Game addiction affects few
Chris Walden, junior journalism major, is 20 years old and describes himself as addicted to the popular online computer game World of Warcraft, which has an estimated seven million active users worldwide.
Walden attributes slipping grades, the loss of a girlfriend and strain on his relationship with his father to his video game addiction.
“I’m handling the game itself pretty well, but I’m not handling the rest of real life very easily,” Walden said. “I’m embarrassed to say it, but I haven’t seen a single A in any of my classes yet.”
Walden has been visiting counselors on and off since high school for his excessive game playing but has yet to find successful treatment.
For many college students, online video games can offer a fun and relaxing escape from the stress in their daily lives. For others, online games have become a way of life often times leading an individual to describe themselves as a gamer.
There exists, however, a minority of college students and gamers like Walden who, some say, are addicted to the games they play.
“We get all ages. People from 40 to 50 years old with internet and gaming addictions, but a lot more are college kids,” said Bob Stenander, corporate services clinician with the Illinois Institute for Addiction Recovery at Proctor Hospital in Peoria, Ill.
Although Eastern does not currently have an internet or online gaming addiction counseling program, counselor Mike Tozer asserts the counseling center is more than willing to accommodate.
“If we had enough people coming forward we’d start a program for game addiction,” Tozer said.
“We are aware that it’s hard for people to talk about these problems, but we’re more than open to deal with them,” he said.
In order to be considered legitimately addicted, an individual must be diagnosed by a professional with a clear understanding of addiction.
“These addictions are process addictions as opposed to chemical,” said Stenander. “They are caused by repeated behaviors. Whether it’s video games, internet or online gambling these addictions must meet the criteria for impulse control disorders as set forth in the [Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders].”
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-IV, is the handbook published by the American Psychiatric Association used in diagnosing mental disorders such as addiction.
The DSM-IV describes impulse disorders as “the failure to resist an impulse, drive, or temptation to perform an act that is harmful to the person or others.”
Those addicted to online games have been reported to disregard aspects of their personal lives in favor of the virtual world presented by their game of choice.
“They’re spending all of their time in the fantasy world. They could be neglecting schoolwork, relationships with real people such as a spouse or their children. Sometimes they just stop socializing all together,” said Liz Woolley, founder of Online Gamers Anonymous, or Olganon.
Woolley started her non-profit organization to help addicted gamers after her son Shawn committed suicide in 2001 due to, she claims, events in the online game EverQuest.
While authoritative empirical investigations on video game addiction are few, available information suggests the average age of video game players is actually higher than the mythic adolescent-gamer stereotype and that those who are at risk for addictive game play patterns are marginal.
According to an article published in August 2006 from the International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, the majority of online gamers, 85 percent, are male and the “majority of players are adult (around two-thirds of players are older than 19 years).”
The same article suggests that gamers who play for over 50 hours a week ran the risk of addiction, while those who played for over 30 hours were described as “dedicated gamers.”
Nicholas Yee, a researcher and student studying for his PhD in the Communications Department at Stanford, has been conducting research on the demographics and effects of online games for the past five years.
His research has shown that a minority of gamers, around eight to nine percent of the 5,530 people he surveyed, actually spent over 40 hours a week playing online games with the average gamer spending 22.71 hours per week in game.
Mark D. Griffiths, professor of gambling studies at Nottingham Trent University, has, according to his profile, “published more papers and articles on gambling and computer games than any other academic in the UK” and would seem to agree with Yee in that game addiction appears to affect a small portion of online gamers.
In an article co-authored by Griffiths and Mark N. O. Davies in 2005, they claimed that there is a lack of qualitative, in-depth fieldwork in the area of game addiction and wrote:
“As a consequence, none of the surveys to date conclusively show that video game addiction exists or is problematic to anyone but a small minority.”
Dr. Kimberly Young, director for the Center for Online Addiction and netaddiction.com, however, feels that online game addiction is legitimate.
“I see it as a real problem, mainly because I receive so many calls from families troubled by online gaming addiction,” she said.
Young described the typical addicted gamer.
“Mostly, they are young males in the ages of 15-22 who are highly intelligent, usually bored with school, and use gaming as a way of escaping other problems in their lives such as being socially awkward or suffering from depression,” she said.
“They use the game as a way of coping with something missing in their real lives,” continued Young.
As the popularity of online gaming continues to rise, it would seem so might the need for game addiction services and research.
Game addiction affects few
Brandon Campbell/Daily Eastern News According to recent studies there exists a small minority of online video game players who have become addicted to the games they play.
