While I was watching my favorite programmings on G4TV about one week ago, I stumble on "The Feed" ticker claiming that doctors and scientists alike found out that video game addiction is a form of mental illness. At first, I was a be curious on why would they just announce it in the first place, not to say that I know some advert effects of playing video games. Two days later, I witness a commercial that strikes a complaint to me. There was two guys playing video games. After a while, one of them looks at his friend, thinking that he has better things to do besides playing video games non-stop. The other guy is . . . well . . . glued to the video game has if the game he is playing took over his mind. This commercial claims to be a "public service announcement" in the same manner as other life-threatening vices like alcohol consumption and smoking marijuana.
I understand there are cases that video games can be addictive. I know that some parts of the brain, especially the one the controls aggression, are highly active when gamer plays a video game. But to call and blatantly televised video game addiction a mental illness is not only an embarrassment to video games, but also to science.
Think about what is an addiction and what is qualified to be addictive. The term for addiction is simply habit-forming. If there is an obsession with a particular activity, it can be qualified as an addiction. We, as the majority, all are familiar with the addiction of alcohol and nicotines. You came to someone with a cigarette problem, you told him/her to stop, and that person will not do so. We, as game enthusiastic, also knew about game addiction, because there has been times when we simple cannot stop playing a video game for any reason.
Why I am stating about addiction instead of tackling about the link of video games and illness? Of all of the addiction listed (hundreds or even thousands), video game addiction was the one claim to be a mental illness. I know that they work hard with statistics and experiments on the influence of games, but it bothers me to witness that something humble (maybe not violent games) and contains no outside chemicals influencing the gamers are in par with other mental illness, such as autism.
Does the scientists mean to tell me that even though cigarette addiction may lead to death because of cancer and other possible cause is not a mental illness, and video games are? Pretty much, that is uncalled for and will not believe in such baloney.
I believe this "result" is another attack to video games on how bad they are, just like the "dangers" of being influenced with violent games. This is another of something that lawyers will use it as some liability, and also something for overprotecting parents to complain about.
What worries me about mental illness is that the FDA has permission to develop or distribute medicines and drugs that deal with the treatment of game addiction. Perhaps I am turning a molehill into a mountain, but what if it becomes a real-life case? We would have Video Game Anonymous, helping gamers breaking free of the games they were playing. We would have thousands of protesters wanting to ban video games. We would have a case that any form of electronic interactive entertainment will be considered a health risk.
