Video Game Addiction

November 3, 2008

This blog is about game addiction and how it effect the life’s of many including myself and now exwife.  I found the topic of addiction in it’s self to be interesting as a subject and I think researching this topic along with your feed back is going to be interesting to all.  If you have a personal story please send me your story and or send me a message. 

Thanks and have a great day.

The Seduction of Virtual Life

November 20, 2008

This guy has interesting view of game addiction, though he fights with calling it an addiction in his article.  Nice link below to getting help resource.

The Seduction

The internet can be an escape from the world for many people, and for some people it can be an escape from themselves.

The internet has become a playground for many people to act out fantasies and take on new identities that were not possible before. This relatively new technology is allowing people to indulge in fantasies in much more sophisticated and “real” ways. The internet provides the dangerous combination of anonymity, impunity and no accountability.

Online Fantasies

Some studies show that as many as two-thirds of people who socialize online change their age or gender – But it is also often taken further. A quiet teenager in an online multiplayer game could be a powerful warlock and rule over a large virtual realm. Or an adult man could pretend to be a 14 year old boy talking to adolescent girls online. Either way, spending hours a day in this virtual identity, disconnected from reality, can lead to skewed and unbalanced real identities.

Addiction?

Although some hesitate to call it an addiction, there are clearly some people who have developed a strong dependency. Often times, getting overly involved in a secondary self is just an outlet for more serious issues. Problems at home or school or shyness and social phobia can lead people to find ways to live a life free of these stresses and anxieties. By pretending to be someone else, one can feel empowered and boost their self esteem while being acknowledged by anonymous others also in the system.

This can have a negative effect, as a person finds that they can relate less and less to those around them. As people spend more time online becoming deeply involved in a virtual identity, they can start to associate themselves more with their online selves than their real selves. Feelings of isolation can be compounded and the only friends one has to turn to are those who know you in the fantasy world.

No one knows the extent of the problem. Many people who get engrossed in another identity online will be spending much of their time in their room or a basement or a dark corner of an internet café. The relationships that can develop through online chatting and socializing can be very real and satisfying, but without face to face interaction, there is no stability or framework for trust.

If young people become too used to interacting online where anything goes and they can be anybody, it can handicap their real social skills for the future. Online fantasy role playing can be a unhealthy escape for some people who need to confront and cope with more serious issues.

Do you play the game, or does it play you? Need to quit – Learn how http://www.choosehelp.com/internet-addiction

Hello world!

October 31, 2008

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