I lost about 5 years of my life to WoW. I was in a good place in 2005, had sold my house and got voluntary redundancy from my job. But emotionally not so great

I lost about 5 years of my life to WoW. I was in a good place in 2005, had sold my house and got voluntary redundancy from my job. But emotionally not so great. Long story short, I spent the proceeds from the house sale and redundancy on a level 85 character from every class, on both Horde and Alliance, on both Euro and US servers. I only stopped when a relationship broke up, and I finally realised that WoW wasn't helping. I logged out that day and haven't touched it since (8 years ago now). I went through a severe clinical depression after that, though, and it took me another 5 years to get back to "normal" (whatever that is). Looking back on it, I was depressed the whole time and was using WoW as a way of surviving the depression without having to face my demons. I think the problem of video game addiction has nothing to do with video games. Video games are a symptom, not a cause. The problem is the usual existential crisis of modern society: what is the point of our lives? I don't think we can solve this by regulating video games. In fact, I think that video games may be a useful barometer for mental health, and a lot less destructive than the other options (alcohol, drugs, sex, etc). But I also think that's a completely different problem from the one the article is talking about, which is luring small kids into spending serious money on online games. That one we can solve with regulation.