Games are impossible to imagine these days. With all the new gadgets, phones, computers, consoles and handhelds, there are also more and more and new games coming out to match them. Games on the PC are quite harmless and can do no harm. There are people who are anti gaming, indeed they say it has a bad influence on youth. There have also been studies done on children and teenagers gaming and whether it is really that bad.
Game addiction in children
What turns out is that gaming has a positive impact on most. For example, "gamers" in general are able to make faster decisions in real life. And there is no concrete evidence that games have a bad influence on people. An hour of gaming a day doesn't hurt either. As for children and teenagers. You also have lots of different kinds of games.
Depending on what someone is playing. For example, shooters such as: Call of Duty, Battlefield or Far Cry. You then also have the adventure games like Tomb Raider, or GTA (Grand Theft Auto) issue V. You have mmo's (massive multiplayer online) games like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV.
Think games, family games and much more. It really becomes a different story when gaming starts to affect your life by neglecting life outside of games.
There are games where people go all in. In particular, people with low to low self-esteem or people who are missing "something" in their lives are the ones who choose to stay in the game world instead of the real world. Mainly with MMOs that offer a virtual world and alternative lives are popular among people.
In a Game You Can Escape
You can be anything you want to be. Whether it be a magician, a thief, a knight, a soldier or anything else you can become it all. Your own virtual home, fame, reputation, name recognition and money can make you famous/popular among the thousands of gamers who play such a game.
People have decided that the game world where they are someone is better than the "real" world where they are just "themselves."
It's also just that, it's not that people are addicted to gaming. But they are fleeing from real life and their responsibilities. They feel a restlessness in them and they choose to throw themselves into the gaming world because it is better there. This is true of any "addiction."
There is something in that person's life that they are running from or afraid of. Not wanting and being able to handle life. This is how alcohol, drugs, eating, gaming and gambling addictions arise. It is an underlying unconscious program that causes constant turmoil and they want to get rid of it.
Self-esteem is low. They lack something in their lives and they fill it by throwing themselves into something, to fill that void.
There are plenty of people with good jobs, families, totally balanced who love to throw themselves completely into the games once in a while, but then it's different. They do it because they really like it and then really enjoy it. That goes for a lot of things.
Just having a glass of wine or a beer, nothing wrong with that. The occasional trip to the casino, nothing wrong with that. As long as you are balanced and have enough self-esteem, there is also no reason to become "addicted" to anything. It is important to address the restlessness and the best way to do that is with regression because then you can identify the cause.
Quinten R.
on01 Dec 2013