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Gaming Disorder and Video Game Addiction: What to Know
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It’s official, say experts: Video games are addictive and can hurt your mental health.
By Michael Dolan Medically Reviewed by Justin Laube, MD
The idea of video games being addictive is certainly not new. Decades before people played Candy Crush on their phones for hours, there were people with pockets full of quarters, playing Pac-Man in arcades for hours. But given the prevalence of video gaming in our lives, the World Health Organization (WHO) has been keeping a watchful eye on people who have become so obsessed with gaming that it has had a negative impact on their lives.
In January 2018, in a draft of their new International Classification of Diseases (ICD), the WHO addressed this addiction for the first time in a condition known as “gaming disorder.” In May 2019, the WHO officially voted to update its ICD to include gaming disorder as a behavioral addiction in a section which includes other addictive behavior, such as substance abuse and gambling. Their new guide, ICD-11, takes effect in January of 2022.
Bruce Y. Lee, MD, associate professor of international health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health ih Baltimore, helps explain what gaming disorder is, and things to consider when you feel that someone is addicted to gaming.
The Negative Impacts of Gaming Disorder “The real issue is how is gaming affecting a person’s life,” Dr. Lee says. “This can apply to nearly any habit or activity. If an activity is helping you and not really hurting anyone, then there’s not a real reason to consider it a disorder. But if you look at the ICD-11, they really specify that it’s affecting the person’s life in a negative way.”
The Negative Impacts of Gaming Disorder “The real issue is how is gaming affecting a person’s life,” Dr. Lee says. “This can apply to nearly any habit or activity. If an activity is helping you and not really hurting anyone, then there’s not a real reason to consider it a disorder. But if you look at the ICD-11, they really specify that it’s affecting the person’s life in a negative way.”
Translation: Gaming Disorder Symptoms in Real-Life Language “In other words,” Lee says, “for number one, gaming controls you and you don’t control it. For number two, it’s taking you away from other things that you should be doing. And three, you keep doing it even though you know it is hurting your life, or others know that it’s hurting your life. And lastly, it should occur over a period of 12 months, unless there is some kind of emergency situation. Everyone can get absorbed in something for a short period of time. You don’t necessarily want to call something a disorder because a person does an activity a lot. In most cases, people are able to say ‘I no longer want to do this,’ but if it lasts more than 12 months, than that’s when you start to think this may be an issue.”
Determination of a Gaming Problem and Who Is Affected by a Gaming Disorder “What the WHO does with the ICD-11 is establish whether something is going to be a condition or not, and give some definition to it,” Lee says. “In terms of more specifics, different experts will come in and determine more kinds of diagnostic screening as a result of the classification.”
Continued Next Week
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