Excessive gaming not an addiction: Research

Washington, November 26: Majority of young people who seek treatment for compulsive computer gaming are not addicted, according to a research carried out by a treatment center which offers help to people addicted to video games.

Keith Bakker, founder of the Smith & Jones Centre in Amsterdam, Europe's only clinic for treating game addiction, has said that 90 percent of the people he sees are not addicts.

After treating hundreds of young gamers since the Smith & Jones Centre opened in 2006, Bakker now realized that instead of a psychological problem, compulsive gaming is a social problem that could be helped better by a stronger involvement from parents and teachers.

Since the opening of the clinic in 2006, Bakker, having treated a number of compulsive gamers, has found that only 10 percent of gamers are true addicts who show addictive tendencies to gaming, as one would to other substances, such as alcohol and drugs. Bakker thinks the traditional addiction counseling is not the way to treat the other 90 percent people who may spend four hours a day or more playing games such as World of Warcraft.

"These kids come in showing some kind of symptoms that are similar to other addictions and chemical dependencies," he said. "But the more we work with these kids the less I believe we can call this addiction. What many of these kids need is their parents and their school teachers - this is a social problem.”

The clinic has started to alter its treatment program for the compulsive gamers to focus more on developing activity-based social and communications skills to help them rejoin society. Bakker suggests that parents can be the best solution for stemming excessive gaming.

"This gaming problem is a result of the society we live in today. Eighty percent of the young people we see have been bullied at school and feel isolated. Many of the symptoms they have can be solved by going back to good old-fashioned communication,” he added. "In most cases of compulsive gaming, it is not addiction and in that case, the solution lies elsewhere."

Bakker suggests that compulsive gamers can leave gaming behind and rebuild their lives if we offer them a place where they feel accepted and where their voice will be heard.

Video game addiction, also called video game overuse, is a proposed form of psychological addiction composed of a compulsive use of computer and video games, most notably massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs).