Video game addicts may get sickness status

By Linda Shrieves | The Orlando Sentinel • Published June 22, 2007

The problem hit home when he drove his daughter to Northwestern University last fall.

There, a Northwestern dean told him that 3 percent to 4 percent of the freshmen boys move into the dormitory, get their high-speed Internet hooked up - and never go to class.

"Needless to say, that's troublesome," Keeley said.

Jones, the University of Illinois professor who has studied college students' use of video games, said American society overreacts to new technology - particularly when it involves children.

He said it started back in the 1920s, when there was hand-wringing about how movies were causing children to spend too much time inside.

"Fast forward, we started to hear the same thing about TV, then about comic books, the same thing about rock 'n' roll, the same thing about rap music and the same thing about the Internet," Jones said. "It's just a pattern."

Technically the AMA vote would only be a first step, because it then would pass the baton to the American Psychiatric Association, which publishes the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the primary handbook used to diagnose mental illnesses and disorders.

The psychiatric association takes the AMA's recommendation seriously, said Dr. James Scully, the APA medical director.

"We, along with them, share a concern for children's well-being, and children who spend too much time playing video games is a concern, especially video games that contain violence," Scully said.

The medical community, unlike the virtual community, doesn't move quickly.

So gamers shouldn't hold their breath waiting for "video-game addiction" to become part of medical parlance. Or to be hauled off to the doctor's office by their parents.

Indeed, five more editions of Madden NFL will debut before the American Psychiatric Association weighs in on video-game addiction.

After all, the next edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is due out in 2012.