Are video games addictive?
The American Medical Association isn’t ready to rank this substance-free habit in the same category with, say, compulsive gambling. But you’ve surely heard the horror stories — and some of them are pretty horrible.
Clint Worley, the senior producer on Sony’s “EverQuest” (or “Evercrack,” to the afflicted), says it’s not the games themselves that are addictive — it’s the social aspects of the massively multiplayer genre.
“The social networking is really kind of the glue that pushes people to sit in the game for long periods of time,” he says.
Dr. Hilarie Cash, a Redmond, Wash.-based therapist who specializes in Internet and computer addiction, agrees. She works with lots of teenagers and young men in their 20s who don’t have a lot going on in the real world. So they play online games to fill the void of friendship, companionship — even love.
more:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24245196/wid/11915829
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Video games definitely are addicting. I, too, find myself drawn into random computer games when I have a computer in front of me and nothing else to do. Time goes by really fast...
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