Why is it drug addicts and computer aficionados are both called users? That was the question Berkeley professor Clifford Stoll rhetorically asked in one of his more memorable quotes—one that, to this day, seems to provide endless amusement to legions of IT administrators. Stoll, who is also an astronomer and author, is perhaps best known for calling the possibility of e-commerce “pure baloney” in his book, “Silicon Snake Oil” and then starting his own Klein bottle business—online.
To the best of my knowledge, no one ever offered Stoll a serious answer to his query, but there is an interesting kernel of truth his observation underscores. For whatever reason, the language of addiction and computers has—from time to time—tended to overlap. And as many “users” have discovered, video games (i.e., what was for many, the main allure of owning a PC) do offer up a tempting pastime where one can whittle away epic portions of his or her life in the service of attaining a particular score or progressing to a certain level. Why we do this is another matter entirely. But as video games have rocketed to unprecendented popularity, the latter fact has proven quite worrisome to misguided politicians who’ve never touched a video game, as well as to select portions of the news media that thrive on sensationalistic stories about gamers who eschew real life interactions (frequently devotees of MMORPGs) for virtual ones. And let’s not forget those poor souls who simply keel over from exhaustion after playing a video game for 50 hours straight. Sloppy journalists love those guys too.
In contrast to these knee-jerk reactions, Neils Clark over at Gamasutra has provided an unusually insightful and accessible look at video game addiction that tries to unmuddy the waters surrounding this hugely misunderstood topic.
Part of the problem of course—one that Clark indirectly brings up in his article—is that the term addiction is almost always linked to vice. In other words, the thing to which you’re addicted usually becomes demonized in our culture. Smoking, drinking, gambling, masturbating—all are frowned upon when done to excess. But what many people seem to conveniently overlook is that almost anything can be addictive depending on your personality and proclivities. That’s not to say that being addicted to cigarettes and being addicted to kissing kittens are one in the same, but there is clearly a double standard when it comes to how we as a society characterize the term. Sports—whether it’s obsessive training, memorizing huge amounts of useless statistical information, or participating in those freaky fantasy leagues—comes to mind as one area of American life which can be massively addictive yet never gets fingered as “a problem.” Again, I realize that staying active—getting plenty of exercise, etc.—is far better than remaining in a vegetative state for eight hours a day. But when done to excess, the effects of such an addiction can be just as detrimental to one’s health and mental state. In the end, to simply blame video games as being inherently addictive is a vast oversimplification, one that needs to probably stop.
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