The root of gaming addiction exposed?

Academics are always years behind the times. It won't be until next-next gen that research will conclude there are health benefits for the extra exercise you get from playing with your Wii.

There is some research that goes into why games are beneficial but you all have to realize that game addiction is growing and is a problem for those that have it. Its fine to like games for the sake of liking games, but if it starts taking over all your free time and starts to take away from your responsibilities then you definitely have an addiction. Knowing why people develop these addictions helps to know how to treat the addiction with the most success.

OK, let me get this straight. Gaming fulfills psychological needs of competence, autonomy, and relatedness... and that makes them addictive? So... food that fulfills your daily need for carbohydrates or vitamins... they're addictive too? Anything that fulfills a need which a human being has is addictive? Reminds me of the definition of a "drug" they gave us in elementary school as 'any substance that alters your body chemistry' which applies to every substance in existence if you introduce it to your body.

I guess I need to lay-off the games. The first time I read that article, it stated the following: "...that video games may fulfill psychological needs like autonomy, competence, and retardedness." Sweet! Video games are helping retarded kids?!?!

No, apparently I am the retarded one, and video games are fueling my disability to read/comprehend.

*sigh* There's always law school...

otakucode, air is rather addictive, yes? ;)

I like the sound of this more than the "variable reward" theories that most gambling/gaming theorists posit.

~t: Addiction is usually (and I'd argue should be) limited to things which create artificial need. Nicotine creates a need in your brain for a certain level of serotonin, for example. Cocaine creates a need for externally generated stimulus to the pleasure pathways of your brain. These are needs which did not exist previously and do not exist in people not addicted to the substance.

The psychological needs of competence, autonomy, and relatedness exist in everyone. I think a good case could be formulated that lots of kids today sorely lack any avenues other than gaming to fulfill these needs. Their parents hover over them continuously, they're not allowed to go outside and play alone, aren't taught general life skills, aren't usually left alone, all things which prevent any sense of autonomy, rob them of a feeling of competence in any arena, and the illogical rules they have to follow at school and at home directly attack their sense of relatedness. Obviously, not all kids are treated like this, this is mostly going off of the parenting 'advice' dished out by the mainstream media which suggests kids are kept, essentially, in a bubble.

I second otakucode's statement.

Free the damn children already and parents stop with the damn lawsuits against life lessons.

otakucode:

In the article, the quotes from the researchers never actually mention addiction. That's just implied by the spin that Forbes put on it.

But, regarding what you were saying re: artificial need as a definitive property of addiction...

An addiction needs a foothold. Most addictions let the brain slack off in production of certain chemicals while the source of the addiction provides a surplus of those chemicals in one way or another; when the source goes away the brain suddenly has a deficit of said chemicals, so now you're really screwed without that cigarette.

But any addiction must provide things which we already crave in order to thrive in the first place. The artificiality lies in the fact that we become dependent on some *source* of that which we crave; a particular source which we did not use before, such as nicotine or cocaine. But the drug itself must provide something that all of us need already; for example cocaine, nicotine, and a tonne of other sources of addiction reward dopamine pathways in various ways (maybe *all* sources of addiction do this, I don't know).

Likewise, the artificiality of an addiction to video games is in the fact that before a 16-hour-a-day WoW aficionado knew about the game, they of course suffered no adverse effects from its absence. But of course all of us have always desired the pleasant things that WoW provides, or else it would never be appealing to someone in the first place. It's just that we (some more than others) can get used to WoW being the *primary* source of those pleasant things, which is where the problems can come from.