I agree. Anything you do as a form of escapism might help you. For example if you watch a lot of TV and English is not your first language, after some point you

I agree. Anything you do as a form of escapism might help you. For example if you watch a lot of TV and English is not your first language, after some point you'll ditch the subtitles and your English will vastly improve. If you play a lot of puzzle games, you will be mentally sharper. If you play a lot of shoot 'em ups, your reaction times will improve. If you hang around in the internet and have an interest for computers, you'll eventually get into computer science and programming and you'll learn quite a lot whilst trying to escape reality. I had a friend whom I would describe as a gaming addict. He was the brightest pupil I knew from the high school. He didn't eat properly, he always wore the same hoodie (his favorite) even in the coldest winter days. He refused to drink water and only drank ice tea. He went on to a college in a distant town and disappeared. After 3 years I saw him, he was still the same. He told me he earned some money from the youtube channel he opened in high school. He had purchased a big box of chocolate marshmallows from the supermarket, which would be his meals for a couple of days while he was visiting his friends in a different town. He struggled at college. He played obscure anime games. After another year, he told me that he changed his major (econ) after 4 years of studying. He started CS and his life turned around. It could be the case that you resort to gaming to escape reality. But resorting to gaming could also make you unable to change that reality and break out from that spiral. I don't know if he would've made the decision to jump ship and start anew sooner if he wasn't playing. But in the end he was able to break out of his habit with time. I think with time the addictions wear off, whether it is TV (in my case) or gaming. I used to watch hours and hours of TV every day. If I didn't I would feel stressed out and couldn't function properly. But now that I've grown I don't feel the urge to bing. It resolved by itself.