‘I knew I had a problem,’ says Scott J. ‘The amount of time I spent doing it kept ramping up, and the idea of stopping was something I found terrible. I recognised all the signs of an addict and knew I had to do something’. Scott J wasn’t addicted to alcohol or drugs but to gaming.
‘It allowed me to escape. All my stress would disappear,’ explains Scott, a spokesman for Gaming Addicts Anonymous, which was established in 2014 and has steadily seen rising demand for its counselling services.
‘Playing with other people made me feel part of something, that I was accomplishing in ways I perhaps couldn’t [in the real world],’ he says. ‘I kept thinking that I’d be able to moderate my use but I couldn’t. The only solution for me was to abstain completely. It took me maybe a year to adjust. Now I have the focus to do other things in my life, to exercise and sleep. I still play games – board games’.
In fact, the average age of a dedicated gamer is actually 33. And, just like the population, half of them are grown women
You may be thinking that addition to playing video games is the stuff of teenage boys, and Scott certainly has to deal with distraught patents calling because their kids threaten to stop eating if their game time is curtailed, or who refuse to go to school. But Scott is well into his thirties. In fact, the average age of a dedicated gamer is actually 33. And, just like the population, half of them are grown women. It’s quite possible to be addicted to innocently playing four hours of Candy Crush a day on a commute as it is to be a 13-year-old locked down with ‘Call of Duty’ in their parent’s basement.
The Gaming Disorder
Indeed, psychologists now refer to IGD or Internet Gaming Disorder, the World Health Organisation has classified ‘video game addiction’ as a mental health disorder, and the DSM-5 – the bible of mental health conditions – has now defined it: If, over a 12 month period, you’re consistently preoccupied with gaming, suffer withdrawal symptoms, are deceptive about your gaming (how long you’ve been playing, for example) or have lost interest in other activities – not to mention relationships, schooling or career – then you could well be suffering from IGD.
Small wonder than in some countries – the UK and South Korea, for example – specialist centres for the treatment of gaming disorders are now opening.
It’s also unclear whether problems often attributed to excessive gaming – ADHD, autism and depression, for example – are because of gaming; or whether people with those problems are drawn to gaming
So is this something to make you wary of your new PS5? Actually, the whole topic is so new that’s still open to debate. ‘Does gaming addiction exist? Yes. But whether video games are addictive is another question entirely,’ says Dr. Mark Griffiths, head of the International Gaming Research Unit at Nottingham Trent University, UK, and the scientist most published on the topic. ‘I’m not anti-gaming at all. I play. I let my children play. But I think what we have is a small minority of players whose play has a [negative] impact on their life’.
It’s also unclear whether problems often attributed to excessive gaming – ADHD, autism and depression, for example – are because of gaming; or whether people with those problems are drawn to gaming. ‘It’s like photo-sensitivity,’ suggests Griffiths. ‘Games may trigger epilepsy but they don’t cause it’.
Not that, of course, the problem isn’t growing. After all, games are designed to be deeply engaging in ways no form of mass entertainment has been before. As Scott J argues, the 24/7 availability of games, their immersive, often realistic quality, their avatar personalisation, the means they provide to connect with other people and their reward mechanisms fire up that habit-forming dopamine release.
Dr. Angelica Ortiz de Gortari, lead researcher in eSports at the University of Bergen, Norway, prefers to speak more of ‘problematic gaming’. She stresses that certain individuals are more susceptible to developing a problematic relationship to playing video games, and that often these people have an underlying mental disorder such as anxiety or depression.
Time spent gaming has been correlated with higher BMI, poor sleep and the excess consumption of caffeine and calories. Too much gaming can make you fat, wired and tired.
‘The world of online gaming can be a highly interactive and rewarding experience, but it also comes with its fair share of potential concerns,’ she says. ‘But there’s still a lack of understanding regarding the specific characteristics of the games and the actual effects they produce’.
Pushing the Right Buttons?
There is also another side to the gaming story less often reported. Certainly studies might suggest that playing video games can have negative physical side-effects – the eye strain, repetitive strain injuries, ‘Nintendonitus’ and motion sickness that excessive gaming can bring on. And, as with anything sedentary, it’s not the healthiest thing you could be doing. Time spent gaming has been correlated with higher BMI, poor sleep and the excess consumption of caffeine and calories. Too much gaming can make you fat, wired and tired.
Some studies have even suggested gamers show a relatively higher IQ, perhaps a consequence of the fast information processing required of players by many games, or perhaps because it takes that processing speed to enjoy the games in the first place
But more recent studies – some using fMRI scans to compare gamers with non-gamers – also indicate that gaming has many positive mental health benefits, among them increased awareness and reaction times, improved working memory and increased cognitive activity. Some studies have even suggested gamers show a relatively higher IQ, perhaps a consequence of the fast information processing required of players by many games, or perhaps because it takes that processing speed to enjoy the games in the first place.
‘If a gamer spends 10,000 hours playing a game they become an expert in that game, but they also become expert in so many other things – problem-solving, strategy, tactics, planning, communication, negotiation, team-building and team management, in meeting goals – and in doing all that with a certain energy and optimism,’ enthuses David Mullich, a leading video-game designer for Apple and Activision.
Another study conducted by the Oxford Internet Institute, UK, and the first to be based on hard data rather than reports from players, concludes that gaming can improve well-being through the sense of autonomy, relatedness, competence and straight-forward enjoyment that they encourage. Playing can prove an important means of stress relief and – counter-intuitively, perhaps – social connection.
As Ortiz de Gortari says, ‘there is a lot of misinformation about the effects of video games, especially toward the negative effects, since there are numerous titles with varying content and ways to play them, and unfortunately, media like to give preference to stories with hard-hitting negative headlines’.
But, she stresses, more research – with government backing, ideally – is required before really getting to the bottom of whether gaming – and how much – is bad for you, good for you, just bad or good for a small minority, or a bit of all of the above. In the meantime, it says something that she would like to see game developers provide warnings as to the potential effects of their games while playing and post-play. And the research, she says, can’t come fast enough.
