Can you really be addicted to video games?
Lesson summary
Hi there everyone, it’s Jeff and this is Plain English, where JR and I help you upgrade your English with current events and trending topics. Today is February 3, 2022 and this is lesson number 439, so you can find the full lesson resources at PlainEnglish.com/439. That, of course, includes the word-for-word transcript that you can use to follow along with the audio.
On today’s lesson, we’ll talk about “Gaming Addiction,” the newest official medical diagnosis added to the World Health Organization’s manual of official diseases and disorders. People with gaming addiction are addicted to playing video games. But not everyone agrees that this is a true disease. We’ll review the pros and cons on today’s lesson.
We’ll also talk about what it means to put one thing ahead of another thing. And JR has a song of the week. Let’s dive in.
‘Gaming addiction’ added to WHO’s list of disorders
Video games are entertaining, captivating, sophisticated, and very popular. But are they addictive in a medical sense?
For the first time, the World Health Organization has classified “Gaming Disorder” as a behavioral addiction in its International Classification of Diseases, or ICD. In other words , people can now be officially, and medically, addicted to playing games, in the same way they can be addicted to alcohol or hard drugs. This is an important development because the WHO manual is used by doctors and insurance companies around the world to identify diseases and disorders, and to provide treatment for them.
The WHO is not alone in calling gaming an addiction. China’s government also believes gaming is addictive; clinics treating video gaming addiction are popular in Asia. In August, China’s government introduced strict measures to curb teenagers’ time spend playing video games. Children age 18 or under are now only allowed to play video games for one hour at a time , and only on three nights per week.
What is gaming disorder, exactly? It’s not necessarily about the amount of a time a person spends playing games, but about the effects gaming has on that person’s life. To have “gaming disorder,” according to the WHO definition, a person must be unable to stop playing games, even though gaming interferes with other life activities, such as school, work, sleep, relationships. And the behavior has to continue for a year or more.
For years, the word “addiction” had only been used with physical substances: alcohol, heroin, cigarettes, narcotics, opioids, et cetera. Addiction to these substances can have a measurable negative impact on a person’s physical health, and when users stop using the substance, they suffer symptoms of withdrawal.
So far, so clear. But in recent decades, many psychologists have started to think that behaviors, not just substances, can be addictive. The best example is gambling. Pathological gambling was the only non-substance addiction included in the WHO manual until now. Like using substances, out-of-control gambling can have severe negative effects on a person’s life, causing gamblers to lose their jobs, lose their families, go into debt, and do any number of other self-destructive things.
But video games are controversial: the scientific community is split on whether video games, and other behavioral addictions like exercise, shopping and eating, should be classified as addictions. I’ll give you the arguments for and against classifying gaming as an addiction.
First, the arguments in favor. Gaming is an addiction because, like gambling or alcoholism, users crave additional time gaming, and they put that ahead of other things they know they should be doing. Users know their habit is not healthy, and they know it is self-destructive, but they can’t stop themselves. While it’s true there are no physical symptoms, and while you can’t go bankrupt playing video games, gamers suffer all the same. They can become isolated, they have difficulty forming relationships, and they lose a lot of time. Losing time to an addiction is just as bad—if not worse—than losing money in, say, a casino.
What’s more, recent advances have given scientists a better understanding of what happens in the brains of people addicted to behaviors. Everyone’s brain releases pleasure chemicals like dopamine and serotonin when we engage in pleasurable behaviors. But that process is disordered in people who suffer from gaming addiction. They get an abnormal amount of these chemicals when playing video games; they get so much that when they stop gaming, they crave more.
But there are two compelling arguments against classifying video games as a medical disorder. The first is about the definition: almost anything can be classified as an “addiction” if it interferes with a person’s life. Many people engage in pleasurable activities to relax or distract themselves from other things in life.
One psychologist performed an experiment with tango dancers. He tweaked the definition of gaming addiction and asked tango dancers about their “tango habit.” He found that 40 percent of the dancers would be “addicted” to tango dancing, if they followed the same criteria as gaming addiction.
He didn’t mean to argue that tango dancing is an addiction. Instead, his argument is that the definition of gaming disorder is too loose. Where do you stop? What makes video gaming an addiction but not tango dancing or thousands of other activities?
The other argument against classifying gaming as an addiction goes like this: the behavior is not the disease, it’s the symptom. According to this argument, people who engage in compulsive video gaming are definitely doing harm to themselves. But they do this because they have other disorders like depression or anxiety, and those disorders are already classified in the WHO manual.
That is an argument for the doctors to sort out. In the meantime, though, gaming companies aren’t doing themselves any favors by making their games increasingly more complex and social. They also employ the same psychological tactics as casinos to keep their users engaged for more time. Video game makers increasingly make money not from upfront purchases, but from in-game purchases, so they have every incentive to keep their users in front of the screen for as long as possible.
Video games evolving
I didn’t grow up playing video games and I don’t play them now. I had to look up the names of the most popular video games and I only recognized Fortnite. And the only reason I recognized that name is because of their lawsuit against Apple and the app store lately.
Apparently, it’s a lot different than when we used to play games that came in a cartridge. Each game would have a certain number of levels, you’d reach the objective at each level, and at a certain point you’d finish the game. After reaching the highest level, it was no longer fun. But today, a lot of games are not objective-based, they’re creativity-based. So instead of trying to reach a level, you create your own experience, and it can constantly be renewed and refreshed.
I’d be interested in trying one, so if you are a gamer, give me a few suggestions on games I can play on a PC—I’m not buying a gaming console—but tell me a game you think I could play on a normal PC and I’ll try it out. Send your suggestions my way to [email protected]
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