Connection or Isolation?
The isolation is worst for the small number of people who have apparently become addicted to cyberspace gaming. They spend nearly all their time online, ignoring parents, friends, schoolwork, or jobs. They come to regard the imaginary world of the games as more important and more “real” than the world outside. (The problem—or at least the accusation—of addiction is not limited to computer games and online communities. It also occurred with live fantasy role-playing games in the 1970s and 1980s.) A few game addicts have even killed themselves rather than give up the activity. Supporters of online games and other forms of virtual reality say that the cause of the addiction is the addicts’ psychological makeup, not the games themselves. “Computer games bring to the surface the problems of the individual,” says Maresa Hecht Orzack, a clinical psychologist who teaches at Harvard Medical School. “Many of these people . . . simply don’t want to deal with their everyday lives.” 42 If such peop
