Concerns about gaming addiction come from individuals, parents, teachers, mental health professionals, and even governments. Several countries have implemented laws prohibiting children from playing specific video games or playing during certain time periods. For example, Venezuela banned shooting games in their country in 2009. China has recently prevented children from playing online games during weekdays and has limited gameplay to 1 hour each weekend night. South Korea implemented a law in 2011 that stopped children from playing between midnight and 6AM but reversed the law in 2021. These strict responses to video games display a growing concern about the negative effects gaming can have on people.
On the other end of the spectrum, many gaming advocates and researchers have expressed concern that gamers are at risk of being over-pathologized. In a study examining the Internet Gaming Disorder Scale (Lemmens, Valkenburg, Gentile, 2015), the authors found that 53% of their participants wouldn’t have met any clinical criteria for gaming disorder. They also concluded that roughly 80% of their participants would have fallen into the category of “normal gamers,” with only 5% exhibiting criteria to meet a gaming addiction.
Although there is and will likely continue to be controversy about whether gaming disorder should be considered a primary diagnosis, many people throughout the world express having problems that arise from excessively playing video games. At the Center for Technology Wellness, our main concern is listening to the unique concerns that people have about their gaming and finding ways to help them address those concerns in a way that works for them or their children.
