Opinion
As a four-decade gamer, I can name a worse addiction
You could say I am a child of the gaming revolution. I was there when Pac-Man ate his first Ghost. I was there when the Space Invaders first invaded. I was first in line for the first Atari console, the first PlayStation, the Xbox, the Game Boy and the Wii.
Over four decades I have spent thousands upon thousands of pleasurable hours exploring dungeons, dodging asteroids, slaying dragons and refighting World War II.
The X factor: a gamer hugs his new Xbox One.Credit:AP
Thus I feel I have some skin in the game in the debate over whether video games are addictive. Recently the World Health Organisation officially recognised “gaming disorder” as a mental condition.
“For gaming disorder to be diagnosed,” it says, “the behaviour pattern must be of sufficient severity to result in significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas of functioning and would normally have been evident for at least 12 months.”
Certainly, some gamers – particularly young gamers obsessed with Fortnite – might meet this definition. Like many hobbies, gaming can distract from studies, harm one’s social life and interfere with work.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison mimics a Pac-Man during the election campaign. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
I have had to console parents about their game-obsessed teens. I could reassure them, from my own experience, that the intense fascination does tend to wear off in the early to mid-20s – much to the relief of girlfriends who claimed I had made them “gaming widows”.
Is gaming addictive? Perhaps. Yet in the rush to address this latest moral panic, I feel we have not addressed the far bigger elephant in the room.
In decades of gaming, I have not come across any game remotely as addictive as our mobile devices. Combine the dopamine hit from “clicks” and “likes” with the tactile simplicity of our smartphones and tablets and you have the perfect synergy for addiction.
This addiction is everywhere. It is evident in your morning bus queue, in which half the passengers are glued to their phones. It is evident in the sheer panic of people who have lost their phones.
It is evident at social events and family gatherings, where anyone from five to 55 will be on their phone or tablet, even while “talking” to you. Only those over 60 seem to be immune to the siren screen, old enough to remember a time when people actually talked to each other for entertainment.
It's the addiction before our very eyes and it’s the addiction adults seem comfortable with.
Even the titans of social media realise something has gone wrong. “God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains,” said former Facebook president Sean Parker of the site.
Yes, gaming seems to addict the young. Mobile devices and social media addict us all.
Charles Purcell is a Sydney writer.