Video Game Addiction
Kevin Platzer
UMUC Asia
According to research by the Entertainment Software Association (2013) 58% of Americans play video games. The population of the United States is 314 million, meaning there are 182 million people playing video games, and that’s just one country. Furthermore, when you consider up to 15% of gamers show signs of addiction according to the American Medical Association (Khan, 2006), that’s 27 million Americans affected by video game addiction to some degree each year. Even more worrisome is Khan concludes that 70-90% of adolescents play video games. Video game addiction can have devastating psychological effects to include (Young, 2009) social and psychological withdrawal, anger problems, and depression.
Marny R. Hauge and Douglas A. Gentile (2003) conducted a study on the effects of video game addiction in adolescents. 80% of addicted adolescents tend to be male. According to a Stanford study done by Allan Reiss (2003) video games activate the reward regions of the brain more in men. Addicted adolescents are more likely to get in arguments with friends and teachers, as well as physical fights. They reported lower academic grades. The likely cause being more time spent playing video games, less time spent studying.
Many cases of video game addiction revolve around games known as MMORPGS, short for Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games. These are virtual worlds in which you perform activities with other people like fighting bosses and completing quests, with the intent of making your character better. Gamers become immersed, and build personal relationships with other characters. They start to abandon real life relationships in favor of the people they meet in game. In essence, they become the player they created in the game, and their life revolves around the game. They also forgo eating and sleeping in order to spend more time on the game. Neglecting exercise and personal hygiene is also...