Backstage - OOC Forums
General Discussion => The Speakeasy: OOG/Off-topic Discussion => Topic started by: Zuzanna Alondra on 09 Jun 2010, 14:09
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This is a little bit of a long read, but very interesting.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-04-21/the-dangers-of-digital-detoxing/full/#
My first thoughts was the following:
Van Cleave says many young people who have been plugged in since birth can't tolerate sudden unplugging.
"For them, there's no difference between having a conversation over the table at Starbucks or IMing a friend they've never met in person who's a thousand miles away. To them, there's no quality difference between these two forms of social interaction. Both are equally good and equally real. They don't see one as worse just because it depends on technology. They don't see the technology.
It took me aback a bit to realize how true that statement is to me, as I find myself talking more often and more freely to a friend in Norway then say a friend that lives a 20 minute drive from me.
Of course there are other interesting nibbles in this article - so... Enjoy.
Discuss.
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This sentence:
The problem has gotten serious enough that the American Psychological Association is considering adding "Internet addiction" to its new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
is exactly why I hate the DSM-IV. Everything's a goddamn mental disorder nowadays.
Anyway: In the sense that they are stretching the term "addiction" our to what it means? Sure. I'm also addicted to my car, then. And also books. And also music.
Damn those horrible addictions.
Also their initial example makes me want to punch someone in the face. He didn't shoot them because of Halo, he shot them because they fucked up raising his ass so that playing Halo was more important than anything else.
Goddamn those sorts of articles anger me!
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I'm glad to see the phrase "behaviors that approach something resembling addiction", though my first thought about the next bit about the DSM made me think "{citation needed}".
Yes, some folks exhibit incredibly unhealthy behaviors. Sometimes this means taking normal, healthy activity to unhealthy extremes: eating, sex, communication, entertainment. And we all have a few unhealthy habits that we struggle to control: some more than others, or to much greater degrees.
But "addiction" is very different, despite the fact that it's entered colloquial usage with a greatly expanded scope from its original intended, technical meaning. I don't think I'm just being pedantic here: words mean things, and those meanings result in different approaches.
So, sure, there's a problem here. I suspect the kid who shot his parents in the head over getting grounded from his XBox had issues that went way deeper than "I like this game!" or even "hey shooting is fun". I don't pretend to know all of them, but clearly they existed.
And yeah, many (most? all?) of us have had problems with letting games take over our lives. It happens with MMORPGs: the world is always on, always evolving, always offering something to do, and we want to be part of it. We get sucked in too far. Hopefully, we realize it before we lose jobs and relationships and end up pooping into a sock.
Also, I dispute the concept that our ancestors didn't live in a complex world. But that might be just my crotchetiness showing through.
On preview: What Lilith said. o/\o
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And yeah, many (most? all?) of us have had problems with letting games take over our lives. It happens with MMORPGs: the world is always on, always evolving, always offering something to do, and we want to be part of it. We get sucked in too far. Hopefully, we realize it before we lose jobs and relationships and end up pooping into a sock.
Actually, most don't when it comes right down to it. The majority of gamers are fairly casual when it comes to gaming. That's also the nuts of it.
There are underlying issues that cause people to develop such an obsessive relationship to MMOs to such a degree like the "Van Cleave" fellow in the article. He played WoW, likely for years, and likely for extended periods so that outside of work the vast majority of his human interaction was via WoW. GEE! Why might he have suicidal thoughts when he suddenly cut himself off from all of his friends and peers? What an abnormal reaction!
The real question would be what caused him to sink into that situation to begin with? The answer is pretty obvious, and an all too common issue in this day and age: Depression is a bitch.
On that note: Depression is rampant because peoples' lives suck. We're more and more alone. Working hours are climbing, job satisfaction is plummeting, debt is increasing, people are losing the ability to communicate, and it has come to a head.
Is it any wonder, given the rise of depression in society entirely due to societal pressures and honestly unrelated to any sort of psychological problems that more and more people are obsessively losing themselves in fantasy worlds?
