Gaming Addiction Getting Recognized by WHO

Here at Gamerzunite, we’ve spoken here and there about so-called “gaming addicts” - people who become so obsessed with video games that they literally cannot stop playing them. At first, it didn’t seem like it was much of a problem: there will always be people addicted to anything if you look hard enough. But it seems as if the problem is more serious (and more prevalent) than we first realized, as the World Health Organization is possibly updating its International Classification of Diseases to include video game addiction.

Officially called “Gaming Disorder”, this newly recognized disease is described as:

a pattern of persistent or recurrent gaming behaviour which may be online or offline, manifested by: 1) impaired control over gaming (e.g., onset, frequency, intensity, duration, termination, context); 2) increasing priority given to gaming to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other life interests and daily activities; and 3) continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences.

Such “negative consequences” include hurting your relationship with friends and family, losing your job, impacting or canceling your education, or otherwise derailing your life in sometimes irreversible ways. The diagnosis apparently requires 12 months of fairly consistent behavior before it can be assigned, but in serious cases (such as people dying after 3 days of non-stop gaming) it can be assigned sooner.

Right now, it’s just a draft, and we have no idea if it’ll be made official anytime soon. Still, the suggestion that it’s a big enough problem to warrant an inclusion is… interesting. It's also been quite controversial, with smarter people than me contending that rather than being a unique disease, it's symptomatic of some other, bigger problem.

But, I have no way to know. While this won’t affect most of it, I still think it’s rather neat, which is why I’m mentioning it here.