Video Game Addiction: A Peak Into Future’s Addiction Or Just The New Normal?

4 Sep

Most of us have a pretty good general idea about video games.

From Tetris to the latest hits like Helldivers 2, Tekken 8 and Black Myth: Wukong, we know that video games are one of the most popular entertainment sources of our digital age. With high-quality graphics, immersive stories, competitive multiplayer modes, mobile games, and more, the gaming industry offers products that appeal to people of all ages. In fact, competitive video game companies today can earn enough profit to host their tournament openings with large concerts featuring various international artists. Video games have become not just a source of entertainment but a cultural phenomenon, especially with the opportunities provided by video-sharing platforms. Thanks to these platforms, many streamers spend their days broadcasting live gameplay. It has become a full-time job for many to earn their living. When we look at the demand for video games and their rising popularity in recent years, as well as the evolution of how they are delivered to people, one can’t help but think of scenes from science fiction movies depicting the technology of the future. The possibilities of what technology and video games can offer seem limitless.

Following this introduction, I’d like to take the conversation somewhere that might be considered as "personal". When Covid-19 hit, I was at the peak of my university years; my new friend group was getting closer and I was at the start of a new romantic relationship. Then the news came and I had to go back to my home city to quarantine. During that time the only way to connect to my loved ones was through the Internet. As someone who’d call themselves a gamer, my relationship with video games reached a new milestone.

Video games didn’t just mean a fun hobby to kill time, now they meant connection.

Rather than having experiences in real life, I was having virtual experiences to keep my friendships alive. The hours we spent playing Among Us didn’t value less than the hours we spent sitting around at the campus. And when the quarantine finally took a toll on my mental health for different reasons (like losing "my best years", my relationship tumbling down and not being able to just take a simple walk outside) I discovered the sweet taste of escapism. I spent my hours on building my little farm in Stardew Valley, doing dungeons as a cute little Lalafell in FFXIV Online and missing shots in Counter-Strike... It is now clear as a day that video games kept me afloat when the only option I had was running away from my bad thoughts.

Now, 4 years later after those "dark" times as I’d resentfully describe, the world is back on it’s track.

Maybe not the same as it was but definitely moving on. Among the many things that have changed in my life is of course my relationship with video games. After all, I don't need to spend as much time playing games as I used to, since I can go on real get-togethers and go back to my "normal" life where I spend time outside, right? WRONG! It actually turned out to be the opposite. Now I preferred to spend time inside playing video games for hours and hours. At some point, even when I was outside, potentially caused by my social battery running out, I dreamt about being home playing some games. I needed to spend some time gaming to recharge. Video games was now part of my mental health care. A little me-time where I get to think and freely decide on things that didn’t have real affects on my life. Hours and hours to spend on fictional worlds, skipping meals to continue playing with friends and postponing things to just keep playing...

And that got me thinking; is this addiction?

Cleveland Clinic’s website describes it as "video game addiction, also called internet gaming disorder, is a condition characterized by severely reduced control over gaming habits, resulting in negative consequences in many aspects of your life, including self-care, relationships, school and work. This condition can include gaming on the internet or any electronic device, but most people who develop significant gaming issues mainly play on the internet."

Video game addiction can impact individuals of all ages, including children, teenagers, and adults, with adults being the most susceptible. People assigned male at birth are more likely to experience video game addiction compared to those assigned female at birth.

Cleveland Clinic describes the symptom of this addiction as the following:

Poor performance at school, work or household responsibilities as a result of excessive video game playing.
Withdrawal symptoms, such as sadness, anxiety or irritability, when games are taken away or gaming isn’t possible.
A need to spend more and more time playing video games to get the same level of enjoyment.
Giving up other previously enjoyed activities and/or social relationships due to gaming.
Being unable to reduce playing time and having unsuccessful attempts to quit gaming despite the negative consequences it’s causing.
Lying to family members or others about the amount of time spent playing video games.
A decline in personal hygiene or grooming due to excessive video gaming.
Using video games as a way to escape stressful situations at work or school or to avoid conflicts at home.
Using video games to relieve negative moods, such as guilt or hopelessness.

"Video game addiction can lead to a number of serious consequences. Gamers can forget that they need to sleep and eat, or even how to communicate with people in the real world. Gamers may play for 10, 15, or even 20 hours in a single gaming session. Only a couple more minutes can turn into hours as the gamer progresses to the next challenge. They may also endure various medical issues resulting from back strain, eye strain, and carpel tunnel syndrome." - NCBI

However I must note that every source I’ve looked to learn more about this addiction noted that whether or not VGA (or IGD) was a real addiction was debated among experts.

Well, why is that?

According to NCBI, many governments, especially in China and South Korea, view compulsive online gaming as a significant health issue and have established treatment centers. However, there's still debate about whether video games can truly be addictive, similar to substances like drugs. Neurological evidence suggests video games might affect brain chemistry in ways similar to addictive substances. While the idea of behavior-based addiction, like gambling, is becoming more accepted, video game addiction hasn't yet been officially recognized. The World Health Organization (WHO) is considering adding video game addiction to its diagnostic manual, but this decision depends on more evidence and agreement among experts. For gaming addiction to be diagnosed, it must significantly impact a person’s life for at least a year. A journal article shared by Mark Zastrow "News Feature: Is video game addiction really an addiction?" touches exactly on this subject. For those who’d like to delve deeper into this debate should definitely read the whole article. "Some skeptics question whether video games are being pushed for inclusion faster than other potential behavioral addictions—like food and sex addictions—because of media hype or politics, where video games have often been a useful foil. "I think people in some ways have gotten kind of addicted to video game addiction," says Ferguson. "They just can’t let go of this concept even though it’s fairly problematic."