I think not.
"Mental disorder" my ass. Society is broken, not peoples' brains.
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Actually, most don't when it comes right down to it. The majority of gamers are fairly casual when it comes to gaming. That's also the nuts of it.
Actually, I meant "us" here, as in "EVE roleplayers". This population self-selects for individuals with a particularly strong tie to MMORPGs and the lifestyle that surrounds them.
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Actually, most don't when it comes right down to it. The majority of gamers are fairly casual when it comes to gaming. That's also the nuts of it.
Actually, I meant "us" here, as in "EVE roleplayers". This population self-selects for individuals with a particularly strong tie to MMORPGs and the lifestyle that surrounds them.
I could point to myself as a "bad" example. Shrink told me I've been depressed since at least mid-December and literally buried myself in Eve to avoid it. Don't believe me? Havo and Miz will both /c it.
One of the roots of the cause: My husband playing WoW so much I felt like I didn't exist - almost to the point of feeling worthless.
While not a cure - a help - diversify you activities... I took my "gaaardening" seriously and go outside.
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When I hear the term "gaming addiction" being used widely and freely I do wonder what became of the "tv addiction" of the previous generation. Has that magically cured itself? I think not. In fact it has become totally accepted. So yeah, who knows, maybe the next generation will look at us and wonder what the fuss was all about.
Also no matter what kind of escape from reality, unless the social taboo on depression and other mental and relationship problems suddenly gets lifted I think we will only see a rise in this. The escape itself is also often mixed up with what addiction is. Hence a lot of cases get cured the moment the underlying problems are solved.
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a lot of cases get cured the moment the underlying problems are solved.
THIS THIS OMG THIS.
Also, what everyone else said about depression (and I'll throw "anxiety" in there, since the two are inextricably linked in many ways). The social taboo almost makes me laugh if it weren't so sad, since such a huge portion of the population struggles with these issues at one point in their lives or another.
Yeah, me included. I like to think things have improved, and I'm not sure if the balance I've reached in my gaming is a cause or effect.
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Did they add religion to that list of mental disorders yet? Those people lose themselves in fantasy worlds, too.
Since most gamers don't confuse games with reality, I'd say gaming is a comparatively healthy venue of escapism, really.
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There was a similar article in an Australian newspaper (sorry, lost the link) recently about internet 'addiction' as opposed to gaming 'addiction' , saying that excessive internet use put people at risk of depression, and what struck me were two things:
1) The proposed definition was spending more than two hours online outside work, i.e. if you are perpetually plugged in and perpetually available to your manager/employer at an instant's notice, that's no problem, it's using those same technologies recreationally that should be examined as a problem. In my experience, people who use technology a lot at work tend to be the same ones who use it a lot recreationally. I'd take a study like this a lot more seriously if it disaggregated the results by work-use as well. But then, that would run the risk of discovering that requiring your employees to check their email from home, or sleep with their blackberry by the bed so you can always, always reach them is bad for their mental health, and we couldn't open that can of worms, could we?
2) The article asserted that young people who use the internet 'excessively' (again, defined as not employment-related) were at greater risk of depression than their peers who used it less. Now, when I was a 'young person' (back in the paleolithic era) there was no internet. Instead of spending hours in my room chatting online, blogging on myspace and listening to music over youtube, I spent hours in my room writing to my pen pals, writing in my diary and listening to music on the radio. (Readers may not be able to imagine it, but there was a time when entire families depended on one single land-line telephone, usually kept in a common area, thus limiting the amount of time teenagers could spent saying "Like, oh my god, like, totally, like..." to their friends). I suspect that I and similarly introspective and creative teens would have scored higher on the 'risk of depression' index than our jock peers, but no-one checked because writing with pen and paper are good, unlike teh ebil internet. There's a similar phenomenon with the moral panic over cyber-bullying by text message: I can assure you young people that back in the day, just as much psychological harm was caused by the healthy old-fashioned means of passing a note in class as by text messages, but since writing was not a new phenomenon unfamiliar to the oldies of the time, the behavior rather than the technology was identified as the problem.
tl;dr : Professionals need to stop assigning moral values to types of activity if they want people to take their conclusions seriously. "The youth of today!" is not a useful scientific hypothesis.
