To break the debate about online game addiction apart even further, we can look at it from a psychological viewpoint. Maybe the so-called addiction does not lie within the game itself but rather in a broader online addiction instead. Internet addiction, as defined in Psychology Themes & Variations, involves a person who spends an excessive amount of time online and one who lacks the control mechanism to regulate online use. The book goes on to explain that this excessive use will interfere with everyday life and that the addict increasingly spends more of his or her time online to escape reality, to a point where that person is in denial about their dependence on the Internet (Weiten 403-4). By using the Internet to escape from real life, the addict exhibits a defense mechanism used to protect themselves from dealing with emotions such as anxiety and stress. Consequently, people who are labeled as being addicted to online gaming, or maybe to just being online, are subconsciously attracted to the effortlessness of using the Internet as a defense mechanism to cope with the high stress public and personal lifestyles of today. The question then might be whether it is the game addiction we as a society need to focus on or do we need to learn how to more effectively cope with everyday stress and anxiety in our lives?
Upon looking at society today, it seems people are trying to deal with more social anxiety and tension in their lives and only intense alterations of reality will soothe the possible developing craving to escape reality. An in-game friend of mine once said that she had often thought of how to escape to a less stressful lifestyle and had always come up with no feasible solution, until she played a MMORPG for the first time. Her own experiences with playing Everquest and Asheron’s Call have only showed her an almost too enjoyable way to escape. Last year, she said she logged more hours playing Everquest and Asheron’s Call than in combination with going to school, attending to household chores, and even sleeping. As a result of her on-going game playing, she went to classes less and less which caused her grades to slip, her apartment almost always needed cleaning, and she was constantly tired. “Would this have happened if I hadn’t been playing Everquest? Probably not, but I also would like to add that I do not have an addiction to the game, just a time-consuming hobby similar to playing golf or watching sports on television. Instead of me doing those activities society feels is okay for a person to do, I play online video games” (Warmancer).
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