ADDICTIONS PACKAGE
Game Over:
Addressing Gaming Dependency in College Students Story by Joshua Carroll | Design & Illustration by Shoshanah Davis
Nearly 70% of Americans play video games, according to a recent study conducted by Electronic Entertainment Design and Research. Based on the U.S. Census Bureau, that’s 230,300,000 people regularly. Addiction is a broad topic that applies to a multitude of different activities, including the overplaying of video games like Minecraft, Fortnite or Call of Duty, by college students. Licensed Mental Health Counselor, Alan Ross Tokosch explains that addiction is “repeated actions and behaviors that the individual continues to pursue despite negative consequences to themselves.” Ross Tokosch explains that gaming addiction shares many of the same aspects as other addictions: the feeling of a lack of control, ignoring obvious consequences and withdrawal symptoms. But despite these similarities, gaming 54
WINTER 2020 | ISSUE TWO
addiction is another brand of addiction entirely. Ross Tokosch explains that unlike a lot of other well-known addictions, gaming addiction does not include substances. He describes it as a behavioral addiction filled with “compulsive behaviors, or behaviors that the individual feels they cannot control.” However, video game addiction is a spectrum of other experiences. “People can fall into gaming addiction and then have these moments of clarity and realization like, ‘Oh man, I’ve spent a whole month in front of the computer. I should get out more and unplug for a while,’” says Ross Tokosch.
Level One: How it Begins
But what exactly makes video games so tantalizing that people spend hours on end playing them? Mason Saulsbury, freshman Film major and novice game developer, says that video games give a large amount of satisfaction.
