Here is the report from the AMA:

http://psychcentral.com/blog/images/csaph12a07.pdf

The American Psychiatry Association (APA), different from the AMA, carefully evaluated evidence for video game addiction and decided not to include it in its latest manual, due to not enough research being performed on the issue. However, new studies are emerging suggesting >2hrs/day as an addiction, requiring attention. Therefore, it may be included as a disorder in the next edition of the APA manual.

I tend to agree. I've had Skyrim for 3 months, and I am pushing 67 hours. It has significantly affected my daily and social functioning. That is ~ 1 hr game-time per day. I find it difficult to believe that putting in more than 1 hr per day does not affect your daily functioning. However, I do find it easy to believe that lots of gamers put in >1hr/day and do not realize the effect gaming has on their other life endeavors.

Please let me know you opinion on this issue. Thank you very much.

I disagree. I see more people watching more TV a day, than playing games. They dont get labeled as addicts though.

If I do any work that needs to be done, then I dont see why I cant spend my time as I wish.

Also in fallout new vegas, I had invested over 1000 hours, easily.

Hmm, well then I am beyond treatment then.

Lies and propaganda.

I have a full-time job, have social event to attend, and volunteer in the community regularly. I also like to exercise at least 3 times per week. Before Skyrim, the most I could dedicate to movies was one movie every 2 weeks. Now, taking into account that I play Skyrim 1hr per day...that translates to a 2-hr movie every other day. This was completely unimaginable to me before.

Big QFT.

What about the people who watch television for 3+ hours a day?

Entertainment doesn't become an addiction unless you let it interfere with your life, it doesn't matter how many hours you put in as long as you can balance it with your responsibilities.

Right...

As Ratslayer and Narmy point out, the majority of people probably spend more time than that each day just watching TV. If playing video games for 2+ hours a day counts as an addiction, then, in the same vein, everybody in a remotely technological culture (i.e. with a TV) has a very serious problem.

Just because you "find it difficult to believe" doesn't mean anything. Maybe you can't balance games with life, but that doesn't apply to everybody.

I'll third the BFQFT nomination.

Bunch of flaming idiots. I'm at 102 hours on Skyrim. Not to mention the other games I've played.

I stayed home from work today because I was sick, I watched tv all day and have been completely bored out of my mind.

Common Drugs Addict: I need to sell everything! I don't need to eat! I need drugs! Druugs!
Common Gambling Addict: I will sell my stuff to play more! I will win everything back! Win!
Common Alcohol Addict: I... I... Love you guys... Yo are so... Idiots! *rage*

Common Game Addict: I will sleep some hours later because I want to play more Skyrim.

The Extremely-Violent or Socially-Excluded Game Addict is much, much, rarer than the Media makes it seem.

I could sleep a little later to read a book (I can also read books for two hours), does that makes me a Book Addict? Should I treat myself?

Obtaining a Master's degree requires on average 500 hours of reading. There are gamers who actually spent more than this amount on games. And, trust me, they don't have a Masters out of it.

You haven't countered the objection-by-way-of-TV-comparison, yet, though. And video games improve eye coordination and reflexes. Hell, if you're playing in a language different to your own, they can even help you learn that foreign language.

An addiction is only an addiction if it interferes with the rest of your life. Take mastvrbation, for instance. Psychologists will tell you that it's perfectly normal to mastvrbate as much as you want, provided that you don't enjoy it to the exclusion of or in lieu of other activities such as dating, six, socialising, work, school, etc.

If you can't pull yourself away from a video game to go out on a date or to study for a big exam then, yeah, you have a problem. Otherwise? No.

Well thats every high school, college and university student then.

The TV thing is easy to counter. Here's the recommendation from the AAP - yet a different society from the AMA and APA (found at the bottom of http://aappolicy.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/pediatrics;107/2/423):

"Limit total media time (with entertainment media) to no more than 1 to 2 hours of quality programming per day."

As I've stated already:





Also, the AAP link states that "Although there are potential benefits from viewing some television shows, such as the promotion of positive aspects of social behavior (eg, sharing, manners, and cooperation), many negative health effects also can result." Same can be said about video games. They can teach hand-eye coordination, but the negative aspects are not worth it. If you want hand-eye coordination, learn how to juggle or play with an yo-yo.

I was actually wondering about this earlier. Our lives would be a lot more productive, in some ways, if we got rid of entertainment. I forget the term for it, but there are some books and papers written on the total number of productive hours lost to TV, and the number is staggering.

Here's the catch, though: many, many discoveries, innovations and creations would never be were it not for the kind of free-flowing creativity that entertainment, in part, fosters. And I'm not just talking about the arts, here. I'm talking about the sciences, too. So many scientific and technical breakthroughs have occurred because of out-of-the-box thinking that the world would be much, much poorer if we tried to exclude such thinking. Entertainment is almost totally about that kind of thinking.

Could we do with less Two & A Half Men? Yes. Could we do with less Call of Duty? Yes. Viz., would we be better off if we did away with the more formulaic crap that every big company is cramming down our collective gullet? Yes. But to do away with entertainment wholly is ludicrous.

If you're trying to say that we're probably wasting our time because a lot, if not most, entertainment nowadays is sugary, worthless crap, you'd be correct. But it all boils down to specifics: what are you consuming, when are you consuming it, in lieu of what are you consuming it, how much of it are you consuming, how productive would you be otherwise, how much productivity does your consumption foster, etc.

Adding an arbitrary 2-hour limit to what is quite a complicated equation is not just non-sensical, it's stupid.

What would you suggest the limit be then? I can see that it may be different from person to person, but what is the average ballpark then?

Tis a lie!

Oh wow! I'm way beyond rehabilitation then!

There is no average ballpark. Every person's life has different demands and different amounts of free time.

A few years ago I played - and could play - hours on end and it didn't effect the rest of my life because I had absolutely nothing else to do. I could read, but then you say that's wasting my time too. I could watch tv, wasting time. I could garden, but again, wasting time unless I was doing it for a food source, which I wasn't.

Everyone needs a way to destress, to completely check out so to speak, of day to day life. Without that, you get sick more often and live an unhappier life as you never get downtime. If you can get your crap done and you're left with 6 hours of time left to your day - play away. As long as you aren't putting off seeing friends, dating, and other things, and - this is the biggy for me - you can stop at anytime without freaking out - then there's no problem with it.

You still haven't countered it, though. If I choose to play video games for an hour instead of watching TV, not only is that worse, but I'm an addict? Really? What does TV teach you, again? Certainly not complex problem solving skills...and neither does juggling. I would argue that video games (some more than others) are a lot more productive with regard to most kinds of cognitive development than television. In fact, just about any negative argument you could make about video games would also work against television...in many cases more so.

Oh, [censored]. I'm addicted to sleeping. I need help guys it's really eating into the hours I could spend being a productive person!

This is ridiculous. I can understand the need for treatments when something is adversely affecting people's lives, but this is silly. Gamers can hold jobs, have social lives, contribute to society and be in perfectly good health, and still put in two-plus hours a day because it's what they do for enjoyment. To suggest that they have an 'addiction' is ridiculous. We might as well label every single recreational activity an addiction of you spend more than two hours doing it per day.

It's foolish to label something an addiction simply because some people enjoy doing it.