We grew up in a generation that was focused on video games. For some of us, it was heading down to the local arcade and feeding quarters into a video machine. For others, it was sitting at home and playing the latest games on PlayStation, Xbox or perhaps even Atari. There was something about gaming that really made us enjoy sticking to it for a long time. Perhaps we thought it was the thrill of beating the boss or of achieving a new level. As it turns out, it may have been something more sinister.
There are some people who enjoy video games but others seem to be compelled to fire up their gaming console and play for hours on end. According to the World Health Organization, ‘gaming disorder’ is now listed in its international classifications of diseases. In other words, videogame addiction is a real thing and it is going to be taken more seriously than it has been in the past.
With high ground and high hopes @Ninja & @marshmellowmusic take the Victory Royale in Game 3 of the #FortniteProAm GGWP! ?⛏️ pic.twitter.com/iblrInikKt
— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) June 13, 2018
Not everybody who plays video games on a regular basis meets the definition. According to the guidelines laid out by the World Health Organization, you must “experience significant impairment in personal, family, social educational, occupational or other important areas of function” to qualify and you need to have lived with the problem for a minimum of one year.
One mother talked about the gaming addiction her daughter experienced. It was so severe that she had to go into rehab. In other words, she had to be diagnosed with ‘gaming disorder’.
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That mother talked about her nine-year-old daughter who was completely addicted to Fortnite. She would play for so long that she would fall asleep in class and she even wet herself.
“Our daughter told us it could be some extras she’d paid for on Fortnite. Of course we were furious and confiscated her Xbox. But then she lashed out and hit my husband in the face.
“My husband saw her light on in the night and found her sitting on a urine-soaked cushion playing the game.
“I found her backside was red-raw. She was so hooked to the game she wouldn’t even go to the toilet.”
It seems that she would wait for her parents to go to bed and then would stay up all night to play the game. “We had no idea, when we let her play the game, of the addictive nature or the impact it could have on her mental health,” her mother said.
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“She is in therapy for the addiction after she became withdrawn, agitated and disturbed from playing up to ten hours a day – sometimes playing until dawn, wetting herself so she didn’t have to leave the screen.
“This is a serious issue which is destroying our little girl’s life and someone needs to step in to ban it before it becomes an epidemic.
“We got called in by her head teacher asking if everything was OK. She had fallen asleep twice in lessons and her grades were slipping.
“When we asked our daughter what the problem was, she became unusually argumentative and aggressive, which we just put down to her hormones.”
We are thankful that she has found the proper therapy to get back to a stable life again.