It's one of my favourite subjects, especially because I think most journalists just blurt out a load of nonsense when writing about gaming addiction. Well, I finally found an article that got it right.

Instead of immediately starting to rant about the dangers of online games and their addictiveness, the article wonders:

For most of us, gaming's just a hobby -- even if it's a hobby that we tend to take rather seriously. The line between hobby and habit is a blurry one, though, and it's not easily understood. When it comes to doing something you enjoy, how much is too much? More to the point, just what is it that makes a good game so hard to put down? Could it be that the quest for better loot or the promise of new adventures is not only driving us to keep playing but is also making it impossible to stop?

That's the interesting stuff. Addiction is a word that everyone uses way too easily, imho. "Are you addicted to your mobile phone too?" Commercials ask us, and I think: "No. My mobile phone is a useful tool in life, and I take it with me everywhere I go, but it does not disrupt my life. On the contrary." It annoys me that people use this word, which describes a serious condition of compulsion to engage in some specific activity, despite harmful consequences to one's health, mental state or social life, for things they just like to do a lot.

The writer of this article explains why we spend so much time on online games: immersion and community. On the one hand there's this expansive fun new world that's much more logical and rewarding than real life, and on the other hand there's a load of people out there who want to play with us. About immersion:

"Immersion has progressed to the point where entering a world [inside a game] is almost automatic. At the point we're at, playing healthy not only means understanding immersion but [also] recognizing that these secondary worlds are designed to be more fulfilling than the primary. Learning to balance them is its own technology. It's something that humankind is in a process of developing, even if on a subconscious level for most gamers."

The problem there is that most of us don't want to have to recognize this. It's nowhere near as much fun when you have to keep reminding yourself that it's just a game. Plus, if you're playing just to get away from it all, what's the point in having to worry about getting too far away from it?

And about the online community:

And then there's the culture. MMOs can have that added drawing power for most people because of the social group that grows with them. But is community more important than narrative? "Let me answer the question with a question," says Clark, who is currently studying the level of meaning in the online relationships forged by World of WarCraft players. "Since when are regular friendships addictions?"

My conclusion: gaming is not an addiction, even when you play four or more hours per day. If your house is relatively clean, your health is good, you still do your daily activities like school or work and shopping and social calls, gaming is a hobby you just like to spend time on. The people you meet in online communities are just as real as people you meet in ordinary life, so spending time with them should not be called an addiction.

True, different rules apply to online communities than to other kinds of human contact. Communication in online communities is often very fast; faster than reason, it often seems to me. There is more drama, and it blows over faster too. People are harsher to each other than in real life, I think, and everything is just faster, both the forming of new relationships and the dying of old ones.

But the word addiction doesn't start to apply until a person's life is disrupted by their compulsion to play the game, sleep deprivation, no time for work or the groceries or to feed the cat. If this happens to an adult, they need to seek help to stop playing. If it happens to a teenager however, there's an easy answer, luckily. The parents take away the game. Clean and simple. Cold turkey from a game is very liberating, I can tell you that from experience.
x-posted to girl_gamers