Immersion Blog

The Social Affairs Unit addresses “social economic and cultural issues with an emphasis on the value of personal responsibility. We research, challenge and debate issues from Welfare to warfare, always seeking to draw out the role of the individual’s obligations.” Or, as the quote from the Times says on it’s front page; “The Social Affairs Unit is famous for driving it’s coach and horses through the liberal consensus scattering intellectual picket lines as it goes.”

They’ve recently launched Standpoint Magazine, which carries a lengthy article by Jerald Block, a psychiatrist who has been working in the realm of video games, violence and addiction for years. Block wants to see the adoption of a clinical diagnosis for pathological computer use in the west;

If a physician in Europe or the United States learned that you game on computers for 40-plus hours a week, they would probably be baffled. Dealing with such matters is not part of our training. In Asia, however, you would probably get a psychiatric diagnosis. Because of public health efforts and widespread media reporting, doctors in Asia recognise excessive computer use as a serious issue. There have been three high-profile game-related murders in China, Vietnam and South Korea, where people have killed over virtual objects or access to computers. More importantly there have been 10 natural deaths in young men who were gaming for 60 hours and more in public nternet cafés. It appears that, as with long aeroplane travel, sitting for hours in front of a computer may cause blood to coagulate. The resulting blood clot, if it travels to the lungs, can kill. Of greatest concern, though, is an epidemic in NEETs – people not in education, employment or training. Adolescents and young men (the vast majority of excessive use occurs in males) are simply dropping out of society and living virtually.

He says that it’s been proposed that four criteria be met for a diagnosis of PCU:

1. Computer use must be excessive (taking context into account).

2. There must be signs of tolerance (a need to spend more time on a computer or games console to achieve the same level of satisfaction).

3. The computer use must be mood altering.

4. The computer use must have led to problems, for example with relationships.

Block believes that because therapists are generally interested in people rather more than technology, they are often ill-equipped to help people suffering from excessive computer use. “As a result,” he warns, “the therapist will readily find the concomitant diagnoses without realising there is the compounding issue of pathological computer use.” Radical interventions in Korea apparently involve sending people to technology-free rural retreats. Yet a week of bucolic bliss has been found to provoke a computer binge on return.

One reason some people spend hours at a computer is to play massive online role-playing games. Block says the ways these games blur the distinction between reality and fiction reminds him of the difficulties faced by people with schizophrenia:

“Given enough exposure to virtual reality, people cannot help but begin to question whether their real lives are merely simulations of life. The concept is subversive and potentially toxic to the human mind. More-over, it combines in a particularly noxious way with compulsive computer use. When technology is used compulsively, it soaks up at least 10 to 12 hours a day; it redefines relationships to include virtual entities and objects, like the computer itself; it encourages processing emotion through the computer.”

Block is also concerned by the ethical issues raised by the concept of virtual sex, which often involves players’ digital representations (their “avatars”) meeting in a virtual bedroom to watch real-life blue movies together. But as Block explains, things can get ethically messy:

“…people sometimes prostitute out their avatars. They participate in sex for virtual money. What if someone only selected virtual prostitutes that were designed to look like children? Certainly this is an enactment of which a therapist should be aware. Would this suggest a risk of paedophilia in real life? Or does discharging the impulse in the virtual world in effect prevent it from emerging in the real world? We can theorise, but we do not actually know.”

This entry was posted on Friday, August 22nd, 2008 at 6:37 am and is filed under Gamers- behaviour, Psychology & Neuroscience, Video games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.