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Can You Really Be Addicted to Video Games?
A new disorder
The World Health Organization officially added a new disorder to the section on substance use and addictive behaviors : “gaming disorder”
A gaming disorder is defined as an overly and uncontainable preoccupation with video games — the obsession results in significant personal, social, academic or occupational impairment for at least 12 months.
However, the idea that someone can be addicted to a behavior, as opposed to a substance, remains contentious.
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A new disorder
The World Health Organization officially added a new disorder to the section on substance use and addictive behaviors : “gaming disorder”
A gaming disorder is defined as an overly and uncontainable preoccupation with video games — the obsession results in significant personal, social, academic or occupational impairment for at least 12 months.
However, the idea that someone can be addicted to a behavior, as opposed to a substance, remains contentious.
The term "addiction"
Addiction can include:
- Addiction as a moral transgression, like excessive drinking or drug use.
- Addiction as a scientific disease, which characterize alcoholism and drug addiction as biological.
- Colloquial violation, which applies the term to almost any fixation.
The idea that someone can be addicted to a behavior, as opposed to a substance, remains debatable.
Arguments against gaming addiction
- Excessive gameplay is a symptom of a larger problem, like anxiety or depression.
- The fear of possible addiction arrises from moral panic about new technologies, not scientific research or clinical data.
- Making excessive gaming a disorder can harm the gaming industry by stigmatizing their products.
A new framework for Addiction
Experts refer to addiction as a complex behavioral disorder that joins biology, psychology, social environment and culture.
Addiction is now defined as a compulsive engagement in a rewarding experience despite severe consequences.
Video games are a social problem
- 2+ billion people worldwide play video games
- A typical gamer in the US spends 12 hours playing each week.
- 60% of gamers neglect sleep to keep playing.
- 40% of gamers have missed a meal.
- In 2018, people worldwide spent a collective nine billion hours watching other people play video games on a streaming service.
- South Korea passed a Shutdown Law in 2011, which prevents anyone under 16 from playing games online between midnight and 6 a.m.
Why video games feel so addictive
- Video games are alternate realities. We experience great satisfaction from our gaming achievements. When compared, real-life seems so much harder and less gratifying.
- Video games sometimes provide the guise of genuine social connection. In reality, it can push someone into a dangerously secluded way of life.
- In games, there are rules and defined goals. Progress is quantified. There are no real-world consequences of failure. In essence, gamers gain a sense of inflated purpose and accomplishment. By contrast, the real world seems mostly bland, and self-worth can be difficult to obtain.
Video games are designed to be addictive
- First, players are enticed with easy and predictable rewards.
- To keep players interested, many games employ a strategy called intermittent reinforcement, in which players are surprised with rewards at random intervals.
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Sympathy and Empathy
Video games had a reputation of being emotionally numbing and brain rotting, but this recent trend towards narrative-centric gaming is now developing a player’s sense of sympathy and empathy...
Mental and Creative Prowess
There are games designed to train and improve brain functionality, logical deduction, pattern recognition, memory, matching, and outside the box thinking.
The interactivity of games is one way to exercise your mind while having fun. That’s important because, like muscles, the brain will atrophy if you don’t work it.
Leadership and Socialization
It’s possible that gaming enables stereotypically introspective individuals to be more social, ultimately improving social skills.
In the earliest consoles, gaming with friends involved a physical gathering in front of a single TV. Even in today’s online multiplayers, gamers often form groups, communicate over voice and video chat, and can even help train leaders in the case of those who manage the groups.
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Video Games Can Teach You Personal Accountability
The reward our brains feel when accomplishing something in a game teaches us to focus our own actions and helps us control the situations around us. Lessons like this are easily applied in t...
Video Games Are Now Used In Therapy
Researchers designed a game called SPARX to help treat depressed teenagers. The players had almost double the total recovery rate when compared to the conventional treatment group.
Video Games Can Help You Make Friends
Games that are popular or involve social mechanics can help with making friends by giving access to the community that forms around the shared experience.
Gaming conventions, online multiplayer sessions, and competitions all help players meet new people and make friends with a common interest.
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Rewards and dopamine
Our brains compute 3 things about reward: how much will we get, how soon will we get it, and how certain are we that we will in fact get it.
And it’s when the probability of a re...
