rbm001's blog

I am doing my compare and contrast paper over addictive vs casual gaming and I found an article over why online gaming is so addictive.  This article was written by Kimberly Young and the title of it is Understanding Online Gaming Addiction and Treatment Issues for Adolescents.  One of the main ideas of this article is how gaming impacts the family life of those that around the addicted.  It also shows warning signs of being addicted and why the youth are now getting addicted to Massively Multiplayer Online games.

According to the article, approximately fifteen percent of all American youths are addicted to online gaming.  The most addicted tend to be younger youths who have emotional problems or low self worth according to the study.  The saddest part of the article is when a 28 year old South Korean man died from playing Starcraft for over 50 hours straight at a cafe.  Gamers tend to forego food, water, and other basic necessities just to play the game and that is because they are constantly being stimulated by the game itself.  An interesting part of the study was that gamers normally would build a strong relationship with other players in the game while neglecting those in the their family or other outside friends.

I thought this was a good article that really explained the addictions to online gaming.  I now know more about why gamers become addicted and how hard it is on their body.  I believe there is a fine line between playing a lot and getting addicted and some people clearly cross that.

http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=7&hid=106&sid=672e2ee2-e59a-4cc3-b305-d7730234c2db%40sessionmgr112