Gaming Addiction: An Epidemic for a Growing Technological Generation

Addiction to video or computer games was once an illegitimate concern among parents and psychologists around the 1980s. But with new technologies popping up each day, adolescents and adults alike are finding new ways to entertain and distract themselves. However, for at least nine percent of those who play video games today, gaming is more than a diversion—it’s an addiction. The American Psychological Association may be considering video gaming addiction a mental disorder in its 2012 edition of the DSM-V due to growing concerns over adolescent and young adult populations worldwide experiencing this increasingly prevalent addictive behavioral disorder.

Before the early 1990s, parents weren’t concerned about potential gaming addiction—instead they focused on preventing their children from experimenting with alcohol and drugs. There are many outward signs and symptoms of alcohol and drug addiction, severe depression and anxiety, or eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia, but compulsive behaviors such as shopping, gambling, and video or computer gaming can be more difficult to spot. But just like drug addicts, those who are addicted to playing games are escaping into fantasy worlds in an attempt to numb their feelings about real life. Today, an increasing amount of young people are trying to manage their emotional and social deficiencies by escaping into the alternate realities of video games.

Since 1995, Dr. Kimberly Young’s Center for Internet Addiction has been assisting individuals who experience obsessions or compulsions involving the Internet including online gaming addiction. Director Keith Bakker at the Smith & Jones Addiction Consultants in Amsterdam, Netherlands created the world’s first detoxification rehabilitation program to treat video gaming addiction at his facility in order to meet the needs of a rising social problem that mostly affects male adolescents and young adults. This year, Dr. Richard Graham opened a new clinic providing gaming addiction intervention and therapy for teens at London’s Capio Nightingale Hospital.

Online gaming addiction has raised international concerns since recent news of the South Korean couple who allowed their premature infant to starve to death while they spent 12 hours per day raising a virtual child at a local cybercafé. A 24-year-old man also died after collapsing inside a cybercafé from playing online for 86 hours straight.

Gaming addiction is unlike alcohol or drug abuse disorders in that it does not involve a substance being ingested into the body and neurophysiologically affecting the brain and vital bodily systems. Substance abuse disorders are characterized by the development of a chemical dependency within the body as well as the brain rewiring its reward mechanisms which alters the abuser’s behavior—such as resorting to alcohol or a drug to feel good about oneself when depressed. These addictions are both chemical and behavioral disorders; a gaming addiction, however, is a distinct impulse control disorder that is more closely associated with such behavioral disorders as gambling addiction or shopping addiction. The gamers develop an altered physiological reward mechanism when engaging in video games. For gamers with low self-esteem, playing complex, exciting games heightens adrenaline, ignites stimulation, and fills the deep need to feel successful, loved, gifted, or meaningful. Individuals who believe they are inept in everyday social contexts might find fulfillment through video games and replace normal, healthy social and physical activities altogether. The illusion of conquering difficult tasks, completing assignments, and—especially in cyber role-playing games—taking on a more powerful identity provides gamers with an idealized existence that they would rather engage themselves in than real life. This emotional provision from gaming is parallel to the way substances might make an addict feel when using their drug of choice as a means of escape or coping mechanism. Reality becomes escapable, and a more seemingly rewarding world is available at the touch of a button.

When habitual gaming teaches the brain to rewire its reward mechanism, the brain changes its motivation stimulus. The brain releases dopamine to reward the individual for a beneficial activity—such as natural habits like eating, sex, and pumping adrenaline, or habits like injecting a chemical substance or participating in a stimulating behavior like gambling or Internet shopping. Healthy forms of reward or entertainment, such as reading or watching a film, have normal breaking points that allow individuals to return to reality and engage in the real world. Many video and cyber games however, do not have any such breaking points and often seem “more real” to gamers. Gamers can become so absorbed in this secondary world that their brains forget how to relate to real world occurrences; the game is no longer a form of entertainment but a replacement for their primary life.

“This is called a motivational monopoly” writes Neils Clark in his book Game Addiction: The Experience and the Effects. “The person has lost the taste for other things, because they simply don’t provide as much excitement, relaxation, or satisfaction as the one domineering behavior.” Reality becomes less significant and more illogical to addicted gamers.

Like other behavioral addictions, gaming addiction is characterized by compulsive behavior, lack of interest in other activities, and certain physical and mental symptoms when attempting to stop (i.e., withdrawal symptoms). Signs of gaming dependency include nonparticipation in social activities, slipping grades in school, association mainly with other gaming addicts, stealing money to continue game play or purchase new games, engaging in delinquent activity, truancy, aggressiveness, irritability and annoyance when denied play, and engaging in increasingly longer periods of play.

More serious physical side effects video game addiction include auditory hallucinations, peripheral neuropathy, joint pain, tenosynovitis, enuresis, encopresis, obesity, photo-sensitive epilepsy, cardiovascular problems, and increased risk of acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Treatment for these symptoms, as well as behavioral dependency, is simply to quit playing the games; however, convincing the gamer to quit requires rehabilitation that involves reintroduction to the elements of social and physical lifestyles.