they are lazy and who has a mental illness?
Which one is winning?
Why does playing video games all day have to be lazy?
Let’s be real here, it ain’t exactly industrious…
I’ve blown a few days of my life on gaming binges, and one thing I don’t have at the end of the day is a proud sense of accomplishment.
And you’d be feeling wrong : high functioning addicts do exist.
Admittedly they typically fail your openness criterion. But that’s understandable, I mean, even if you’re doing good work, your boss probably won’t like the idea of you working for him while *technically *zonked out. Hell, half the places I worked at wouldn’t even let me work with headphones on ;).
FWIW, I consider myself an (mild ?) alcoholic simply because while I don’t *crave *drinks all the time or even drink all that frequently/regularly, don’t drink at work, have a relatively healthy (if terminally geeky) social life etc… but when I do drink I simply can’t stop at one beer. I have to have all the beers, until I either go to sleep or my friends cut me off.
You should. Those princesses aren’t going to save themselves (except for the times that they do).