Some people are talking about “video game addiction” or “computer addiction.” Is there such a thing?
I began studying this in 1999, largely because it seemed that people were misusing these terms and I wanted to see if there was any validity to the idea of video game “addiction.” I worried that all it meant for most people is, “my child spends a lot of time playing and I don’t understand why.” To be an addiction, it has to mean more than you do it a lot. It has to mean that you do it so much or in such a way that it begins to damage your life — it has to damage your psychological functioning, your occupational functioning, your social functioning, your family functioning, your school functioning, etc. Using the definition of pathological gambling as a guide, when we study gamers, there do indeed appear to be some children who reach a level that could be considered pathological. Unfortunately, the percentage of gamers who reach this level is not small. My best current estimate is about 8.5% of gamers are damaging their functioning to such an extent that they probably should seek help.
