The Gaming Community React to BBC Suggesting 20 Hours A Week is an Addiction Following the news that the World Health Organization (WHO) have officially classified \u2018gaming disorder\u2019 as a mental illness, the BBC made the rather odd suggestion that 20 hours a week qualified as an \u2018addiction\u2019. It should be noted, that this is not a figure that comes from the WHO\u2019s report and classification of gaming disorder, rather the WHO does not specify a certain amount of time required to be diagnosed. Gaming Disorder, as recognized by the WHO, should be present over a 12 month period and when an individual plays video games to the extent that it significantly impairs \u201cpersonal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas of functioning.\u201d The BBC covered the news by putting together a short video in which they speak to a group of young gamers, who explain they play roughly 20 hours a week. The school aged boys from Scotland explain that they play a variety of games, including Fortnite, FIFA and Minecraft, for over 20 hours a week, saying that it is an escape for a few hours each day after school. The report also shows the group playing together and being social, which is a key component to many of these games, notably Fortnite. However, there is no mention that these boys are failing in school, their personal health is lacking or that they are \u2018prioritising gaming over other interests\u2019, as the WHO specifies as the requirements for gaming disorder. Games and Esports journalist and former host Richard Lewis said of the BBC\u2019s report: \u201cIt just shows kids playing and saying \u2018yeh, I like games, it\u2019s escapism\u2019. Then it just says at the end \u2018you can have too much of a good thing though\u2019 \u2013 yes, we all know that. Many responed to the report on Twitter, explaining that the BBC idea of addiction was badly skewed. Addictive behaviour certainly deserves attention \u2013 but you can\u2019t define it simply by time-spent in the activity. I spend ~20 hours a week reading \u2013 does that make me an addict? The average person spends more than 20 hours a week watching TV \u2013 are they addicts too?\u2014 Andrew James Carter (@Carter_AndrewJ) June 18, 2018 Ofcom reported in 2017 that on average people in the UK watched 4 hours of TV a day, 28 hours a week! Average usage of social media in 2017 was 16 hours per week. This is not a bad statistic for games, what is bad is parents not giving a damn about what their kids do!!!! \u2014 Paulout (@Paulout) June 18, 2018 I spent over 20 hours per week gaming all through my childhood and university (maybe less in final year)\u2026 Many of my friends did too. Come on @BBC you can sense check this stuff in a much better way! \u2014 James Dean (@j1mco) June 18, 2018 Looking at the official classification from the WHO, Lewis reiterates that it is a \u2018disorder\u2019 and in no way linked to \u2018addiction\u2019, despite the BBC\u2019s use of the latter term. \u201cWe\u2019ve all known gamers like that. Who stay up, play too much, don\u2019t look after themselves, they\u2019re willing to throw away friendships over video games. But the vast majority of gamers, ones that play for much longer than 20 hours a week, are very well balanced, responsible adults, that choose to do this as their passion. It\u2019s their mode of escapism, they don\u2019t want to read a book, they don\u2019t want to watch TV, they don\u2019t want to go the movies \u2013 they want to play video games. And what\u2019s the problem? What is reassuring about what the WHO has said, is that unless you\u2019ve got all this shit going on, gaming\u2019s fine, and deliberately strayed away from using the word addiction.\u201d You can watch Lewis\u2019 full video below, in which he goes in to much more detail about the WHO\u2019s classification, and BBC\u2019s what he calls, misrepresentation of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Gaming Community React to BBC Suggesting 20 Hours A Week is an Addiction Following the news that the World Health Organization (WHO) have officially classified \u2018gaming disorder\u2019 as a mental illness, the BBC made the rather odd suggestion that 20 hours a week qualified as an \u2018addiction\u2019. It should be noted, that this is […]<\/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-85655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85655","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=85655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85655\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}