If IGD is included in the next revision of either the ICD or the DSM, there is concern that floodgates will open to other disorders, such as sex and food addictions, many of which also show evidence of activating the brain’s reward system but exhibit even fewer of the traditional addiction markers, such as tolerance and withdrawal. Some, like Griffiths—who works from a set of criteria that consists of tolerance, withdrawal, salience, mood modification, relapse, and conflict with others—have no problem with that. "I don’t care what the behavior is; if any behavior fulfills those six criteria, then I operationally define that person as addicted to that activity." But others are wary.

"That’s always been the problem with these behavioral addictions"

“That’s always been the problem with these behavioral addictions,” says George Koob. “Where do you draw the line? There are those who will argue that compulsive sexual behavior can be addiction-like and others that consider it a joke.” But, he adds, “Anything that’s causing—in my view—pain and suffering and manifests itself as a pathology deserves some attention.””

It is clear that despite the debate around the classification, excessive gaming can cause various behavioural issues. Even reading the symptoms I did notice I carry some of them, but does that really make me addicted? I don’t think so. Regardless of the times I failed to follow through with some of my daily chores, the affects video games had on my life were mostly on the positive side. And I’m not just lying to myself either, “Video games on prescription” written by Stephen Armstrong mentions couple examples where video games were used to help with mental health struggles. "The Wellcome Trust is already supporting several game based therapy projects with the aim to gather some scientific evidence. It has given a £1.3m translation award to King’s College London Institute of Psychiatry to follow up on a small project that allowed patients with schizophrenia to create avatars for the voices in their heads and effectively battle them. In a pilot study with six patients, almost all reported a reduction in the frequency and severity of the voices. 6 Three patients stopped hearing voices completely after experiencing them for 16, 13, and 3.5 years, respectively." Though this is still an area that needs to be explored and experimented on, it seems like it had a great potential. "Video Games And Health: Video Gaming Is Safe For Most Players And Can Be Useful In Health Care" on British Medical Journal written by Mark Griffiths, a professor of gambling studies, mentions that" ...there is little evidence that moderate frequency of play has serious acute adverse effects from moderate play. Adverse effects, when they occur, tend to be relatively minor and temporary, resolving spontaneously with decreased frequency of play. More evidence is needed on excessive play and on defining what constitutes excess in the first place. There should also be long term studies of the course of video game addiction."

With that in mind I decided to ask some questions to my gamer friends...

Some of them I met through online games and some of them introduced me to my favourite games. I wanted to know if they considered themselves as addicted to video games. Most of them play everyday from 6 to 9 maybe even longer depending on the day but from those who I asked only one of them saw himself as addicted. For others it was a certain “no”. However those who shared the reasons behind why they played for hours all had something common: they had no other alternative. Gaming was the wallet friendly way of spending some time, it was a way of escaping the harsh realities of life, especially economic struggles. Great way of spending some time and an efficient tool for escapism. So I asked them one more question: Which games helped you go through tough times? With their answers and mine, I made a little game list that could calm your mind through wavy times, and if not, at least would definitely be a fun time. Some of these games are cozy feel good games to spend relaxing time and some are focused on creating and building to keep your mind busy and some of them are story driven adventure-like fantasy games.

If you don’t have any experience with gaming and would like to discover a new way to deal with stress I definitely recommend you to check these out:

Sky: Children of The Light
Journey
Spiritfarer
Minecraft
Stray
Borderlands 2
It Takes Two
Satisfactory
Baldur’s Gate 3
Forager
Witcher 3
Stardew Valley
Europa Universalis IV: Rights of Man
Cattails

If you are a gamer who realised things might be getting out of hand and gaming started to cause real life issues for you, let me be the bearer of some good news for you: various treatments exist. With VGA the most used way of treatment is a talk therapy. “Psychotherapy is a term for a variety of treatment techniques that aim to help you identify and change troubling emotions, thoughts and behaviors.” Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, group therapy and counselling is used in treating these kind of addictions. Though it wouldn’t be wrong to mention that, it is possible that excessive gaming can also be a symptom of an underlying mental health problem like depression and anxiety. It is always advised to check in with your personal healthcare provider to get the right diagnosis.

References

Armstrong, Stephen. “Video Games on Prescription.” BMJ: British Medical Journal, vol. 349, 2014. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26517223. Accessed 3 Sept. 2024.

Cleveland Clinic. “Video Game Addiction: What It Is, Symptoms & Treatment.” Cleveland Clinic, 27 May 2022, my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/23124-video-game-addiction.

Griffiths, Mark. “Video Games And Health: Video Gaming Is Safe For Most Players And Can Be Useful In Health Care.” BMJ: British Medical Journal, vol. 331, no. 7509, 2005, pp. 122–23. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25460165. Accessed 3 Sept. 2024.

Mohammad, Shabina et al. “Symptoms, Mechanisms, and Treatments of Video Game Addiction.” Cureus vol. 15,3 e36957. 31 Mar. 2023, doi:10.7759/cureus.36957

Przybylski, Andrew K., et al. “The Ideal Self at Play: The Appeal of Video Games That Let You Be All You Can Be.” Psychological Science, vol. 23, no. 1, 2012, pp. 69–76. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41416995. Accessed 3 Sept. 2024.

“Video Game Addiction.” The Science Teacher, vol. 74, no. 2, 2007, pp. 20–22. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24141134. Accessed 3 Sept. 2024.

Zastrow, Mark. “News Feature: Is video game addiction really an addiction?.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America vol. 114,17 (2017): 4268-4272. doi:10.1073/pnas.1705077114

Tuğçe Özdemir