Campfire: Are You a Gaming/Internet Addict?

This week's campfire is all about addiction. How much time do YOU spend playing videogames or on the Internet???

NOTE: We might use your video in the show, so please be sure to state in your video that it's okay if we use it. If you don't, we won't be able to show your video on the show. Thanks!

Tags: addiction

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Permalink Reply by Nick on July 10, 2008 at 12:31pm: Totally...glad to know I am not the only one who takes my iphone to bed :)

I work from home a lot so the internet is my access point to social media, and friends. I don't see anything wrong with it myself.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by coquitah on July 10, 2008 at 12:56pm: I'm defenetly an internet addict, I even get called names, it like I'm talking to my friends about something and we have a question and I'm the first one to say "lets look it up on the internet"... I love the internet I mean its huge its powerful is something I feel I have control over.. like I can deside what websites to go to I can pic up information I can select I can hear diferent opinion about somwthing that normaly in real life I wouldnt. But there is allways that freaky addiction factor... I mean we have to realise we DO live in a real world and we arent virtual people.. hhaha this reminds me of "The guild"; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Spytap on July 10, 2008 at 1:04pm: I know that at least in the clinical sense I'm probably addicted to the internet. There's an emotional attachment if not a psychological necessity that I feel if I go without access. It takes a real effort for me to not check email, or twitter, or the blogs and websites I cycle through all day, even when I'm on vacation; I literally need to wean myself off of it for a number of days to feel comfortable being completely offline.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jhon on July 10, 2008 at 1:13pm: holy *snap*!

I'm a gamer

( CS:S, Starcraft, CoD4, SupCom, Halo3) and I never thought of counting the hours i spent playing games online, on on singleplayer mode, but I tried to count it approximatly, with the following data:

Week play: Average of 4hrs a day, monday through friday
week-end play: average of 6hrs a day, saturday-sunday
5x4= 20
2x6=12
=32hrs/week

during summer add me workin 48hrs a week, plus sleeping, eating, going out with friends, not doing anything cause too tired.

during school semesters add 24hrs of courses a week plus homework and exam studying, eating, sleeping, going out with friends, 8hrs of work, not doing anything cause too lazy.

during winter, my average go up a bit. but keeping those numbers it gives about 1600+ hrs of gaming a year. And I've been able to lower it down last few years about 25% i'd say. i tried to control my, well lets say it, addiction :P

But thats just gaming, i'm not counting Web surfing (including chating) xD and most recently reading ( real books i mean :P)... i guess that explain my 4hrs of sleeping this summer.. lol?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Patrick on July 10, 2008 at 2:50pm: i am a total internet addict i spend hours a day just looking thru websites; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Justin on July 10, 2008 at 7:58pm: Yea, my parents actually took me to a therapist because of my addiction. I was playing 10 to 11 hours of video games on top of school. I'm also addicted to reading, I've been known to stay up until 3 or 4 in the morning to finish a book and then getting up at 7 the next day for work or school. I think having a gaming/internet addiction is serious. It cuts off all other stimuli from your life like friends, family, and just plain human contact. I know all of you are gonna say,"I play with real people...", playing over the internet or actually playing face to face is a completely different experience. I personally fell that even if you game for 6 hours you still need to spend time with real people. That is all I have to say.

-Perry; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by mike1630 on July 10, 2008 at 8:35pm: I iz addicted to the nets :(; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Seth Wall on July 10, 2008 at 11:02pm

Hey Zadi/Folks,

I would consider myself to be a fairly avid gamer. I have been into the latest PC/Console games since I was in jr. high/high school, and was even into the old school arcade games and even, the NES (it's almost weird now to think that its so old, by comparison). There were times that whole groups of my friends would go down to the mall, into a PC Gaming rental place, and play during our lunch hours when we were supposed to stick around school; or someone would even host a full-fledged 20+ ppl LAN party at their house. I used to play WoW (I love RPG's) for about 1.5-2 years, but quit because it took too many consecutive hours to play to even get anywhere in the game. I usually check Facebook/Myspace/YouTube/Gmail/MSN constantly while I'm at work (on the computer all day there), and then usually come home to play TF2 for a couple of hours.

It's funny that you posted this question, and I happen to know a lot about the subject of internet addiction from 1)my own experience, and 2)research I did during my senior year in college. I found a webpage by Nick Yee, a PhD from Stanford, that chronicles the lives of thousands of people involved in online gaming, specifically when it comes to MMORPG's, called the Daedalus Project. I did a research paper on this topic, and I'm usually pretty good at archiving my work, but I'm missing this one! I even have other citations/references saved on my computer (as attached PDFs - Nick Yee also has a ton archived on his site of his work), but not my paper. If anyone is interested in writing a paper on this topic as a research paper, I highly recommend this one - it's really fun if you are a gamer to see what other gamers think/feel when put to the scientific test. Plus, I just did all the research for you - all you gotta do is write your own original paper! :p

Attachments:

Charlton Danforth Addiction Engagement Paper.pdf, 187 KB
game_addiction.pdf, 168 KB
vgsca_gama.pdf, 657 KB

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Permalink Reply by Mil 3000 on July 11, 2008 at 1:34am: Find more videos like this on MIX; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jordan on July 11, 2008 at 4:25am: It looks Really dark. I'll have to have better lighting next time.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jordan on July 15, 2008 at 11:53pm: ohhhh damn I either didn't see the note when I posted, or it was posted after I posted my vid.

Is it acceptable if I say in this post that you can use my video if you want?

even though it's too dark to see rofl.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by DMZilla on July 11, 2008 at 6:52am: I play games for a full time job and then come home and play more games, but when it comes to going to see a movie with friends I have no problem breaking the connection with gaming. Even while gaming that much I still find time to read two books a week. On the other hand I watched too many of my friends fail college because they skipped classes and social events to play WoW. They were definitely addicted and I made a promise to myself that I would never think games were that important.

Also, being passionate about the 'net isn't necessarily a bad thing, but be careful what you are doing with your time. Some things are great to know, but if you are just watching dumb YouTube videos or checking Facebook every 30 seconds then you're time could probably be better spent doing something else... like reading a book. Think about television (that glowing box in the living room)... you could watch the Discovery/History Channel, or you could just stare at some drooling idiots on a reality show. It's up to you to make sure you are benefiting from being constantly plugged in. If you aren't gaining any real knowledge and improving yourself from the intertubes, then why be plugged in all of the time? I love a good lolcat as much as the next geek, but I know when it's time to step away for awhile.

~DMZ; ▶ Reply to This