07.02.07 5:00 AM CDT
• Modern Wizardry
• Rocky Rakovic
Looks like our intern Lynsey Gilchrist has been reading the medical journals again:We all know someone who spends too much time playing video games. Maybe in the ballpark of 20-25 hours per week? (That’s a full day, by the way.)
New studies show that 8- to 18-year-old boys spend 18-20 hours per week gaming and that same with video game systems in their room spend 24.5 hours per week gaming. MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) players spend 20-25 hours per week on MMORPGs alone. For comparison, the average college student spends 10 hours per week on the Internet.
Laugh all you want, but last weekend, the American Medical Association debated a proposal to determine if video-game addiction deserves a formal medical diagnosis. Wednesday, the AMA softened the proposal, saying overuse of games can be a problem, but not calling it a formal addiction.
If the group had adopted the original measure, it could have paved the way for insurance coverage of video game addiction.
Groups like On-Line Gamers Anonymous cite examples of gamers who have stopped socializing and even foregone necessities like eating and showering to play games for hours or days on end. Many doctors, though, said you can’t compare something like excessive video-game playing to alcoholism. The AMA recommended the American Psychiatric Association research the problem for consideration in the 2012 American Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders.
I have to admit I thought this was a bit ridiculous. Then I read the manual’s complete listing of disorders and realized that if there are clinical diagnoses for “bed wetting not due to a medical condition,” fetishism and problems adjusting after relocating, then maybe this kid deserves a clinical diagnosis as well.
And if you like the T-shirt pictured, get it here.
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