Addiction For Game Addiction

(Link: Now that you see how people incorperate there games into their day, lets look at relationships through video games)

Whether gambling, alcohol or shopping, it is surprising to find video games being a part of this growing list. Video game addiction is a growing epidemic that is running rampant through the world, including parts of Asia. Death from video games is becoming more common and sounds like a horror story (Flanagan). Contributing to the increase are illnesses and social disorders, two well-known conditions being social anxiety and depression. By shutting themselves out from the real world, the only light being the screen of their television or computer and eyes glued to the screen, their basic needs are ignored.

Video game addiction is not yet recognized by the American Medical Association as a diagnosable disorder, but addiction has become a very real problem for many video game players. An addiction is when the person needs more and more of a substance or behavior to keep them going, and if the person does not get more, they can become irritable and miserable. Compulsive gaming meets these criteria, and there have been many studied instances where severe withdrawal symptoms in game addicts are seen when parents take away the child’s electronic gaming system. According to chapter three of the book, a study in Singapore of 3,000 middle schoolers found that the

International studies have shown that between seven and eleven per cent of gamers show some symptoms associated with addiction. Some teens are heavy users of online role-playing games (RPGs) such as World of Warcraft and multiplayer games such as Call of Duty in which they interact with other players in real time. These teens will often neglect schoolwork and other aspects of their daily lives when they become immersed in these games. The American Medical Association has identified “video game overuse” as ‘behaviour’.

The average adolescent spends a major part of the normal week watching or interacting with some form of the media’s products. Video games are one of these media based mediums and have become increasingly popular since the 1980’s. According to a report in Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, "Female gamers spent an average of 44 minutes playing on the weekdays and one hour and four minutes playing on the weekends, and male gamers spent an average of 58 minutes playing on the weekdays and one hour and 37 minutes playing on the weekends" ("Video Game Play Among Adolescents"). What can we understand from this evidence? The fact is that adolescents, male or female, are spending tremendous amounts of time each day sitting in front of

From the past till now, video game never loses its popularity, from Gameboy to Wii, and from NDS to LOL, millions and billions of people are obsessed with this imaginary world. Some of the video games are created for educational purpose, however, most are created for the people who wants to escape from reality. “In a national Harris Poll survey of 1,178 American youths (ages 8-18), ISU Assistant Professor of Psychology Douglas Gentile found nearly one in 10 of the gamers (8.5 percent) to be pathological players.” ("Figure 2f from: Irimia R, Gottschling M (2016) ") Not only the statistic shows the high rate of addiction towards video games, terrible consequences of the addictions are more than enough to be served. For example, an extreme case of an Chinese kid called Xioyi suicide because he lose in one of his game on December 27, 2004; where he left a note that said he wanted “to join the heroes of the game he worshiped.” Video game has the potential to ruin a person’s life, as well as their family, or even the

There are several ways for parents to take to stop video game addiction, quitting games altogether will not help the addicted, but there are various alternatives. Parents can start with setting a time length for how long

An epidemic is beginning to sweep this nation. In this modern society, a majority of children, teens, and some adults are showing signs of what some experts refer to as video game addiction. Many professionals have differing opinions on the addictive nature of video games, but it does not take an expert to see that children are no longer playing outside, toddlers have learned how to operate pieces of technology that are challenging to some adults and cry when they are taken away from them, and some adults jeopardize their health every year by risking malnutrition and heart disease all in the attempts to play video games.

A report published by the Entertainment Software Association revealed that in 2015, 155 million Americans play video games with an average of two gamers in each game-playing household (Entertainment Software Association, “Essential Facts about the Computer and Video Game Industry”). With this massive popularity that has come alongside video games in mind, the question is raised: how are video games affecting today's people? With the current way video games are structured, the game rewards players for achieving certain accomplishments e.g. competitive video games reward players who achieve victories with a higher ranking. With this in mind, some gamers may place more emphasis on their gaming achievements rather than their happiness or success in the real life. This in turn might cause a gamer to become addicted; however, a distinction must be set between video game addiction and operant conditioning. Operant conditioning towards a gamer can be one of the factors contributing towards video game addiction; they are not the same thing.

