Gaming Is Not Addictive – It’s Your Own Damn Fault

Dutch psychiatrists (you know anyone who has to deal with a Dutch mind is pretty hardcore) have come to the conclusion that young gamers who routinely play for several hours every night are rarely addicted to the games they play.

Yesterday the BBC brought news that Keith Bakker, head of the only clinic in Europe that deals with supposed gaming addiction, has said that 90% of the young people brought to his clinic do not show signs of any true addiction. While this news implies that video games are perhaps less of a corrupting influence, Mr. Bakker goes on to make some fairly cutting remarks and ends up slamming gaming as an enjoyable hobby and portraying it as some kind of sick and anti-social venture into isolation. In reference to the supposed epidemic of compulsive gamers that lies at the root of this article, Keith told the following to a BBC journalist,

This gaming problem is a result of the society we live in today, eighty per cent of the young people we see have been bullied at school and feel isolated. Many of the symptoms they have can be solved by going back to good old fashioned communication.

The media have long attempted to portray anyone who takes up video games as their chosen hobby in the least flattering of lights. The idea that a psychiatric professional could take such a liberating idea, that gaming as with any other hobby is a choice made as to how an individual enjoys spending their time, rather than some twisted desire to escape from the world and turn it into a needless attack on gamers is fairly dispiriting. I don’t think we’ll be seeing any lynch mobs hunting down game developers; this just isn’t that emotive an issue for many people. However, it is another brick in the wall between gamers and the mainstream entertainment industry.

Mr. Bakker makes sensible points in the article: parents should keep an eye on how much time their children spend gaming, and maintain communication with their kids. But every comment is laced with an underlying anti-gaming tone that seeks to degrade the favoured past-time of millions of individuals.  The article finishes with Mr. Bakker’s comments and moves on to a variety of anecdotal and just plain irrelevant points, going so far as to dredge up the Columbine shootings:

“When two students killed twelve pupils and a teacher in the Columbine High School shooting in the US in 1999, many believed that their common interest in playing violent games had helped to trigger the massacre.”

Not only does Mr. Bakker display utter disdain for gamers, it seems the BBC are eager to mention an unsubstantiated rumour from the past decade. I’m not saying there aren’t important results reported by Mr. Bakker, or that parents shouldn’t worry if little Timmy plays 10 hours of Bonestorm a day. What I object to is the singling out of gaming, as if the wider pop-culture is so healthy and wholesome in comparison. The phenomenon Mr. Bakker describes is true of the huge swathe of our society that routinely sit wordless in front of the TV every night, yet it is once again video games that pose some particular threat to our youth.