Addiction

Personally, like a lot of other people, I don’t really agree with the term addiction’ for videogames. Or perhaps I should say I don’t really think it’s a stand out problem. The reason for this is that addiction (or ‘problematic use’) to anything is always happening, whether it’s food, alcohol, books, drugs, sex, television or even shopping. It seems to me that the only reason videogame ‘addiction’ is viewed so negatively is because of the negative image of videogames and video gamers in the media.

Now, I think that everyone who has played videogames before understand the addictive nature of games. I think I can safely assume many of us has said before that we would play for x length of time and ended up playing far beyond that. This implies the lack of control from the ‘user’, which I guess in turn, suggests some form of ‘addiction’.

But to a lot of us, it is just another form of procrastination. The same point can be made about watching the tele, or eating a bowl of ice cream, or reading a book. All of these things are just daily activities that give us pleasure, but then when you start using them problematically, well then, it’s a problem. I guess what my point is, is that videogame addiction is indeed a problem, but so is being addicted to anything. Let’s chill out and stop hating on games.

Han-Gyul Cho