Over the holidays, when Auntie Mabel starts railing at you for your inability to put down that "Nintendorn GameWii thing," you can happily tell her (or whomever) that it's perfectly okay -- you're not addicted to gaming. After a lot of fuss over long hours of gaming, a rehab center in Amsterdam that began a treatment program for video game addiction a few years ago. Now, however, those same individuals who began the program no longer think that gaming is the issue. Instead, the root of the problem lies elsewhere. Keith Bakker, the clinic's founder, says that "ninety percent" of the kids they're treating are not addicted to gaming, though the symptoms are sometimes similar to people in the throes of substance addiction. But now that they've worked with so many patients, Bakker believes the root of the problem lies with parents, and with schools, for not noticing the feelings of isolation and social frustration that can often lead young gamers to escape for hours each day with their consoles.
This is interesting to us, of course, as gamers, because it reinforces the same things many in the community have said when games are linked to various crimes. Now, if only we can take games completely out of the equation -- because they're just a convenient tool for escape, after all, and now even science knows they're not the cause -- maybe we can start to help kids who are struggling to find ways to fit in.
[Via Terra Nova]
