Watching the news about a video game today on Youtube which I won't cite because of the fact that they quoted a woman who claims her son failed out of college for playing games and0 failed a bowling class. I came to wonder: Are video games a hobby or an addiction? Why do you pick what you do? I honestly think it's a hobby that with everything, can turn into a addiction. Games are just a fun pastime that people play to kill time or to relieve stress. Can it turn into an addiction? Yes, but it's up to the individual to control how much they play.
I don't think it's possible to become "addicted" to a game, at least not physically. It would only be a mental addiction. That's all on you though. If you can't just sit back and chill on a game for a few hours then be done with it, that's a problem you should think about and try to take care of. Even if you rely on games as an emotional clutch, and there are people who do, you should still be able to put the paddle down and go do what needs to be done. I'll admit it. I'll stay up for three days straight to beat a game, if I don't have anything to do. But if it even looks like it might start to interfere with my life, the system shuts down. Anyone who says they're addicted to games needs to wake up. You're not addicted, you just need a little more self control. If it sounds like I'm being a bit harsh then good. Come back to me and let me know when you go through physical withdrawals, then I'll believe you're addicted to a game. That's just like how people blame violence on video games. Blame the parents who don't care enough to watch their children and the content they're seeing. They're more than likely the ones who bought the kid the game in the first place. Start being parents and take the **** away from your kids if you don't want them to have it. Don't p***yfoot around. Sorry, side rant right there. Anyway, no you can not be addicted to a game. I don't consider mental addictions actual addictions. It's just something you really like and you don't have enough self control to say no.
I play games pretty much all the time, but I can be interrupted to do things. Remember the story of the boy who went what, four days straight without sleep playing games and passed out? He didn't even notice things like his body signaling he had to use the bathroom. I mean, how do you not notice when you have to go to the bathroom? I mean, really. There should be a point where something distracts you, but in his case, he probably paid no attention to it. You're better than the boy because you can at least be interrupted, but that's still too much. I'd say staying up all night one night every once a while to play video games or whatever is more than sufficient. What does it deplete from your life, though? Personally, if they want to call it physical addiction, just let them. It's not all the parents' responsibility, though. Yes, the parents should teach their kids that they're just games and not imitate things shown on them. However, if the kids choose to imitate what's seen on video games -- and TV, for that matter -- because they either haven't been taught yet or are disobeying orders, that is their choice in that regard, and I don't think it's fair to blame the parents. Take the video in this thread, for example. Would you blame the parent? I personally wouldn't. (Feel free to post there, by the way, if you have anything to add.
That's called having no self-control. Also, you'd think the parents would have forced him to quit playing. I'm sure I already said this in the corresponding thread though. There's no harm in it. As long as you eat, and do other things necessary for your health. Sleep isn't a big thing. People go without sleep a lot in the real world. I know just about every employee in the factory I work at runs on about an hour to two hours of sleep because there isn't enough time in the day. You either do what you got to do or sleep. Sleep is like the last thing on my mind when I get off of work. I'm thinking of everything else that has to be done first. So sleep isn't a biggy. I'm not going to sit here and listen to a bunch of bull**** from "people" who try and tell me they are addicted to video games. Not when I've seen real addiction kill people on the streets, put people behind bars, and generally ruin the lives of them and the people around them. That's something that can piss me off in two seconds flat. I disagree. I'll give the kids about .01% of the blame, but the rest lies with the parents. If you don't care enough to make your kid hate you, you're not a good parent. Trust me, there is no winning when it comes to parenting. You're children will hate you at one point in their lives. You can't be the buddy. You can try, but then you start letting them get away with things they shouldn't. If a kid is playing a game for too long, you turn it off. If a kid doesn't want to listen, I'm sorry, but you beat his/her ass (obviously just spank them, no fists or backhands/slaps, anything like that). I swear, we're letting loose a softer generation. Hell, I'm part of a softer generation myself. I see kids getting a lot of the "finger" these days. For those of you who don't know what the "finger" is, it's when you wag your finger at someone who's done wrong like it's actually going to make them straighten up. I'm sorry again, but a paddle would fix a lot of these punks right up. I'm not talking abusive or nothing, just discipline. Sorry for the long side-rant. Anyways, it's not an addiction. You can't die from not playing a game. You aren't going to have withdrawals. Addiction isn't a word I like to see thrown around lightly. I know addiction. To use it like this is ridiculous.