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excessive internet use put people at risk of depression
What's funny about it, most sociological studies (however few there are) on the topic put the cause/effect equation the opposite direction.
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I'm glad to see the phrase "behaviors that approach something resembling addiction", though my first thought about the next bit about the DSM made me think "{citation needed}".
Oh God, a wikipedian. Run for your lives, people.
This discussion, and I mean the overall discussion about digital services and the like, is prone to resemble what the men must have bitched about when women became literate and would have the gall to avoid the kitchen in favor of their stack of penny-dreadfuls.
Anyone who feels the need to lambast the shrinks and their DSM because of this has been suckered into believing either that shrinks are generally better than this or that they'll be able to go to a mental health professional out of the blue and get a good one, let alone one in the upper half of the spectrum or one that thinks critically.
Think this silly shit is new? Think it's atypical? Go read the last psychiatrist's (http://thelastpsychiatrist.com) notes for a while and see what a moderately good shrink's thought process looks like when he's thinking critically. Yes, there are ads on the site. Persevere - the content is worth it (http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2007/07/the_most_important_article_on.html), particularly the articles (http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2009/05/no_bias_anywhere_here.html) pertaining to the blog author's explanations (http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2008/12/off_label_prescribing.html) of the behavior of his colleagues (http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2009/05/shhh--_dont_tell_anyone_cheeri.html) which makes implications of the whole system's capacity to be objective about fuck all (http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2009/09/is_more_regulation_needed.html) and the necessity of finding a good doctor (http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2009/04/how_dangerous_is_academic_psyc_1.html).
I think I have the capacity to walk away from gaming, or from the online presence I often maintain and leave for a month at a go, because I get burnt out on it by gravitating to difficult things. Not to plateauing on a digital treadmill (hello, WoW raiders) but to something like, say, seeking out content at the top of my genre food chain, content of merit that challenges my thinking. When it gets hard to find such things, I lose interest and take a break and then go on the hunt again. When such things mentally exhaust me, I go and recuperate.
I also stop reading once in a while because when I read, I read things that fall somewhere between 'educational material' and 'novels that fuck with your head.' And I tend to not go for light reading so much as stop for a few weeks (at most).
I don't have these problems. Perhaps if you seek out good enough content you can become desirous of a mental break. I certainly do.
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I dunno, to me addiction is an unhealthy preoccupation with any activity that interferes with a balanced lifestyle. Ultimately YOU have to determine what's an ideal existence for yourself, and while a therapist can help put that into perspective, it's ultimately your choice how you want to handle your own time.
I think societal 'norms' often pressure people into feeling bad for how they choose to exist. ie. "You need to be married with children and a nice job" bullshit, but (at least for me) with maturity and adulthood comes the realization that one should be happy in their own skin doing what they enjoy.
♥ unicorns ♥
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I used to use EVE as escapism from real life problems and issues, for me it was a place where I could move away and be someone else without any tags or previous history a "start anew" kinda thing.
This was probably, largely due to my position in RL, which is well... "less" than satisfied with (bordered on proper depression a few times).
And to be honest, thats probably where the so-called addiction to my gaming/pc etc came from - and is concurrently why I tend to spend most of free time sitting around at my desk doing stuff on the computer.
But, what it did do for me, was keep me on the straight and narrow and that escapeism and relaxation of expectations and demands made by RL gave my mind a time to just, stop stressing and develop more.
