There was an Article on MSN News that I read - and posted a comment on - I'll post it here in this Blog.
Enjoy,
Video Games Not an Addiction — Yet
Sun Jun 24, 2007 10:00PM EDT
Internet and video game addiction is not a mental disorder akin to alcoholism. At least not yet. American Medical Association doctors who had recommended excessive playing of video and online games be called an addiction and be added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders have backed away from the controversial recommendation, Reuters reports.
The general accord among addiction experts is that more study is needed before such a serious label is applied to the 10 percent of video gamers who have a problem with excessive video and online game playing.
There are no findings yet to "suggest that this is a complex physiological disease state akin to alcoholism or other substance abuse disorders, and it doesn't get to have the word addiction attached to it," Dr. Stuart Gitlow of the American Society of Addiction Medicine and Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York told Reuters.
Other doctors noted research is not conclusive over whether video games are addictive. But as Dr. Louis Kraus of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and a psychiatrist at Rush University Medical Center says in the article, when kids spend too much time playing video games they are not doing other things to help them socialize with friends, get exercise, and stay healthy.
Wise words I will heed as my kids' summer vacation begins. I'm all for including video games in the mix of vacation fun, as long as my kids are reading, swimming, and playing outside and getting exercise with friends, too. Finding the right balance is always tricky. Ill let you know how we do on that score this summer, if you do, too. How do you make sure your kids don't spend endless hours on video games, especially when they have more free time on their hands?
Wade Comments:
I don't think it is a 'game' per say that is addictive - I play allot myself. and have gone through times of abstinence where I wouldn't play any games at all.
I found that I would replace that time with TV or Video Watching - or Reading a book. I found that it was 'leisure time' activities that I desired to spend my time on.
you have but to see some one that has a Chemical Addiction and the trauma that person has to go through to 'kick the addiction' to realize that to classify a desire to spend vast amounts of time playing Video games in the same category as a Chemical addiction would just be plain wrong.
There may be mental or emotional issues that a hard core video game player has or is dealing with - and Video games may be being used as a coping mechanism to deal with those issue... But I definitely think that the right decision was made here to do additional research. It's clearly not easy to prove that it is a 'Game' that is causing the behavior that has similarities to behaviors exhibited by addicts.
In my case - Take the game away and I'll fill that time up with something else, Reading for example. Can we blame the 'video game' for the fact that society finds 'reading' to be an acceptable past time, yet chokes on finding 'Gaming' an acceptable activity for an adult?
If we find that 'Gaming' is addictive - then we need to start looking at Golf and other sports that can consume vast amounts of time and monetary resources of individuals that get 'really into it'. It is a Slippery slope if you claim that an 'object' has the power to addict, and not look at treating the actual emotional and mental problems that an individual has.
If you can blame a 'game' for the maladies that you have in life, it seems like one more thing to get through before the 'true' problem can be treated.
That's my 2 bits, take it from someone that has been accused of being an addict, it's not the game causing some malady in me - it's just me, I have my own issues and I'm using the game/movie/book/mindless TV watching to deal with it.
by Wade Hone.