So, lately I’ve been seeing some posts on gaming and I’ve been wondering. I’ve been playing Roblox for an hour and I plan to hit my usual time of 4-5 hours. I do it to pass the time.
So, lately I’ve been seeing some posts on gaming and I’ve been wondering. I’ve been playing Roblox for an hour and I plan to hit my usual time of 4-5 hours. I do it to pass the time.
IMO the question is more around when it starts having demonstrable negative effects on your life. Missing obligations to family and friends. Work getting done poorly. Not taking care of your own health. Stuff like that.
I would state that this is the bar for determining if anything is an addiction. Does it make your life harder to manage or not?
Is your life harder to manage because too much coffee? yes = addiction; no = acceptable
Is your life harder to manage because not enough coffee? yes = addiction; no = acceptable
I don’t disagree with you. I’m just hoping to point out the flaw in that logic. Effect on life management is one aspect of one type of addiction in my opinion. There is more than one type: mental (pathologically doing something known to be unhealthy i.e. smoking) and physical (negative physical symptoms after ceasing something routine i.e. opiate withdrawals) come to mind. I could argue there are also social and antisocial addictions (i.e. gambling and masturbation) which can still be done without immediately making ones life harder to manage, but they might and eventually will, most likely, but not necessarily.
Addiction can be nuanced. I feel it’s important to not set a bar like that, as an addict will use that to excuse or enable or deny that their unhealthy behaviour effects their life, sometimes without even realizing it.
I totally agree. I used to have a problem with gaming growing up, I’d prioritize it over everything else and my studies really suffered as a result, but now? I spend almost as much time playing games as I did back then, but it’s an end-of-the-day post-resposiblities thing I do that allows me to spend time doing something with my wife even when we’re miles apart (like we frequently are). It all depends on the effect it is having on your life, not a matter of raw time spent on it.
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