More on videogame 'addiction'

I wanna talk about this so-called gaming 'addiction', why I think that 'addiction' and variations of the word are so easily thrown around when other activities do not get the same treatment or labels.

So why do gamers so easily get labelled addicts? why are gamers singled out among the other activities which can be diagnosed as 'problematic use'?

My guess is society isn't exactly crazy. I think that there is a kind of lifestyle that society views as the 'normal' way of life. Society has a norm for how one allocates their life and their time for things such as work, family/significant other, exercise, sleep and lastly play (gaming, hobbies, self improvement and everything else comes under this category). No matter how unevenly time is allocated between these activities, there is a kind of a model that all lives have to follow in order to be considered normal. Any deviant from this will be viewed as problematic (for some people it may actually be problematic but I'll get to that later).

Here is a rough example of how society might view a normal allocation of someone's time:

As you can see, the portion of time spent on gaming that can be considered to be normal is pretty tiny, so really any amount would be too much in relation to this table. A healthy 2 hours gaming a day or 10 hours gaming a week is perfectly normal, and actually considered a perfectly light load among gamers but would be unthinkable to anyone who do not play games even though the actual gamer may be doing well at work, getting good grades, happily married, perfectly fit. So yea, as you can see it is not hard to deviate from what is considered normal because the allowance for 'play' is so minimal. Any amount of play would be considered problematic use because of these views. That is why I think 'addict' and words like that are so commonly used among outsiders to address gaming.

That is not to say that there are real people who have problems organising their time, who have real problems of self control when it comes games. I am one of them. And I only started playing games five weeks ago (Damn you lol and my friends who made me start it!)

I agree with Kevin who suggested that game companies should find a way to help with the issue such as making people aware of how long they've been playing in one go, and encourage self-regulation. That would be really helpful for me but I think I need even drastic measures like being locked out of a game if I've been playing it for more than 2 hours in one go.

Gamer Baby!!!(n.n)