World\u2019s Most Famous Gamer Ninja Discusses \u2018Gaming Disorder\u2019 Being Classed as a Mental Illness Ninja, Twitch\/ShuttershockAs the most popular Twitch streamer on the platform, regularly attracting over 100,000 concurrent viewers, Tyler \u201cNinja\u201d Blevins is arguably the most high profile gamer in the world. A former professional Halo player, Ninja turned his attention to streaming on Twitch full time recently, and has since become a household name \u2013 at least in household\u2019s of gamers. So, when the World Health Organization officially recognized gaming addiction as a \u2018disorder\u2019, Ninja had a few things to say about it. Briefly, the WHO says that if, over a 12 month period, an individual plays video games to the extent that it significantly impairs \u201cpersonal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas of functioning\u201d, it is a mental illness. When asked about the news on his Twitch stream by a viewer, Ninja did not hold back on making his feelings clear about it. \u201cSo when you watch ten hours, or twenty hours of TV a week, is that a mental illness? Is that a disorder? I guess the world\u2019s a little crazy. If you were to watch two to three hours of news a day, every day for the entire week, that\u2019s more than ten hours. That\u2019s more than ten hours a week \u2013 do you have a \u2018watching the news mental disorder?\u2019 Oh no, watching the news is all good.\u201d He goes on to say that as long as parents effectively manage how their children spend their time and are achieving in other important areas, there should be no need for the classification of a disorder. \u201cEverything can be addictive, you could be addicted to taking shits. The brain is so complex. Should kids be playing 50, 60 hours of video games every week? I don\u2019t know are they getting straight A\u2019s? If they\u2019re doing well in school, in every aspect of their life \u2013 they\u2019re coming for dinner saying Hi, doing their chores, and they come home and play video games all day with their friends after, are you really going to be mad about that? If they are failing, then it\u2019s the parents job to limit what they\u2019re doing, because of course at that point yeh it\u2019s not good. That\u2019s common sense, which 99% of parents don\u2019t have.\u201d The WHO classification seems to be concerned with those gamers who are in fact \u2018failing\u2019 in other aspects of life, be it school, work, social life or personal health. However, the escalation of this scenario to a mental disorder has angered many passionate gamers, who feel it stigmatizes individuals whose problem is not in fact video games, but who simply lack the ability to effectively balance their lives and need help with this. The problem, many gamers would argue, is not the video games, as many past times can be addictive or consuming as Ninja alludes to, but instead should be treated as a individual\u2019s personal issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
World\u2019s Most Famous Gamer Ninja Discusses \u2018Gaming Disorder\u2019 Being Classed as a Mental Illness Ninja, Twitch\/ShuttershockAs the most popular Twitch streamer on the platform, regularly attracting over 100,000 concurrent viewers, Tyler \u201cNinja\u201d Blevins is arguably the most high profile gamer in the world. A former professional Halo player, Ninja turned his attention to streaming on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64974\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}