Gaming addiction theory is misguided

IT’S CERTAINLY common to hear parents complain that their children are “addicted” to video games.

Some researchers even claim these games are comparable to illegal drugs in terms of their influence on the brain – that they are “digital heroin” or “digital pharmakeia”.

The American Psychiatric Association has identified internet gaming disorder as a possible psychiatric illness, and the WHO has proposed including “gaming disorder” in its catalogue of mental diseases.

This is all terribly misguided. Playing video games is not addictive in any meaningful sense. It is normal behaviour that is not damaging or disruptive of lives in the way drug or alcohol use can be.

Let’s start with the neuroscientific analogy: that the areas in the brain associated with the pleasures of drug use are the same as those associated with the pleasures of playing video games.

This is true but not illuminating. These areas of the brain – those that produce and respond to the neurotransmitter dopamine – are involved in just about any pleasurable activity: having sex, enjoying a nice conversation, eating good food, reading a book, using methamphetamines. The amount of dopamine involved in these activities, however, differs widely. Playing a video game or watching an amusing video on the internet causes roughly about as much dopamine to be released in your brain as eating a slice of pizza.

A large-scale study of internetbased games recently published in the American Journal of Psychiatry bears out our scepticism about this “addiction.” Using the American Psychiatric Association’s own metrics for ascertaining psychiatric disorder, the study’s researchers found that, at most, 1% of video game players might exhibit characteristics of an addiction. Addiction The study found that almost none of those classified as being possibly addicted to video games experienced negative outcomes from this addiction. This suggests that the diagnosis of addiction doesn’t make much sense to begin with.

The biggest difference between addicts and non-addicts the study found, was that the addicts played more video games. This diagnosis verges on mere tautology.

The risk here, of course, is that by treating the immoderate playing of video games as an addiction, we are pathologising relatively normal behaviour. Consider a common diagnostic question used to help identify addiction, such as “I always use X to relax after a bad day.” Well, if X is methamphetamine, that’s a worrisome choice, one that presumably indicates addiction. But if X is playing video games, how is that different from unwinding after work by knitting, watching sport or playing bridge?

We don’t deny that new technologies come with some perils.

Evidence for addiction to video games is virtually non-existent. Indulging in panic about technology or nostalgia for a better past that never really existed does us no good. – New York Times

● Christopher J Ferguson, a professor of psychology at Stetson University, and Patrick Markey, a professor of psychology at Villanova, are the authors of Moral Combat: Why the War on Video Games is Wrong.