AMA Considers Gaming as Addiction
June 23, 2007
The LA Times reports that the AMA will consider making “video game addiction” a psychiatric disorder:
The proposal also would have doctors exhort parents to curb their children’s use of the Internet, television and video games to two hours a day. In addition, it would have the AMA… lobby the Federal Trade Commission to improve the current system for rating video game content.
My first reaction that proving media causation is a high bar that is not always met. (My skepticism may derive from the fact that my last game addiction was a spring break bout with Tetris in the early 90s.) Further, gaming has become such a common activity that discerning its effects is not easy.
“The causation question is not particularly well-supported,” said Jamil Moledina, executive director of the Game Developers Conference, an annual event for professional game creators.
The proposal before the AMA also points out the inadequacies of current studies, citing “insufficient research to definitively conclude that video game overuse is an addiction.”
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Bou | November 4, 2007 at 12:45 pm
What is addiction? A pleasurable experience too heavily indulged in with the distinct difference that it may be harmful (to self, or to others by way of consequences when such people are emotionally close)
I love driving my car. I could drive 24 hours a day. Am I addicted? I love my wife to distraction — am I addicted?
Addiction is simply too much of what others don’t want us to do — for whatever reason!
Bou