Stages, Causes and Risk Factors of Gaming Addiction

Stages of a Gaming Addiction 

Once again, because there is no unanimity within the medical profession about how to categorises gaming addiction, no generally agreed list exists of the stages through which the condition develops. Furthermore, because each case is unique and may involve an entirely different game or games from another, any such list should only be considered as a rough guide to how the condition may manifest. Nevertheless, some key stages might be as follows:

• Initial exposure: an individual’s early experiences with video gaming, during which enjoyment of and perhaps a fascination with such games may develop very quickly.
• Deeper interest: gaming begins to take up a position of greater significance in the individual’s life, perhaps requiring growing investment in hardware, software and time. Other activities may begin to take on a diminished significance in consequence.
• Growing obsession: gaming begins to take up a central role in the individual’s life, with their thoughts becoming increasingly solely directed towards gaming and other activities and, now, relationships becoming increasingly neglected as the great majority of the individual’s free time is now taken up with gaming.

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• Full-blown addiction: gaming becomes the individual’s dominant or even sole interest. All their free time is taken up with gaming, and all their energies are focused upon it, possibly at the cost of work or academic progress. Dietary and sleeping patterns are likely to be hugely affected by constant gaming, and the gamer may find themselves entirely dislocated from friends, family and the real world.

It is important to note that, despite many media scare stories, video gaming will not inevitably become an addiction in every case; gaming can be a harmless – indeed, healthy – part of a person’s life, an enjoyable way to relax and even a way to make friends and socialise virtually.

Causes and Risk Factors of Gaming Addiction

As with addiction generally, there is no universal “recipe” for gaming addiction: medical authorities agree that addiction can result from both genetic and environmental factors, and even displaying a combination of many well-known risk factors for addiction does not automatically mean that a given individual will become addicted.

However, as our understanding of the condition grows, certain risk factors, in particular, have been highlighted as contributing to higher rates of video game addiction. These include:

• low self-esteem
• a feeling of having been neglected
• using computer games to manage moods
• anxiety/neuroticism

• having an aggressive personality
• depression
• a pessimistic outlook on life
• loneliness

• having been subjected to authoritarian parenting
• social anxiety
• a lack of empathy
• isolation

• gender (many more men than women appear to be affected, though this certainly does not mean that women cannot suffer from the condition)

Yash Raj Singh Bhati