What is online gaming addiction?
This is where it lags*. Online gaming addiction is the most common form of internet addiction. It happens when gamers spend hours online, resulting in them neglecting important areas of their lives, including their health, education, work and/or family. An addict generally spends over four hours at a time gaming and will most likely become pissed off when this isn’t possible. Many people are familiar with smoking, alcohol and gambling addictions, but gaming addiction isn’t widely known. Mental health professionals are now likely to agree that this addiction exists, yet there is no official diagnosis. Gaming addiction has no criteria of its own. Instead, the guidelines used to identify problem gamblers are used. Some of these are: preoccupation (always thinking about the activity), lying (about the amount of time spent) and loss of control (failing to cut back time). Who does it affect? ‘Gamaholics’ are found in different age, cultural and social groups, but teenagers (especially males)