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The Economist January 1st 2022
International
Addictive behaviour
Can you get hooked on video games?
Games-makers’ latest business models have bolstered the case that you can
W
hen china’s government censors books, bars “eff eminate men” from television or spoonfeeds Communist Par ty dogma to schoolchildren, liberals agree that its behaviour is shockingly repressive. But when in August it banned children from playing video games for most of the week, liberals who happened to be parents were in two minds. Yes, restricting the un der18s to an hour of gaming a day, on only three nights a week, was rather drastic. But perhaps it might be good for them? China’s government argues that video games are addictive. This fear is not new. Two decades ago players of “Everquest”, an early online game, ruefully dubbed their hobby “Evercrack”. Gamingaddiction clin ics have spread from China and South Ko rea to the West (Britain’s ritzy Priory clinic treats gaming addiction as well as staples such as sex, shopping and cocaine). Now the World Health Organisation (who) has lent support to the Chinese po sition. On January 1st the latest edition of its International Classifi cation of Diseases
(icd), a manual widely used by doctors and healthinsurance fi rms, comes into force. For the fi rst time it recognises an affl iction it calls “gaming disorder”. It is tempting to dismiss all this as just another moral panic about an arriviste form of entertainment. Twenty years ago games were condemned for making play ers violent, when there is no evidence that they do. But the argument matters, and not just to parents exasperated by their off spring’s preference for “Fortnite” over maths or oldfashioned social interaction. Newzoo, a consultancy, puts global video game revenues at $170bn in 2020, far ahead of music or cinema, and growing quickly. The idea that computer games can be addictive stems from a change in how psy chologists understand addiction. For ma ny years it required a physical substance, such as nicotine or morphine, on which a patient could become hooked, says Rune Nielsen, a psychologist at the it University of Copenhagen. That began to change in the late 1990s, with the idea that people
could become addicted to pleasurable be haviours as well as drugs. For one such behaviour, that defi nition is fairly uncontroversial. “Not many peo ple these days dispute the idea that you can become addicted to gambling,” says Mark Griffi ths, a psychologist at Nottingham Trent University. But, he says, that line of thinking also “opens the theoretical fl ood gates” to defi ning all sorts of other fun ac tivities as “addictive” in ways that stretch most people’s understanding of the term. Besides gaming, Dr Griffi ths studies addic tions to exercise, sex and work. One paper, published in 2013 (not written by Dr Grif fi ths) surveyed keen tangodancers and found that around 40% might qualify as “addicts” under the new paradigm. Besides gambling, which was already included in the icd, videogaming is the only behavioural addiction on the who’s list. Diagnosis relies on compulsive use and negative consequences. Like other junkies, those suff ering from “gaming dis order” put their next hit over most other activities, even if that it causes harm in other parts of their lives. That a few players develop unhealthy relationships with their pastimes seems hard to argue with. Psychologists describe gamers who forgo sleep, offl ine relation ships and work. Rows with families are common. Many call themselves addicts, and struggle to kick their habits. Hilarie Cash, the clinical director of restart, a
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