Posted on September 16, 2009

The thought of being addicted to playing video games may seem to some as a cop out for those individuals who can’t seem to tear themselves away from a gaming system. Research, however, suggests that this addiction is real and it is more complicated than a person simply giving in to their own whims.

According to an online study conduced by Harris Interactive in January of 2007, 8.5 percent of youth gamers (aged 8 to 18) can be classified as pathological or clinically addicted to playing video games. Nearly one-quarter, or 23 percent, of youths report they have felt addicted to video games. With 81 percent of American youths playing video games at least once a month, this could be a problem.

Actual time spent playing can differ by both age and gender. The average 8 to 12 year-old (tween) plays 13 hours of video games per week, while the average 13 to 18 year-old plays 14 hours of video games per week. Tween and teen boys average 16 and 18 hours per week, while tween girls average 10 hours per week and teen girls average 8 hours per week.

According to Dr. Douglas Gentile, Director of the Media Research Lab at Iowa State University and the director of research for the National Institute on Media and the Family, in a Harris Interactive statement, "It is important that people realize that playing a lot is not the same thing as pathological play.

For something to be an addiction, it has to mean more than you do it a lot. It has to mean that you do it in such a way that it damages your life. This is why we based our definition on how pathological gambling is diagnosed in the DSM-IV. Almost one out of every ten youth gamers show enough symptoms of damage to their school, family, and psychological functioning to merit serious concern."

Gamers who participated in this survey and were classified as pathological reported lower grades in school than their peers, were more likely to have video game systems in their bedrooms (at 65 percent), were spending much more time playing games each week (an average of 24.5 hours per week) and were more likely to have been diagnosed with an attention deficit problem.

According to Dr. Suzanne Martin, Youth and Education Researcher at Harris Interactive, "The prevalence of video gaming in youth culture in combination with this level of pathological video gaming is great cause for concern and highlights the need for further research in this arena."

This study also brings up another question in situations where tween and teens are spending so much time playing games: where are their parents? Parental involvement can go a long way toward keeping youth away from gaming and involved in more productive and healthy activities.