How Gaming Addiction Can Ruin Lives
By Movieguide® Contributor
Video game addiction is a real problem that affects thousands of adolescents and sucks the joy out of every aspect of life.
Brigham Young wrestler Logan Visser found out firsthand just how addictive video games can be. After arriving at college, Visser’s favorite pastime took over his life and became a problem that he could not control.
The then-18-year-old told The New York Post how he would play League of Legends all night and sleep through the day. During his first semester at school, Visser put on weight and flunked out of most of his classes.
“When you’re that deep into it, you just have a bunch of shame and it’s like the only place to turn to is back into the thing that’s creating all your problems,” he said.
“Gaming just took over. I was completely wasting my life,” he continued. “I wanted to keep getting better at this thing that doesn’t even matter.”
“I see why the older generations look down on people that are addicted to gaming. But they’ve never faced anything like this where it’s literally designed to keep you engaged and keep you coming back,” Visser added.
Visser is not alone in his addiction. Defined by impaired control over gaming, increasing priority given to gaming over other activities, and the continuation of gaming despite negative consequences, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared “gaming disorder” an addictive behavior in 2019.
WHO categorized this addiction because the prevalence of these characteristics became too large to ignore, especially among adolescents. One study found that up to 8.5% of young gamers struggle with this addiction.
While the official classification of gaming as being addictive may surprise some, psychologists who work with children and teens felt it was a long time coming.
Dr. Tanveer Ahmed, a psychiatrist who mainly treats adolescents told The New York Post that he sees kids every week who are addicted to gaming and he views it as difficult a habit to kick as gambling.
“The root of the problem is usually linked to social anxiety,” Ahmed explained. “The vast majority [of video game addicts] struggle to form healthy social connections in the real world, and it is the online world where they feel… a sense of social connection.”
Parents have run into major difficulties when implementing rules to help curb the addiction, such as turning off the Wi-Fi or taking away gaming consoles.
“I work with clients who, when they turn the computer off, their kid is threatening to commit suicide or refusing to go to school,” said Cam Adair, the founder of Game Quitters, the world’s largest support group for those struggling with video game addiction. “For some families, unplugging means a violent reaction from their son, and it’s a literal safety concern.”
For some, the best option to beat the addiction is to attend programs that help them detox from technology. The Summerland Program for Technology Habit Changes, for example, holds video game addiction camps that offer sessions in nature free from technology.
The founder of the Summerland Program, Dr. Michael Bishop believes programs like his will become more necessary as technology companies tighten their grip on consumers.
“There are psychological and behavioral researchers and statisticians that are trying to make games more habit-forming so they monopolize your time as much as possible,” he explained. “The marketing and development budgets of these games run in the tens of millions, even hundreds of millions of dollars.”
“Fifty years from now, it’s going to kind of be looking back at cigarette advertising from the ‘30s and ‘40s. And we’re going to think, ‘What the hell were we thinking?’” he added.
Movieguide® previously reported on addictive video games:
An extensive article by Daily Mail UK reports that mothers across London note substantial changes in their children’s behavior. Why the noticeable shift? The popular video game Fortnite seems to be the root of the problem.
One nine-year-old girl was even sent to rehab. “Parents sought help after finding her playing the game in the middle of the night, sat on a urine-soaked cushion, as she had been too engrossed to go to the toilet.”
A fifteen-year-old boy was hospitalized. Fortnite “left him unable to go to school for a year and needing vitamin D tablets because of a lack of sunlight.”
A mother states of her son, Luke, “He was such a lovely boy, but this game has turned him into a nightmare.”
Why all the chaos? The premise of the game is survival of the fittest. Gamers are dropped into a location of their choosing, into a preset map and urged to survive. Guns and other life are available throughout play, encouraging gamers to stay alive as long as possible. Like other popular games, participants may choose to play with friends via the internet.
