Online Gaming Addiction Using Official Mental Disorder Essay

The videogame addiction may seem funny or ridiculous, but in reality it is a dangerous obsession that truly exposes several needs that have yet to be addressed within the afflicted. Addiction is a damaging problem, and the impact of varying sorts of addictions, such as illegal and

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

Video games were created to provide a unique, interactive experience for the user. This “experience” is something we can define as being fun, engaging, and interesting. This was the mindset of Dr. Frankenstein in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; he was extremely engaged and interested in his work regarding the monster. However, MMORPG’s represent the bad side to video games; in the same way that Frankenstein’s monster was the hellish subject that interested him, MMORPG’s still interest some users despite their lack of true video game “experience”. In fact, MMORPG’s cause addiction, separate families, lead to depression, and separate the user from real life, indicating that they are virtual “animals” that need to be tamed.

In Iran, there are few and limited studies on the effects of addiction to computer games on players. Considering the increasing rate of addiction to computer games among Iranian adolescents and youth, the present study was conducted to

Shouldn’t this generation be required to play Pac-Man, Asteroids, Galaga, Centipede Pit Fall or Frogger before they get to play Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto or Halo? The games these days have real life graphics and by some can be considered offensive and too graphic, having an (EC) early childhood to (AO) an adult only rating (Entertainment Software Rating Board). Games went from being a nice hobby to a young kid to the average gamer now being an average age of 34 years old. The popularity of game usage is detrimental to the American society, changing our nation to

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’.

Video games or online games are played everyday by a vast majority of teens in the United States. It is estimated that in 2008 approximately 70-90% of teens reportedly play these games. Many individuals believe that video games offer a learning experience like no other. However, video games distract from learning and actually negatively affect the minds of teen players, therefore, playing video or online games is indisputably harmful to adolescents’ intellectual and social development.

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

Our modern world’s virtual connectivity can have subtle, but arduous effects on society as a whole and for each individual. While these technologies are relatively new compared to humankind’s grand history, each year, more research is being conducted and released on the impacts that social media, video games, and virtual simulations have on the youth. All this research seems to have one thing in common which is that even though technology does have obvious benefits, no one can deny the fact that there are some serious repercussions arising alongside the advantages. Most of these issues deal with emotional and social developments that can be observed in the more recent generations who are raised with access to technology. Experts have written

What is the cause of addiction(s)? An addiction is cause by a person’s psychological habit that got developed into the person’s mental and physical condition, in which a person is unable to take control. The reason why people develop an addiction is because they have psychological, emotional, and interpersonal problem that they don’t want to deal with, so they find alternative ways to avoid the problems. Some people turn to drugs as a way to escape reality, but the majority of the people turn to the virtual online world to escape from their psychological, emotional, and interpersonal problem. A virtual online game that is currently popular for people to escape their psychological, emotional and interpersonal problem would be a game called World of Warcraft. World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game(MMORPG), in which player have a vast of task they can do, ranging from exploring areas, fight monsters to level up, quests, interacting and battle with other players to unlocking abilities and spells. World of Warcraft, like many other MMORPG, is a highly addicting game. The reason for that is because there are always new things to do, there are a lot of people to socialize with, and it is a place where a person can go to escape from reality. World of Warcraft, get people addicted by creating habit(s) to their consumer causing them to want to play regularly. In the book, The

Second Skin is a documentary about the world of MMORPGs, or massively multiplayer online role playing games, and it focuses on those who have given everything they have to the game. The director examines the pros and cons of MMORPGs, why the games are so popular, and how they can effect the players lives. The psychologists and sociologist they interviewed in the film speculate the long-term effects of spending extended periods of time in a fantasy world, secluded from reality and basic human interaction. These obsessive gamers become addicted to online computer games and will do anything to keep playing the game. Some become so consumed in the game that it eventually starts to negatively effect their lives.

Video Games cause social isolation, for example a 15 year old boy in Sweden pass out after playing World of Warcraft for 24 hours straight, he passed out because he started experiencing social withdrawal, the kid was lacking contact with other humans, and his body’s response to the problem was to pass out. On an extreme level, Ruya Cunningham, a college student spent twenty hours a week playing video games, she eventually “dropped out of school, stopped exercising, and even stopped bathing” (Marcovitz 70). Later on, Ruya Cunningham developed depression, but she kept playing video games because she was addicted to the game. When people are addicted to a game, there is a spiraling vortex sucking the gamer away from society and from sanity. As a consequence of playing violent video games, many teen gamers struggle with real world relationships, this is because they form close virtual relationships with people they meet online. A man in Wisconsin has formed a tremendously close relationship with a group of guys he plays online with, he discusses politics with them and they send each other Christmas gifts even though they do not know each other (Marcovitz 70-72). Video games can also affect the players mental and their physiological state.

Internet gaming is one of the most common problem of which many people around the globe are facing in their daily lives. Addiction, one of the serious problems with internet gaming have caused severe changes to their behavior and attitude to life. Majority of teenagers and

Many young children and teenagers have heard their mother’s incessant plead to get away from the screen and to go outside or pick up a book for once instead. The urge to play “just one more level” before starting that homework or doing those chores can be quite distracting. But are video games really as awful as Mom exclaims or as brutal as those TV ads depict? It turns out that video games can have a strong impact on participants’ lives in both positive as well as negative ways.

“You know you 're a serious World of Warcraft player when the game starts interfering with your life. You know you 're an addict when your life starts interfering with the game” (qtd. In Van Cleave iv). This anonymous quote in Ryan G. Van Cleave’s memoir, Unplugged: My Journey Into the Dark World of Video Game Addiction, perfectly describes why game addiction has become an increasing problem in this technology-based world. While it is questioned by some people, whether video game addiction is an actual disorder, one study found dopamine levels increase in a person’s brain, while playing games. Consequently, video game addiction is an actual problem and it should be treated as such because it can correlate to depression, social isolation, violence, lack of success in the education system, and even spending less time taking care of one’s personal hygiene.