One of the major concerns of parents worldwide these days is the amount of time their children are spending time playing online games. Games such as 'League of Legends', 'World of Warcraft' and 'Grand Theft Auto' has been keeping children busy and some of them even neglect what they supposed to do just to play games.
Freelance lecturer in child health Dr. Aric Sigman claimed that he heard from doctors that parents are asking sleeping pills for their children. "Whether you call it an addiction or not, this is an enormous and growing problem," he said, according to the Guardian. Ben Jones (not his real name), an avid gamer who played online games ever since he was 15 years old, usually spends his time playing games for nine hours. At age 27, he's very concerned about his addiction, which recently ended a relationship in his part. "It's like smoking or drinking, it's a very bad habit." He said.
But a new study from Oxford argued that playing internet games is not severe in terms of addiction, unlike gambling. The Oxford Internet Institute conducted a study about severity of online games addiction and how it is connected to gambling addiction, according to Daily News & Analysis India.
Oxford Internet Institute's lead author of the online games addiction study, Dr. Andrew Przybylski said "To our knowledge, these are the first findings from a large-scale project to produce robust evidence on the potential new problem of "internet gaming disorder,". Dr. Przybylski also said "Contrary to what was predicted, the study did not find a clear link between potential addiction and negative effects on health, however, more research grounded in open and robust scientific practices is needed to learn if games are truly as addictive as many fear,". This particular study conducted by Dr. Przybylski et al was published in the American Journal of Psychiatry.
