Killing Puppies

Situation 1: “Mum, I’m sorry to tell you this, but I’m addicted to Heroin”

Situation 2: “Mum, I’m sorry to tell you this, but I’m addicted to killing puppies”

Situation 3: “Mum, I’m sorry to tell you this, but I’m addicted to videogames”

Which one do you think is going to sound least frightening to a mother? And yet videogame addiction is still feared the world over by parents who think it is causing their children to become stupid and ignorant. When really it is usually the parents ignorance about the videogames that is causing their fears. From personal experience, anyone I’ve heard people saying are addicted to videogames, when looked at objectively it is just a hobby. I can’t say I know anyone who would react like a crack-head whose drugs are taken away if his or her games or their console was taken away. I don’t think I know a single person who I would actually class as being ‘addicted’ to videogames. But then again, I don’t know everyone. I am not going to rule out the possibility that there are people in the world who are, especially with some case studies I have read, but I just think the subject of game addiction may have been exaggerated. People are acting as if every home has a person completely addicted to videogames, who would go psycho and start shooting people if his character died. If there are people like this in the world it would be a long jump to go from that to blaming the games completely for it. There were serial killers along time before there were videogames.