Games really are not addicting. They are compelling, and can easily be used to escape life when it really sucks. Honestly, books, TV, and music can easily be used for the same purpose.

Why are these kids being allowed to play games at those hours? Sounds like bad parenting to me.

There are people who spend vast amounts of time watching, training for, and playing games like football. I haven't ever heard someone say that is unhealthy and a bad thing, even if football is all they ever talk about and use their free time for. Where is the boundary between Football, Chess, D&D, SC2, Quake, and WoW? When does it transition from a healthy interest to a waste of life? Why is the line drawn there?

Playing football involves running and jumping and being alive. Playing Farmville involves sitting still and clicking the same buttons over and over and over. Football breeds real, live, community. Farmville virtualizes community.

Football intuitively seems healthy, whereas Farmville seems perverse and almost purely destructive.

We can safely say that Farmville is addictive because it is designed to be addictive, and succeeds at invoking addictive behaviors. People who play football/watch football don't seem to do so addictively.

Come on, are you being serious? Are you trolling?

> Football intuitively seems healthy

I completely agree, which is why I included it!

My personal experience has been that Chess is treated in much the same way. Sure, they might be happier with that person having picked Football, but nobody would ever call them addicted to Chess.

I agree that Farmville is an abomination; I disagree with calling it addictive. Sure, you can demonstrate that people will abuse games (I'm unsure about Farmville, but this certainly applies to ones like WoW) to avoid real life and to make themselves feel better. Taking away their computer may result in them exhibiting withdrawal symptoms such as irritability. The same is true of movies, TV programs, books, computer programming, and almost any sort of entertainment.

People can play games for many different reasons. A few:

- casual, healthy entertainment

- competition, like regular sports sans muscles

- a way to avoid dealing with life

The 3rd is a problem, but is not exclusive to games, and is generally ignored if you use something like books. That said, many video games are perfect for being used for avoiding life; IMO due to the easy immersion, repetitive interaction, and satisfying rewards.

Because you can make a lot more money being a football player or coach.

That's where the line is drawn.

It's very likely that only 1% of children who spent countless hours of their childhood in organized sports ever made a dollar off of it.

I had friends that spent 2 hours a night, saturday morning and sunday morning playing organized football (soccer). Their grades were always low because they rarely completed the assigned homework. They had no social life in football season, literally no social life. I had a friend who would be grounded if he got an after school detention, because it meant he missed an evening practice. He didn't get punished because he'd done wrong, he got punished because his dad wanted him playing sports.

I played video games. I had lots of free time to socialise with friends, my grades were always excellent. Me and my friends would get together for gaming parties, 8-player C&C games, Halo 4 player deathmatch tournaments, etc. I spent most of my time interacting with people. Even when I was at home playing games, half the time I was online with my high school friends.

Why is there a line drawn in allowing parents to forcibly confine their children into organized sports because a very slim minority that don't get serious injuries and manage to play in the top 5 percentile MAY be scouted and then MAY get picked to play for a professional team. If not, they're just a loser that spent way too much time playing a game and achieved nothing.

At least video gamers tend to lead a life because they need money to buy games.

It may be true that video games are addictive, but so are cigarettes and alcohol and the majority of addicts lead normal productive lives because these minorly addictive substances require money. This money requirement means people work, which mean people socialize.

Most gamers I knew as a kid had paper routes or mowed lawns for money. Why? Because money bought games. The kids playing sports didn't have paper routes, they didn't have the time. They never did a job until they graduated highschool.

Myself at 15 was working as a video game reviewer. It was a job that gave me video games.

Why are you shooting the messenger? I never said I liked football being glorified over other games.

If you fail to get into the NFL, you can at least coach. No one is going to pay you to coach them Halo.

So, Chess and SC2 must be ok because (somewhere, sometime) there are people playing these games competitively and making money, while D&D and WOW are evil, at least doing more than 10hrs/week, because it's not done competitively and you don't get any reminders about it if/when you are a loser(?)

This is the first media-neutral definition of games that are worth/aren't worth playing obsessively that I've seen, and it actually makes some sense.

Many people play football without any hope for making money of it. Why does the fact that someone somewhere makes money from it matter?

> "The kids have to study and grow up eventually."

Studying addiction is just as much of a problem in South Korea as gaming addiction is. South Korean children spend a ridiculously high amount of time in class, most of it used very inefficiently. Taking away what scant leisure time the children have and devoting it to more studying is going to have a net negative effect, not a net positive one.