Gaming Addiction
Doctor claims 40 percent of World of Warcraft players are addicted, reads the headline. It's a terrifying number if true – it means we have 2.6m mentally ill people just from World of Warcraft alone. But the article makes a very sensible conclusion which is simply this: all humans get addicted to something if they don't have a balanced life.
Think of it this way. You are pulled in many directions by legitimate activities: work, rest, food, drink, exercise, play, and so on. It's only when one of these takes up too much time, and leads to the suboptimal performance of your social unit (family problems, co-worker problems etc), and you still can't let it go, that we call it an addiction.
Yes, there are physical addictions – to morphine, caffeine, heroin, nicotine, sugar, salt, and such. These are quantifiable, as ingestion leads to directly measurable effects. But the activity addictions are socially calibrated – if you are addicted to work, most people don't complain; if you are addicted to video-game playing, it's bad unless you become World Champion, at which point your government might give you a sporting excellence grant. If you are addicted to exercise, it's a physiological process which is often a true addiction with physical stress and bad consequences, but most people think it's somewhat desirable.
I have to agree with the article's conclusion. The best defence against addiction is not drug-based treatment or mental-illness classification and negative counselling. The best defence is positive encouragement for a balanced lifestyle. Or at least, as balanced as we can make it while still being socially functional.
Think of it this way. You are pulled in many directions by legitimate activities: work, rest, food, drink, exercise, play, and so on. It's only when one of these takes up too much time, and leads to the suboptimal performance of your social unit (family problems, co-worker problems etc), and you still can't let it go, that we call it an addiction.
Yes, there are physical addictions – to morphine, caffeine, heroin, nicotine, sugar, salt, and such. These are quantifiable, as ingestion leads to directly measurable effects. But the activity addictions are socially calibrated – if you are addicted to work, most people don't complain; if you are addicted to video-game playing, it's bad unless you become World Champion, at which point your government might give you a sporting excellence grant. If you are addicted to exercise, it's a physiological process which is often a true addiction with physical stress and bad consequences, but most people think it's somewhat desirable.
I have to agree with the article's conclusion. The best defence against addiction is not drug-based treatment or mental-illness classification and negative counselling. The best defence is positive encouragement for a balanced lifestyle. Or at least, as balanced as we can make it while still being socially functional.
etched with acid at 6:59:00 pm
4 Comments:
I know at least 2 people addicted to exercise but a guild full of addicted WoW players.
and the 40 percent think they are the sixty
My reaction to that headline was, "Er, wow."
That aside, this is interesting:
So what's her solution? She believes that MMORPGs should come with warning labels on the box, much like cigarette boxes do today. In addition, she feels that computer-related addiction (not just gaming, but also excessive chat and Internet use) should be considered to be legitimate mental disorders, and thus be eligible for health insurance.
The idea is suboptimal performance. If I use *all* my free time (as opposed to all my time that should be used for other things) for one activity, that might be obsessive, but not addictive.
Am I a bipolar addict? I might spend 12 hours on the computer one day (since it's summer vacation), then spend 12 hours jogging outdoors the next day.
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