Gaming addiction classified as disorder by WHO

I don't agree, Valentijn. When you have adults in their 20s, still living with their parents, not working, and spending every waking moment playing video games, that is a serious problem. Some of these people spend upwards of 20 hours a day gaming. That is an addiction.

 

Possibly they are living with parents, playing games 20 hours a day, coz they can't get a real job, or find anywhere else to live? Has anyone heard of sky high rents, and zero hour contracts?

 

I think that a big part of the problem is that these people have grown up spending too much time on their computer, tablets, game consoles, iPhones and not enough time socializing with real people; getting outdoors to play with friends, play sports, and join groups. It has become a way of life for them and they don't know any other way to be. The sad part is that their brains are now hard wired very differently to the people who didn't spend an excessive amount of time sitting in front of a screen.

 

This has become their lifestyle. There are jobs out there; maybe not full time or the line of work that they would prefer, but people who want to work usually find something.

 

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170622103824.htm

Video games can change your brain
Studies investigating how playing video games can affect the brain have shown that they can cause changes in many brain regions
Date:
June 22, 2017

Summary:
Scientists have collected and summarized studies looking at how video games can shape our brains and behavior. Research to date suggests that playing video games can change the brain regions responsible for attention and visuospatial skills and make them more efficient. The researchers also looked at studies exploring brain regions associated with the reward system, and how these are related to video game addiction.


Article:

Do you play video games? If so, you aren't alone. Video games are becoming more common and are increasingly enjoyed by adults. The average age of gamers has been increasing, and was estimated to be 35 in 2016. Changing technology also means that more people are exposed to video games. Many committed gamers play on desktop computers or consoles, but a new breed of casual gamers has emerged, who play on smartphones and tablets at spare moments throughout the day, like their morning commute. So, we know that video games are an increasingly common form of entertainment, but do they have any effect on our brains and behavior?

Over the years, the media have made various sensationalist claims about video games and their effect on our health and happiness. "Games have sometimes been praised or demonized, often without real data backing up those claims. Moreover, gaming is a popular activity, so everyone seems to have strong opinions on the topic," says Marc Palaus, first author on the review, recently published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

Palaus and his colleagues wanted to see if any trends had emerged from the research to date concerning how video games affect the structure and activity of our brains. They collected the results from 116 scientific studies, 22 of which looked at structural changes in the brain and 100 of which looked at changes in brain functionality and/or behavior.

The studies show that playing video games can change how our brains perform, and even their structure. For example, playing video games affects our attention, and some studies found that gamers show improvements in several types of attention, such as sustained attention or selective attention. The brain regions involved in attention are also more efficient in gamers and require less activation to sustain attention on demanding tasks.

There is also evidence that video games can increase the size and efficiency of brain regions related to visuospatial skills. For example, the right hippocampus was enlarged in both long-term gamers and volunteers following a video game training program.

Video games can also be addictive, and this kind of addiction is called "Internet gaming disorder." Researchers have found functional and structural changes in the neural reward system in gaming addicts, in part by exposing them to gaming cues that cause cravings and monitoring their neural responses. These neural changes are basically the same as those seen in other addictive disorders.

So, what do all these brain changes mean? "We focused on how the brain reacts to video game exposure, but these effects do not always translate to real-life changes," says Palaus. As video games are still quite new, the research into their effects is still in its infancy. For example, we are still working out what aspects of games affect which brain regions and how. "It's likely that video games have both positive (on attention, visual and motor skills) and negative aspects (risk of addiction), and it is essential we embrace this complexity," explains Palaus.

 

Not where I live. I don't know how it is in other countries.

Of course, badly paid jobs can be found where you have to work 12h a day or so and have to travel, be entirely flexible, or maybe have to do shift work. Then you hate or love your job - but still live with the parents because your wage doesn't pay a rent (or, if it does, there's not enough left for food, lest alone for clothing or medical care or social activities), and you won't meet people because you don't have the time. But you probably don't play games.

That's not a solution, is it?

 

I am not sure of your frame of reference, but addiction comes in many forms. People may loose their careers, family, friends, homes, finances, social status, health, etc due to addictive behavior.

 

@MErmaid
I have no final opinion about whether gaming is an addiction in the biological sense or not

I just have the feeling that defining it as a "mental illness" won't be helpful. I think you have to understand, not to give names.

 

I think the term 'mental illness' is becoming very over used these days.

 

I worked at several jobs that paid less than minimum wage, and struggled financially. I had to repair my own car, sew my own clothes, and doubled up on roommates so I could afford to pay rent. It was not easy at all, but I did it, and it taught me a lot about sacrifice and delayed gratification.