Why video games are so addictive
Games are enticing because you might win but you might not. And video games do it so efficiently, because they ride the tide of computer technology. The balance between winning and losing is continuously adjusted, according to how well you’re doing, as measured in hits and misses, gains and losses, moment by moment. The sweet spot knows you, it finds you. It adjusts to you.
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Developing mastery
Fun is the experience of developing mastery. When we acquire new skills and recognize valuable patterns, our brains reward us with a shot of pleasurable sensations.
Games and learning
Games are optimal learning environments:
- Feedback loops are short, fast and adapted to your skill level.
- Challenges grow as you develop new skills.
- Failures are learning opportunities because every time you make a mistake, you get a hint about how you can do better next time.
Boredom and learning
Boredom is what we feel when our brain decides that there's nothing worth learning. It's the brain searching for new information.
And even games become boring at some point because they eventually run out of things to teach you. That's when you stop playing.
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Kids Addicted to Videogames
- When we see kids playing videogames all day, we think they are addicted, and that it is harmful.
- In most cases, there is no addiction, but just overindulgence,
- In cases they do...
Moderate Gaming
Kids have been naturally avoiding schoolwork or household chores way before video games came in the picture.
And moderate video game playing, less than three hours a day is not an addiction but can actually be beneficial for the cognitive and reflexive development of kids.
Unmet Psychological Needs
There are certain psychological needs that kids look for:
- Competence: Kids need to compete, grow, and attain mastery over tasks.
- Autonomy: A sense of freedom and control.
- Relatedness: A want of being worthy to others while wanting others to matter to us as well.
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Nothing is too big to tackle
Determination is key
Whether it's powering through the many dungeons of Hyrule in a Legend of Zelda game or trying to complete an especially difficult assignment at work, you're not going to accomplish it all in one day.
The key to getting through it all is to remain steadfast and keep moving forward, no matter the difficulty. Procrastination certainly doesn't help; it'll still be waiting right where you left off.
Sometimes it takes teamwork
If Team Fortess 2 has anything to teach, it's that even the motliest of crews can win the day when they work together toward a common goal.
Sometimes the best teams come together from different walks of life, so don't be afraid to bring your cocky Scout and your experimental Medic even if it seems they won't work well together.
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Real Life Lessons From Videogames
- Difficulty increases as you progress.
- If there are no obstacles you’re going in the wrong direction.
- Look for secrets and do some side quests to get ...
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Programmed To Be Addictive
Games are designed to be addictive in a ‘gateway drug’ fashion. The ‘free-to-play’ or ‘Freemium’ models entice users to try and as soon as one plays it and is hooked, they ask for a little amount o...
Behaviour Psychology
Most of these addictive mobile games are casual ones, and raked in $50 billion dollars of annual revenue in 2018 alone, more than what Hollywood’s global revenue was in that year.
Core gaming has dedicated followers and are complex, requiring commitment and skill. They require years of commitment and people are passionate about them, with some being lifetime members.
These games use highly advanced psychological tricks, studying the behaviour of smokers, to get people to spend on their platform.
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The reward system
The reward system in our brain exists to ensure we seek out what we need. If eating nutritious food or being smiled at pleases us, we try to secure more of these stimuli. However, seeking pleasure ...
Desire and pleasure
In 1986, a discovery was made that dopamine did not produce pleasure, but in fact, desire. While dopamine makes us want, pleasure comes from opioids and endocannabinoids ( a kind of marijuana produced in the brain), which paints pleasure on good experiences.
Potential clinical application
We cannot explain away our minds by brain mechanisms. Brain mechanisms are part of our minds.
Understanding that desire and dread, for instance, share the same brain operations, could help ease schizophrenia symptoms by restricting a particular dopamine neuron that produces fear.
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Storytelling is essential to living
Stories are the primary way through which we make sense of our world. We explain ideas by telling stories.
Even science uses storytelling when they use data of the physical world to ex...
The brain’s reward system
When the brain pieces separate bits of an image together to form a coherent picture, it is known as pattern recognition. Once we recognize a pattern, it can spark a degree of pleasure, often described as that "a-ha" moment.
Where science and story meet
Despite the verities of science, we feel compelled to tell stories that venture beyond the facts.
When we first see separate ideas, we feel obliged to find a relationship between the ideas to form a coherent picture. Once a possible relationship has been established, we feel the need to come up with an explanation.
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