So, lately I’ve been seeing some posts on gaming and I’ve been wondering. I’ve been playing Roblox for an hour and I plan to hit my usual time of 4-5 hours. I do it to pass the time.
Consider the following:
On the one hand. Slavery got repurposed and repackaged in a nice 9-to-5 format - 8 hours, so that we’d stop complaining. Compared to that, spending let’s say two hours on videogames is defo not bad.
On the other hand, we’re talking about Roblox, one of the largest brainrots around. There’s defo better stuff to engage in.
In the same way that your friend who drinks a couple beers a day after work is probably fine, you’re probably fine spending a few hours after work playing games.
It isn’t a specific number of hours.
Addiction is a neuropsychological disorder characterized by a persistent and intense urge to use a drug or engage in a behavior that produces natural reward, despite substantial harm and other negative consequences.
If it feels harmful seek help. If not, have fun.
IMO the question is more around when it starts having demonstrable negative effects on your life. Missing obligations to family and friends. Work getting done poorly. Not taking care of your own health. Stuff like that.
I would state that this is the bar for determining if anything is an addiction. Does it make your life harder to manage or not?
Is your life harder to manage because too much coffee? yes = addiction; no = acceptable
Is your life harder to manage because not enough coffee? yes = addiction; no = acceptable
I don’t disagree with you. I’m just hoping to point out the flaw in that logic. Effect on life management is one aspect of one type of addiction in my opinion. There is more than one type: mental (pathologically doing something known to be unhealthy i.e. smoking) and physical (negative physical symptoms after ceasing something routine i.e. opiate withdrawals) come to mind. I could argue there are also social and antisocial addictions (i.e. gambling and masturbation) which can still be done without immediately making ones life harder to manage, but they might and eventually will, most likely, but not necessarily.
Addiction can be nuanced. I feel it’s important to not set a bar like that, as an addict will use that to excuse or enable or deny that their unhealthy behaviour effects their life, sometimes without even realizing it.
I totally agree. I used to have a problem with gaming growing up, I’d prioritize it over everything else and my studies really suffered as a result, but now? I spend almost as much time playing games as I did back then, but it’s an end-of-the-day post-resposiblities thing I do that allows me to spend time doing something with my wife even when we’re miles apart (like we frequently are). It all depends on the effect it is having on your life, not a matter of raw time spent on it.
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As a general rule when it starts interfering with your “higher priorities”, ususally career/family/friends. Calling off work using personal leave for a video game you waited 3 years for is ok. Using the last of your sick leave to get another day of gaming isn’t. Missing events with people you want to have a good relationship with isn’t.
This is a good rule of thumb for most addictions afaik.
People can smoke cigarettes without interfering with higher priorities. I don’t feel it applies to ‘most addictions’. It applies to a lot of them, but the opposite can be true sometimes too. I’ve known alcoholics who would have to call off work if they STOPPED drinking for a day, who would not be able to visit with family/friends unless they had a drink or three first.
It’s a good rule, I agree with that, but not necessarily for most addictions, especially the more entrenched one has become in the habit.
Yeah, that is called withdrawal syndrome, when there are symptoms if the person stops using a substance. I think that’s a problem caused by an addiction that interferes with a higher priority.
By the way, this is no joke and can lead to death depending on the severity.
For tobacco, I don’t think withdrawal syndrome can kill, but it can last for 6 months according to a psychiatrist I know.
And about the criteria for addiction, in my country it is:
- manipulative behavior to keep doing it (it = using the substance or the activity)
- repertory restrictions (avoid doing other activities that the person used to do)
- harm in other aspects of life (like what we said before)
- keep doing it, even with those damages
Addiction is not about how many hours you play, it’s about how much it interferes with other priorities.
That said, above 20 hours a week would be around the borderline for me. If I started playing more than that then I’d probably be addicted.
Nonsense. E.g. I do play a lot more than 20hrs and am not addicted. Wifey too. It’s a passion and we don’t work, so there’s plenty of time to do so. Like any other hobby.
Addiction isn’t measured by time but harm.
There are exceptions. 20 hours is just a rough watermark. My reply wasn’t really clear on this so I’ll amend it.
Very rough, that’s not even 3 hours a day. Which, in my book, is very very little for a hobby. Compared to going to work for 8 hours :)
Something becomes an addiction when it is unreasonably difficult to stop doing it in order to address something you would consciously rate as more important. That could mean biological needs like food or sleep, social needs like work or seeing friends and family, or self-improvement like exercise or pursuing hobbies other than video games. It is not determined primarily by hours spent.
Of course if you have no other hobbies, never exercise, don’t have friends, and actively minimize other time commitments to maximize the time you can spend gaming, most people would consider your lifestyle imbalanced. That doesn’t make it an addiction though, and if you’re an adult, what kind of lifestyle you want is ultimately up to you.
“That could mean biological needs like food or sleep, social needs like work or seeing friends and family, or self-improvement like exercise or pursuing hobbies…”
Work has done all of this to me on repeated occasions, but I wouldn’t say I’m addicted to work.
Though… I suppose I am addicted to the resulting paycheck.
For work, the compulsion comes from outside, not from you. It’s not an addiction, it’s company profit intruding on your life.
Ok, well I definitely exercise (sometimes), have a lot of friends who I text though I never go out anywhere, and I try to do other things as well, so I would say I’m not addicted. TYSM :)
I suppose I would add that if you consciously want to do something less and can’t bring yourself to do so, that’s also addictive behavior. It doesn’t sound like that’s the case here though; you just like gaming. It’s OK to like gaming.
I play a lot.
I’ve finished a game and started playing it again immediately. It was Deus Ex (2000), so you know the Liberty Island mission is awesome. So, justified.
I actually had a dream last night that I was showing someone I could do the entire first mission with zero equipment, zero kills. (I can also do it zero detection, but that takes longer. And, not if I also want to rescue Gunther. That’s much harder. He also greatly interferes with a “no kill” rule.) So I run in, remark on how pixelated/low-poly everything is, and then as soon as I get on the island proper (off the dock) and hang a right to go around back, the remaster releases online and the graphics get noticeably better… and the game takes on elements of Cyberpunk 2077, so now I’m dealing with those threats as well, so it’s basically the Liberty Island mission reimagined in Cyberpunk.
I’ve also had a dream once I was stuck in Animal Crossing. It’s funny, when you first start the game, you fly into the island, but you can never actually leave it. Sure, you can visit other islands, but after 5AM you’re sent back home. Even if you pay the raccoons back and do all the home upgrades. (What you can do, within canon, is move to another island. But, you can never leave the islands and go back to civilisation. There are even some obscure hints within the game that you’re the last human, or one of the last humans. That’s a whole rabbit hole. And yes, I mean the kids game with fishing, farming, and animals for neighbors. It’s supposedly post-apocalyptic, but you never get to see it. Could even take place in the same universe as Fallout, for all we know.
I’d say any more than about fifteen minutes a week, combined between phone, computer, gaming, and internet is overdoing it.
