Comments by "XSportSeeker" (@XSpImmaLion) on "Gaming Addiction & Australia Elections: VICE News Tonight Full Episode (HBO)" video.

  1. For those in doubt, here, let's use logic to see this so called "gaming addiction" for what it really is. Around half of adult americans play video games nowadays. Video games have been around for... some 3 decades more or less now, right? There are definitely some gamers who do spend too much of their time playing games, yes, something that can also be said about just any form of entertainment out there - but they are not in the majority, it's not anywhere close to percentages of alcohol abuse, illegal drugs consumption, or something like gambling. It's self evident. With the numbers of gamers out there, if it was anywhere close to other forms of addiction, you'd have entire communities, cities, and even portions of the country ruined by it. Can immediate, short lived, and often biased studies find some sort of "brain alteration" related to gaming? Sure. Because with similar methodologies, you'll find "brain alteration" for every single form of persistent behaviour. Social networks will cause brain changes, playing a given sport for too long will cause brain changes, watching TV everyday will cause brain changes, having any sort of hobby will cause brain changes. This does not prove shit all. Just proves that we are humans, not robots, and that the brain is a plastic adaptive organ. If finding brain alterations automagically translated to mental disease, to addiction, to disorder, then almost everything could be diagnosed as a disorder. The reason why there's been so much controversy around the WHO classification of gaming addiction is that for this particular case, contrary to stuff like climate change, there really isn't a consensus in the scientific community about it. The studies have been too few and far between, most of them have not been peer reviewed, there isn't much in terms of cross validation, replication and reproduction of results. In simpler terms, this isn't coming from proper scientific method. Which is both understandable since widespread gaming is relatively recent, so there hasn't been enough time to create a consistent and solid body of studies to say anything, and it is also damning to the WHO. I really don't get how and why a organization like WHO would jump the gun on something like that, but it's very damning evidence of bias and potential dangerous politics being involved on WHO advisories which could entirely discredit the organization's work. Specially when it comes to a real definition of the supposed disorder, and a proper distinction and need to separate into it's own category versus just being identified as an already existing disorder, such as obsessive compulsive disorder. One might think that having a dedicated classification for gaming addiction or gaming disorder could be helpful for people who really have problems with it, but it can end up being damaging and just delaying proper treatment. Case in point, people who will actively exploit supposed patients who have the disorder offering "cures" without any proof that it works or even helps, while they could've been successfully treated if they had been diagnosed with an existing disorder with proven treatments. As we all know by now, there are tons of snake oil sellers scamming people with all sorts of mental disorders and addictions even when those problems have proper treatment and therapy methods approved by scientific community. The rehab industry is infamous for that. Now, the first thing that appears in the piece to respond to a so called gaming addiction is eerily similar to exactly those infamous overpriced rehab centers promising a cure in the very same terms. And see that I'm not saying the people who got interview don't have problems, and don't deserve attention and help, but it's more than likely that what they need is not paying 30 grant on an offline bootcamp - they need to be properly diagnosed, and receive proper therapy, and potentially proper medicine to get out of it. With this bogus gaming addiction the risk is to miss out on really curing people, and leaving them in a limbo where they'll spend all their money chasing a solution that doesn't exist.
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