Addiction or Problematic use

I remember last year while writing in the 2010 blog I stated that my partner played a lot of play station games (ps3) to be exact. He played games like FPS and RPG’s. At first I thought to myself what the hell is he doing on there this guy must be addicted I think he has a problem. But from his perspective he wasn’t at all addicted. It was just fun and a way of socialising with his friends!!!

However, in class when Kevin discussed addiction stating that addiction is a loaded term and can be better defined by Bakker and Clark’s term PROBLEMATIC USE. He uses Bakker’s term 'problematic use' because addiction is so loaded and emotive in my opinion it seems a bit PC to me. Problematic use meant that the state of a powerlessness person experiences when and despite attempts to stop and reduce playing games and can’t walk away. I still prefer ‘ADDICTION’ over problematic use maybe because I’m used to the term because I always use it. But what do I know about video games??? The theoretical conclusions made by such a term are believable, but in a practical sense I see no importance in applying academic terms to define addiction. As addiction can be hard to define due to the context of how people see it. However to define addiction using non-chemical meanings two examples used in Kevin’s lecture is gambling when people pre -disposed and also being a workaholic as some people hide from real life by fixating on work. IF THEY FIT in than games do too this is known to be compulsion and psychological dependence.

Nevertheless, the reason why problematic use is better described than addiction because it describes the situation while acknowledging that there can be a problem at play. That’s why addiction is dangerous because it is contested.