 

This is from the WHO website:

What is gaming disorder?

Gaming disorder is defined in the draft 11th Revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) as a pattern of gaming behavior (“digital-gaming” or “video-gaming”) characterized by impaired control over gaming, increasing priority given to gaming over other activities to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other interests and daily activities, and continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences.

For gaming disorder to be diagnosed, the behaviour pattern must be of sufficient severity to result in significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas of functioning and would normally have been evident for at least 12 months.

 

Could you have done it, and learnt the same things, from a "job" that paid minimum wage but guaranteed absolutely no hours tho (where until very recently your "contract" said that you couldnt work for anyone else)

 

If a job couldn't guarantee a minimum number of hours, I wouldn't be agreeing to not working for someone else at the same time. It's not uncommon for part time workers to be working several jobs.

 

Sorry but I don’t understand the concept of guaranteed employment? And also I am not familiar with a contract that states you can’t work elsewhere? (Is this because proprietary software/hardware was involved?)

 

Under the UK system that would have be classed as refusing work, which would mean absolutely no state benefits, and if all the employers who are actually taking on people are using these sorts of contracts, what do you do? You take one, and probably still have to live at parents, with not enough money to do anything useful, or you don't take it, live at parents, with no money, or you find a nice cardboard box and get thin, wet and cold.

Now, if you have no money, no options, nowhere to go, and lots of time........

@MErmaid Zero Hour Contracts (UK), been in existence for several years, the most common form of contract for the types of business that takes on low skilled workers, up until it was made illegal last year pretty much all of the contracts were exclusive, and guaranteed no hours, hence the name. So people didn't know if they were working the next day, or even that day, and didn't know what their income would be, if anything.

But this has been dragged so far OT, if you don;t believe me, google it.

 

What is a state benefit? How does one seek employment? Sorry, this belongs in a new thread.

In the US, at one time we used to require people to look for work, if they wanted to continue receiving unemployment benefits. It was a huge failure, so now they just hand out the check, and hope you find work.

 

In Germany, too.

I remember H&M is one of those companies "offering" such contracts.

 

I believe you, it’s just that these are new concepts for me to understand and digest. It’s messed up here, because nothing seems guaranteed, unless you are an overpaid CEO that requires to be bought out of a contract upon termination.

 

State benefits (which I thought was a universally understood term lol) is the equivalent of welfare/unemployment - it can be paid for unemployment (with strict conditions such as claimants must actively seek work 37 hours a week), disability, housing. Refusing any paid work, or training, or if you can't prove you've put in 37 hours looking for work, every week, if not on certain classes of disability benefit, means all welfare payments stop, including housing.

I hope that answers all your questions, and that I haven't upset anyone else by explaining

 

We use the term State benefits, to apply to the specific State one resides in. Federal benefits apply across all States. We have County benefits, that apply to the County of the State you reside in. And to make things more complicated, Counties may help manage State benefits, while States may help manage Federal Benefits.

It’s very difficult for a cognitively challenged person to navigate and traverse so many different points of references. Quite often on one single phone call we can be transferred to multiple agencies and multiple people, as an attempt to find the right agency and the right person to talk with.

It’s all about having the strength and determination to persevere the process.

Additionally there are more layers regarding the private world where you pay an insurance company out-of-pocket for a policy (private health care insurance, private prescription insurance, and private disability insurance.

The private world intersects with the government world too.

Then there is the corporate world, where your employer can pay another private insurance firm for a policy OR they can be self insured (health insurance, prescription insurance...) Employers can pay into a State Disability fund (managed by State Government), OR they can opt out of the state plan and fund their own private disability policy (ERISA). For ERISA plans, your employer can pay a private company (UNUM, MetLife, etc) OR choose to be self insured.

Generally if things go smoothly, you only need to pay an attorney a flat rate of $6,000 to get on Federal Disability, called SSDI. It may take 3-5 years to secure SSDI. With the long wait involved, a Federal Judge may opt to retro the first day of your start disability date, up to 2 years, which means you only get back pay for 1.5 years.

With both ERISA plans and private (pay out of pocket) disability plans, attorneys take about 33% of the net back pay you receive, which usually depends on an annual review process (to deny or approve the claim). If the attorney has to get more involved than pushing some paperwork around, then they usually charge 40% or more of your net back pay you receive. If initially, or at any point in the annual review cycle, your claim is denied, and all appeals are denied, then a judge will get involved and make a decision. And then the whole process starts all over again in the next annual review cycle. Oh, I forgot to mention, whenever you get denied, all payments immediately stop.

Your world seems so much simpler and easier to navigate.