I honestly believe it helped me develop as a person far more than what I was achieving through RL interactions at the time, although that is largely because at that time - all my friends where, well to be kind "Extremely Immature".
nowdays, I have no problem giving up my computers for say - a couple of weeks while I get out and go on trips with family/friends whatever, I do like to have them back, but only so I can recontact the immense and widely varied base of people I classify as friends and some, close to family.
As has been mentioned here - the problem is not inherantly the Internet/games/etc but the underlying social pressures and demands on us that make us seek a place where we don't have those stresses.
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I think societal 'norms' often pressure people into feeling bad for how they choose to exist. ie. "You need to be married with children and a nice job" bullshit-
While not only holding a job you are also supposed to hurry home from work and have supper on the table and the house spotless for your man. Infact it's nice to comb your hair before he gets home to be presentable and never complain if he doesn't help.
But I digress... had to get a snarky pitch in at the family norms my mother keeps saying I should do afterall.
As has been mentioned here - the problem is not inherantly the Internet/games/etc but the underlying social pressures and demands on us that make us seek a place where we don't have those stresses.
Well said.
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While not only holding a job you are also supposed to hurry home from work and have supper on the table and the house spotless for your man. Infact it's nice to comb your hair before he gets home to be presentable and never complain if he doesn't help.
The fifties called. They wanted their societal breastfeeding back.
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The fifties called. They wanted their societal breastfeeding back.
Yeah well... if doctors actually did things like look at the woman's boobs when they are expecting...
"If we had known you had xyz problem we could of given you xyz thing before your baby was born to correct it, but instead just supplement w/ formula and try to pump....."
Seriously - no wonder so many woman fail at breastfeeding... "It's easy and natural... you must just be doing it wrong..." *start cussing* Seriously people...
Random side topic that I doubt is popular enough to demand it's own thread eh?
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Put it in the kids thread? :)
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Things.
Metaphor abuser >:|
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Things.
Metaphor abuser >:|
Fine - flat small nips compared to size and plastic shells that live in your bra to help express them. *sigh*
Back on topic bump? *chuckles*
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And they say men can't stop talking about features of female anatomy ><
It's like, jesus, do all other subjects escape you? Guh.
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I was serious about the back on topic bump?
It is interesting looking back on the last few years how much time friends and myself have spent gaming. To the point of when someone "leaves" the game they seem to almost vanish.
Has anyone else noticed that trend in their life?
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The fact that I didn't really feel withdrawal during the extended DT (the way some other players did) gave me confidence that my gameplay is under control. :)
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The down time got to me because the house was tidy and the baby was asleep at the same time... so I fnally go to log in for the first time in a few days to a "Huh?"
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The Goodbye Letter I'd never send - for those that don't understand this song - you obviously have never played World of Warcraft.
Congrats on 80.
You’re working on your third 80.
She’s bitter and jaded
You got Loremaster, alright.
But with all of the raiding, the titles and treasure,
I hope it was worth it tonight.
I hope you like 80.
Your daughter is aging.
Your wife has moved on with her life.
With all of the raiding;
I hope it was worth it tonight.
She’d log on her pally,
Do heroics and Mally,
Until late o’clock at night.
Then she’d log of her toon
And turn to you, waiting for you to log too.
You’d turn back to her and say,
“I have to do my auctions tonight.”
So I hope you like 80,
Your child is aging.
Your wife has moved on with her life.
With all of the raiding;
I hope it was worth it tonight.
The server went down for prescheduled maintenance,
You found her alone in the room,
She cried herself asnooze.
Wondering how’d she loose
For the sake of a thousand gold?
But you’ll make it up in the morning.
You’ll buy her epic flying, help her get a title or two,
But the hurt and the surprise,
When there are still tears in her eyes,
She’s handing her ring back to you.
I hope you like 80;
Your daughter is aging,
Your wife has moved on with her life.
With all of the raiding –
I hope you move on with your life.
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/me hugs.
WoW sucks. It's probably best not to send it to him now... but eventually, some time a couple of years down the line perhaps, I think you should.