The Theoretical and Social Meanings of Video Gaming "Addiction"
The Theoretical and Social Meanings of Video Gaming "Addiction"
Thursday, 10 July 2025: 11:15
Location: FSE020 (Faculty of Education Sciences (FSE))
Oral Presentation
The last decade has seen an explosion in scientific and social attention to problematic video gaming, as signified by two new diagnostic formulations in the DSM-5 (2013) and ICD-11 (2019), as well as several thousand papers on the topic. It marks a wider trend in expanding the concept of addiction to encompass culturally encouraged and often expected behaviors, in contrast to the previously pathologized substance use or gambling practices, which carry more stigma and legal considerations.
While there is ample evidence that problematic video gaming does cause significant suffering and that there is a need for a social response to it, the route of pathologization represents a very particular angle of approaching a complex biopsychosocial phenomenon that is unique to the current century and expresses influences of technological, cultural, and economic change. Supporters of this approach understandably argue that it comes from an urgent need to provide help, conduct research, and form policy. On the other hand, the approach stretches the very notion of what addiction and mental health is, expanding it into new territories where alternative and broader paradigms seem to be needed for both conceptualization and action but are lacking.
The presentation will 1) overview the last decade of research and debates on problematic gaming, including personal research; 2) highlight the uses and tensions that the pathologization of the new cultural phenomenon represents; and 3) discuss the role of sociology in forming a theoretical and policy approach that could address the tensions.
While there is ample evidence that problematic video gaming does cause significant suffering and that there is a need for a social response to it, the route of pathologization represents a very particular angle of approaching a complex biopsychosocial phenomenon that is unique to the current century and expresses influences of technological, cultural, and economic change. Supporters of this approach understandably argue that it comes from an urgent need to provide help, conduct research, and form policy. On the other hand, the approach stretches the very notion of what addiction and mental health is, expanding it into new territories where alternative and broader paradigms seem to be needed for both conceptualization and action but are lacking.
The presentation will 1) overview the last decade of research and debates on problematic gaming, including personal research; 2) highlight the uses and tensions that the pathologization of the new cultural phenomenon represents; and 3) discuss the role of sociology in forming a theoretical and policy approach that could address the tensions.