If you play video games for more than 2 hours a day, you're about to be stricken with a disease. No, you haven't gotten it yet, and it'll hit without warning. But if the American Medical Association decides to formally recognize 'video game addiction' as a real disorder, millions of people across the States will be instantly infected.
This is the head of a growing trend for grey haired researches and aging conservative doctors labeling every new wave of tech culture as some sort of addiction or disorder. This most recent iteration lays out a very sweeping definition for 'addicted gamers.'
"A gamer is a term used to describe a person who plays games. Historically, a gamer was someone who played role-playing games or war games, but more recently the term has come to include computer and video game players. Although the term technically includes those who do not necessarily consider themselves gamers (ie, casual gamers), it is a commonly used colloquial term to identify persons who spend as much of their leisure time as possible playing or reading about games. Video gaming has traditionally been a social experience, and most video games are playable by more than one person. Multi-player video games can be played either competitively or cooperatively online by using multiple input devices, or by “hotseating."
See yourself there? Better call up your shrink because you need therapy, apparently.
The study suggests several calls to action, including the ESRB cracking down further on gaming ratings, calling on physicians to 'further educate the public on the health risks of gaming,' and to limit gaming time to no more than 1 to 2 hours per day. Where is the line drawn now, when doctors decide to take aim at something which people do in their leisure time that has no direct negative effect on a person's health? Besides this study's potential damaging effect on the competitive gaming scene as a whole and it's attempts to gain a more mainstream audience and following, due to the general public's perpetual willingness to swallow any sort of scare tactic pushed at them, this also could open up a proverbial can of worms regarding new treatments, crackpot psychologists, and high-profile (and don't forget high-cost) drugs to treat this new invented disease.
And that's exactly what it is, invented. As long as prevailing medical thought continues to root itself in some sort of Pleasantville 1950s mentality regarding technology and the motion of culture not only here in the States but worldwide as well, the more that medical societies like the AMA will become increasingly irrelevant in the public sphere.
I, however, am going to make sure I get in as much gaming as possible in the next few days...that is of course before I'm diagnosed with a disease. But not before I write to the AMA to urge them strongly to take up similar courses of action against action movies, cell phones, email, text messaging, playing golf, practising a musical instrument, hanging out, walking....
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070615/002750.shtml
http://blog.wired.com/games/2007/06/doctor_urges_am.html
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20031104/2344216_F.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20060915/031213.shtml
