Ninety percent of gamers who turned themselves in to a European gaming addiction clinic aren't actually addicted, according to a BBC story.
"This gaming problem is a result of the society we live in today," Mr Bakker told BBC News. "Eighty per cent of the young people we see have been bullied at school and feel isolated...
For Mr Bakker the root cause of the huge growth in excessive gaming lies with parents who have failed in their duty of care.
For Mr Bakker the root cause of the huge growth in excessive gaming lies with parents who have failed in their duty of care.
So it's not games which are to blame, but authorities and bullies? Let's see if this story remains in popular awareness for long.
This being the same Keith Bakker that only in July 2007 claimed game addiction was the biggest current threat for young people "as everyone now owns a computer, and we know 20% of the population is vulnerable to addictions, so you do the math" (link in Dutch: http://www.dag.nl/Nieuws/Artikelpagina-Nieuws.htm?contentid=20579), a statement coinciding with adding a new game addiction programme to his private clinic. Maybe it wasn't as big a commercial success as he thought. This guy is somewhat of a joke in the Netherlands. But to be fair, in the linked article he did also mention seeing a lot of his patients turning to gaming as a means of escape. Where he turned it into a independent form of addiction last year, he now apparantly sees it as what it probably is: a symptom.
Anyway, can I go back to WoW now before my hands start trembling? ;)
Posted by: Ton Zijlstra | November 28, 2008 at 02:28