The over usage of video games has appeared to affect the mind in the OFC, the striatum, and the sensory regions. Addict gamers appeared to have more of a impulsiveness control than the normal gamer. Players who had played online showed an increase of gray matter density from the other players in the left anterior cingulate cortex. Another thing I found interesting in this article was that higher amounts of dopamine appeared in addict gamers from the “reward process” in videogames than the casual gamer. The Cambridge gambling task ( which affects the brain in making poor decisions) was found higher in addict gamers. Not only that, but addict gamers appeared to have a slower information processing than normal players.

The controversial topic of video game addiction is what I have decided to focus my multi-genre research project on. Although a multitude of people do not even know of the existence of such a problem in today's society, I can assure you that this is becoming an increasingly greater problem effecting people around the world of all ages. Through my multi-genre project, I intend on proving the uselessness and detrimental qualities of playing video games, and I am going to explore some healthy alternatives to such a problematic habit.

Playing video games for hours at a time in one day, every day of the week can lead to another major problem, gaming addiction. Youth may become obsessed with the game and think they have to beat it before they do anything else and never want to leave their rooms because they want to consistently play the game. Dr. Russell A. Sabella states in his article on Education.com that: “for most people, computer use and video game play is integrated into their lives as a balanced manner. For others, time spent on the computer or video games is out of balance and has displaced work, school, friends, even family”(Sabella). Becoming addicted to video games can cause a lot of problems in the family because some parents like to have family dinners and they have to literally fight with their kid to get

For the past decades, video games have been accessible to varied kinds of groups all over the world, which are from children to adults. Meanwhile, problems of online games addiction are arising particularly rapid and evident, especially in Asia. According to the news “Gaming Addiction On the Rise in Asia” by Paul Gaita, nearly 1.2 billion out of 84 million of world wide online gamers are Asians, which has led Asia to be the chief of video game addiction. (Gaita) Also, Andrei Dinu, an author at Lerablog, points out that even though Asia is at the technological cutting-edge, it unluckily becomes the boss of video game addiction. (Dinu) With this fast growth of video gaming popularity, the public has voiced their concerns. For example, Mary Schlimme, in her research paper, she declared, “All addictions can be dangerous and harmful to the addicted person and others around him; however, video game addiction can be particularly detrimental to children.” (Schlimme) In other words, computer games indulgence hurts people with no boundary, but especially to children. Even though a lot of researchers put forward their argument that violent video games could release one’s desire for acting violently, there is an increasing number of evidence proving that excessively playing video games can lead to a higher level of poor physical health and aggressive behavior on teens and pre-teens.

Video game addiction is a serious problem in many parts of the world today and deserves more attention. It is no secret that children and adults in many countries throughout the world play video games. According to Jennifer Seter Wagner, studies show 92 percent of under ages of 18 play video games frequently in the United States. A video game is an electronic game that needs the players to generate visual feedback on a video device such as a TV screen or a computer device. There are two concepts that people have about addiction to video games: some people believe video games benefit children mind, but most people consider video games have negative side effects for all ages. I strongly believe that video games should avoid because addiction to video gaming has several negative side effects for teenagers such as wasting money, disobeying parents, skipping class to play games, and others.

One main concern of parents is that their child would become an addict, and would not be able to perform as a healthy successful individual in the society when they grow up. Indeed, intense and prolong gaming will lead to addiction, which can decrease a person’s productivity, and, disturbing the daily routine, meaning they would stay up all night. However, to be called as an addict one has to show characteristics of addiction, which is a factor of personal behavior, performance, etc. In spite of the number of games available only, one out of ten regular gamer can be categorized as game addicts (webpage), which indicates that not many