I can't remember the exact story. Maybe his mom was at work all day and didn't know about how he took no breaks and such. At night, perhaps she wasn't aware he was staying all night every night. Those are just theories, however. Like I said, I don't remember the exact story. It's somewhere in the Current Events forum here, though, if you want to search for it. Mentally, it bothers you. However, what does it deplete from you physically? It is causing you physical pain? Most likely not. You're choosing to let this affect you and waste energy on it by getting angry over something trivial; they're not making you. By trivial, I don't mean that staying up playing video games for however many days straight is trivial, because that's obviously a bad situation to be in because it's bad for your health. However, what is trivial is them saying it's a physical addiction. It's not physically affecting you, so just let them call it whatever they want -- whether they call it mental addiction, physical addiction, or just addiction. I'm sorry, but I strongly disagree. You can't put all of the burden on the parents. The kids have to take some of the responsibility as well; otherwise, they'll never learn or at least not learn until they themselves are teenagers or young adults. Additionally, the blame can indeed vary. It could be 50% blame on the child and 50% blame on the parents, 70% blame on the child and 30% on the parents and vice-versa, or 100% blame on the child and 0% blame on the parents and vice-versa. The point is that it varies, so while, yes, it can be a lot on the parents' part, that won't always be the case. For example, if a mother frequently has been teaching her son since, for the sake of this example, he was eight years old that if a friend of theirs, regardless of age, tries to get them to do something illegal for their age to not accept it and the son is now, for the sake of this example, 15 years old and gets talked into taking marijuana by a group of kids he knows in high school, are you going to blame the mother for that after she repeatedly taught him to not do things like that and the dangers? I wouldn't.
This thread is actually asking whether or not this is an addiction though . . . I don't even . . . It's not a physical addiction. It might be a mental addiction but that's just a bunch of crap. It does bother me because half of these people don't know what addiction is. They'd probably say they were addicted to chewing gum. It's ridiculous. It's a hobby, sometimes people with no self-control show up to mess with the rest of us. You're not going to change my mind on this. You don't know the things I've seen. How many people I know who've been messed up because of addictions. Think about that, then get back to me. You may not know, and it doesn't bother you as badly, but it makes me mad. Amaury, I stop considering someone a kid when they turn 13. I'm talking about "kids." I don't know what your definition of a kid is, but fifteen is old enough to scrap with. If I had a boy I'd probably throw down with him at fifteen if he messed up. So no, I'm not going to blame the mother. I will however, blame the parents for letting their eight year old son sit on the couch all day playing video games. Then, think he's going to try the things he saw in the game and get killed. Yea, I'm going to give full blame to the parent. Kids are . . . less than intelligent. You can't just tell a kid something and expect them to follow it at that age. I don't know if you'd know this or not, but it just goes in one ear and out the other. If a guy about 15 messes up and gets busted smoking weed . . . I'd let the little brat go to jail for a couple nights. Woah, no no no no. I'm way off topic here. Look, this is what I'm saying. This is my bottom-line and there is no changing that fact. I don't believe gaming is an addiction. It's a hobby and people like to go overboard. I say forget it. You don't know when to quit it's your problem.
Having seen kids who have all the restrictions on the world on their computers by their parents and then sneak on and download thirty gigs of porn on a school computer. (True story.) Kids are going to find a way around things, they are going to find a way to play video games for hours no matter what parents do. One of the reasons why kids usually go nuts on their first year of college, not all kids mind you, but they are free from parents and they will do stupid things. Is that the parents fault? No, it's the parents responsibility until they leave and they teach them. If they have to work 60 hours a week to feed the kids which them having the kids in the first place is another debate in itself, they can't be there for the kids. I do think video games can be addicting. I have been addicted to ridiculous things. I won't mention it here because it's downright humiliating when I look back at it, but it still massively affected my life and took it over. I lost friends due to it, I think if you are constantly thinking about it non-stop, you have a period of time you have to watch or play the game, even if you're eating and sleeping, you are still addicted. It happens a lot more than once or twice.
I would say they can be addicting, but it has to be rare. People say I'm addicted to video games, but I seriously believe I'm not. I barely touched my 3DS all weekend. In fact, yesterday I played it for like an hour, then went the rest of the day without it. Today, I played when I woke up, and haven't used it for more than four hours. Yes, I do take it to school, but I rarely even look at it there, because I'm more focused on school at the time.
The line between hobby and addiction is very thin, and determined on perspective. To some, a hobby is just a hobby, and then to others the people the hobby is an addiction. IMO it only becomes an addiction when it limits your function in daily life. You see people on YouTube who make videos about gaming and whatever who have a room full of games. Some would say that that person is addicted, when that person says it's just their hobby. Personally, I'm inclined to side with the person who says that's just their hobby. Saying that someone is "addicted" to something usually comes off as a desperate insult, or from a judgmental person trying to make sense of how that person does not fit into your expectations of how a person should live.
Child, then. Either way, until a child is 18, they're under their parents' responsibility, but it doesn't mean that when they do something wrong at whatever age that involves the law all blame goes or should go on the parent. So, going by my marihuana example, at 15, he's still under his parents' responsibility, but it was his decision that and will later have to deal with the consequences of letting -- or choose to let -- the group influence him, not his parents. In regards to kids, it's not fair to say that they all have the "in one ear; out the other" mentality. I never said I myself thought it was a physical addiction, I was just saying it's a waste of energy to get angry distinction differences.
