Game Addiction: Symptoms And Treatment

Game addiction is a very hot topic. Advances in technology, along with the influence of the Internet, have made video games incredibly accessible, especially online. In fact, it is the online games that cause psychological experts the most concern, as they can easily cause serious addictions.

But when do we speak of addictive behaviour? Is anyone who plays too many video games addicted to it? Let’s take a closer look at these questions.

What is game addiction?

Excessive activity is not the same as addictive activity. What sets the two apart and what makes it possible to diagnose something like an addiction is how much it affects the person’s life. That is, someone with a gaming addiction will miss a lot of their life because they are constantly playing video games.

In order to identify, prevent and treat a gaming addiction, you need to know that there are some important behavioral indicators. To give you an idea, here are some associated symptoms:

• Attention: video games become the center of the person’s life. He is very busy with it, even when he is not playing. The same goes for his feelings and actions, everything revolves around video games.
• Mood swings: Someone with a gaming addiction exhibits a subjective sense of euphoria and excitement while playing.
• Tolerance: Similar to drug addiction, people with gaming addiction have a growing need to play and get the same high they did when they first started playing. That means they will spend more and more time playing video games, creating a vicious circle.

• Withdrawal Symptoms: When unable to play, or when they have less time to play, people with video game addiction will show symptoms similar to the withdrawal symptoms people experience when they come off drugs. For example, there is irritability, a bad mood, etc.
• Conflict: This includes interpersonal conflict as well as conflict with other activities or with oneself. The gaming addiction affects their relationships and conflicts at work or school will also arise. At the same time, the person will feel that he is losing control.
• Relapse: After periods of abstinence or control, the person falls straight back into their old, addictive behavior patterns.

Games Addiction Treatments

Because gaming addiction is a fairly recent problem that has not been much researched, few treatments are available. In addition, there are certain other factors that make it more difficult to make progress in this area, such as the growth of the video game industry, the relatively low cost of addiction, and the permissiveness of the general population towards this type of activity.

Still, there are some things you can do to prevent gaming addiction. The groups that are particularly vulnerable are children and teenagers. There are therefore some methods that parents can use if they suspect that their child is addicted to video games.

Advice for parents

• Check which games your child plays the most, and replace the violent games with more educational games if necessary.
• Encourage the child to play in groups. This will prevent him from isolating himself and also promote social interaction.
• Agree on the rules and the amount of time he can play. For example, make an agreement that he can play for two hours every afternoon after he has done his homework.

• Make sure you actively listen to your child. You must remember that there is a reason for his behavior. He may well be experiencing a problem in other areas of his life and he is trying to communicate or express it in this way.
• If none of these steps work, you can take the game console away for a while until you think it’s okay to return it.

If the gaming addiction involves an adult, then of course it’s a different story. There are special clinics for adults with video game addiction, although they are generally much less prone to it. The philosophy of the said clinics is to show people that they can enjoy the real world as much as the fantasy world.