Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

At what point do you consider an individual addicted to a video game (psychological addiction)?

During this project we calculated their addictions using number between 1 and 5, and the lowest possible score a person could receive was 6 (the highest being 27). Where would we draw the line between normal and addicted. We said 20, because the average of the two numbers (6 and 27) was 17 and it had to be above that.

Sincerely,

Emmy, Megan and Nef

neforimsLTIN,

There are two different answers that come to mind right away.

First, in an analogy with IQ tests (http://psychology.about.com/od/psycholo ... -score.htm) you can claim that anyone above the first standard deviation is addicted. It is pretty arbitrary though. Why not the second one? Or the third?

Second, in analogy with alcoholism (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK44358/) you can measure whether gaming behavior has adverse effects on daily life.

I would tend to favor the second method because it focuses on the actual effects of the behavior. Different people can have different levels of gaming activity to reach the same adverse effect. Nevertheless, I would suggest you use both in your project and weigh their pros and cons.

Please keep us posted, this is a very interesting project!


Good luck!

@hhemken

Thank you so much for your answer!
The second link helped us a lot on finding out what addiction really is, so thank you.
Actually, we were trying to ask something along the lines of:
"At what do you consider someone addicted to a video game?"

If you could also give us your input on this question, that would be awesome.
-Emmy

neforimsLTIN,

Along the lines of alcoholism and drug addiction, I would consider someone is doing too much gaming if it causes problems at school, at work, in the family, with other personal relationships, or with the gamer's health. If such problems can be objectively counted, then that person has problems due to gaming and should cut down.

Makes sense?

@hhemken

Yes! Makes absolute sense. Thank you again!

-Emmy

PS You have an awesome name.

neforimsLTIN,

Thanks!