“While the medical community currently does not recognize video game addiction as a mental disorder, hopefully this study will be one of many that will allow us to have an educated conversation on the positive and negative effects of video games,” Douglas Gentile, an assistant professor of psychology at Iowa State and lead author of the study, said.

 

The study involved 1,178 kids and teens aged 8 to 18 and showed that 8.5 percent of those who played video games exhibited at least six of 11 addiction symptoms such as skipping household to play games, poor performance on tests of homework because of playing, playing games to escape problems, excessive thinking about playing games and planning the next opportunity to play, trying to play less and failing, restlessness or irritability when trying to reduce or stop playing, lying about how much they play, stealing a game or stealing money to buy a game.

 

Boys were more prone to addiction to games than girls. Four times as many boys as girls were considered “pathological” gamers, the study found. These kids also did worse in school, had trouble paying attention in class and reported feeling “addicted.” They were also twice as likely to report attention-deficit disorder or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

 

“What's most concerning to me is really the total percentage, just the vast number of kids that are having real problems in their lives because they play games, and they may not know how to stop it,” said Gentile.

 

To be more specific, addicted gamers were more than twice as likely to have been diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder -- 25 percent of pathological gamers versus 11 percent of non-pathological players. And they were more likely (24 percent vs. 12 percent) to report having been involved in physical fights in the past year.

 

David Walsh, president of the National Institute on Media and the Family, acknowledged the fact that the number of kids having problems because of playing is still small, but “it’s still a significant enough number that parents should be paying attention. There are kids whose game play becomes more than an enjoyable pastime.”

 

He encouraged parents to control their kids’ play time by making sure they have rules about how much kids can play before the problem gets out of hand.