4 ms·

I think the key is: > the behaviour pattern must be of sufficient severity to result in significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupa

• ssijak 8y ago
  Watching TV for 4 hours per day does all that to you. Especially now when tv programs are so bad.
  • virgilp 8y ago
    I'd argue that's a disorder, too
    • sgroppino 8y ago
      How about playing chess 5 hours per day? Is that a disorder, too?
      • kungtotte 8y ago
        The disorder/addiction lies in the why and how of what it is you're doing, not the amount in itself. You can be an alcoholic when you only ever drink one beer per day, as long as it's either a compulsion to do it and/or it affects your life negatively.
        • virgilp 8y ago
          I've heard that theory before, that "you're an alcoholic if you feel the need to drink alcohol periodically". Like, if you drink one beer per day during weekend, you're alcoholic because you feel compelled to do it, periodically/ on external stimulus ("it's weekend"). While this may be a theoretically sound definition of "alcoholism", to me this sounds weak/ not anchored in real human perception. I argue that if it has no significant negative effect on your life, it's not addiction/ disorder.
          • kungtotte 8y ago
            You're using a really weak definition of compulsion. One might feel a desire to have a few after work on Friday, and it might even be a weekly habit. But if you can just as soon not to, then you don't have a compulsion.
      • watwut 8y ago
        > significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas of functioning There was also rule about it being long-term. So, are you about to loose job because of that chess? Are you failing the school despite being previously good student because of that chess? Are you increasingly isolated from everyone, increasingly angry and frustrated and yelling on people that you could communicate just fine before playing that much (e.g. if you hated each other before that too, then it does not count)? Are you increasingly fearful of social contact and increasingly clueless in conversation? Or rather does it stays the same? Did you ceased to care about yourself due showering taking too much time off chess in your point of view? It is less about absolute time spent with activity and more about impact on you or your direct environment.
        • asddddd 8y ago
          By this criteria I've been addicted to chess, reading books, programming, and possibly video games! Not various drugs, though, despite consuming excessive quantities for extended periods. I absolutely think it's a double standard, where only activities perceived as morally bad (video games, but not reading books, for example) get labeled like this.
          • watwut 8y ago
            You was addicted if those things negatively affected your life by those standards. I dunno why that would be controversial or argument against this diagnosis. If you seen negative impact on your life and could not stop despite trying, there is zero controversy. Just about only difference is that such addiction on books happens less often to neurotypical people. And since you was negatively affected by pretty much everything that went around, it seems to be of personality prone to addiction thing. That being said, playing games is not labeled anything. As the material itself says, only minority of players are diagnozable as majority of players dont have those symptoms.
            • asddddd 8y ago
              > I dunno why that would be controversial or argument against this diagnosis Because I don't think it's a meaningful diagnosis or disorder, and that it is inherently a puritanical value judgement. How many people have their lives negatively affected by working excessive hours, by focusing on sports instead of academics, or any number of other things that will never get their own label?
      • DanBC 8y ago
        > For [...] disorder to be diagnosed, the behaviour pattern must be of sufficient severity to result in significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas of functioning > and continuation or escalation of [...] despite the occurrence of negative consequences. These seem fairly clear to me.
      • onion2k 8y ago
        Spending time doing something doesn't make it a disorder. Spending time doing something to the extreme detriment of other aspects of your life is what makes it a disorder. If you spend 5 hours a day playing chess even though you know it's ruining your life then, yes, it's a disorder. If that becomes common enough that chess is often associated with people ruining their lives, then it's reasonable for the WHO to recognise it. This isn't complicated.
        • StavrosK 8y ago
          Exactly, and I don't know why we go to the trouble of defining specific categories. Why not just say that "I find myself doing X so much that it affects other aspects of my life and I would like to stop" is the definition of a disorder, no matter what X is, and just help people? Why do we need the label?
      • jonhendry18 8y ago
        If you play chess so much that you're not bathing and people avoid you because you smell bad, and it hurts your social interactions, yeah, that might be a disorder.
  • falcor84 8y ago
    >... now when tv programs are so bad. What? I don't know what you're watching, but I'm here living in the golden age of television, with a big backlog of shows that I would love to watch if I had the time.
• manfredo 8y ago
  I definitely agree that the WHO's definition, which focuses on social impairment, is better than the definitions that use a threshold. It's just the disparity between TV time vs. video game time in other definitions (a couple in the top Google results for gaming addiction or gaming disorder) that I'm highlighting.