Addiction

As has already been discussed, the word addiction is hugely overused in relation to many new-media techs. People, myself included, often use it as a kind of shorthand for when we engage with the Internet or (some) video games for long periods of time, as in “I’m so addicted to this cat blog”. This casual use is obviously far removed from the realities of any sort of chemical dependency. The “Problematic Use” term seems to eliminate much of the carry-overs from the real world of true addiction. But how do we judge “persistent and deleterious effects on their life”?

I don’t know if I could ever place my gaming habits within that definition, if we take “deleterious” as meaning harmful or dangerous. The post from lici_haysom surely described what I would consider a fairly extreme engagement with a video game, in my experience at least. But was it deleterious? It certainly sounds like his social life was harmed, but as the Cover reading argued, those sorts of judgements are not really useful. When and how do we decide that a person’s video game use fits this criterion, and who decides this? Do we have to fall back into the rhetoric of Addiction, and say that the gamer must first admit they have a problem before they can get help?

Supplanting the term “addiction” is undoubtedly useful though, as its use seems to galvanise both those who say it is ridiculous to associate video games with a physical dependency (and therefore any type of dependency), and others who point to video games as a societal evil. I just don’t know that many gamers could fit the definition of Problematic Use, but maybe I’m being naïve.