Are games like drugs?
Chicago's WGN news is warning parents that video games are like drugs, an audacious claim that has gamers across the country wondering what those crazy journalists are smoking. According to the WGN health segment on the impact of gaming, the adrenaline rush that occurs during gameplay makes the experience itself an addictive stimulant:
"It's a stimulant. It's highly addictive. It's causing kids to forget about their friends, ignore their schoolwork and become impulsive and hot tempered."
To support this dubious assumption, they call in a social worker to give his expert medical opinion. How does social worker Robert Kauffman know that games are destroying the fabric of society? Because, he says, youngsters aren't as obedient as they used to be:
"We get kids who act out more. They don't think about what they are doing. they don't see the consequences in it. They tend to act less respectfully to their parents, and it just keeps going on."
How many countless times before him have the same words been uttered in admonishment? Transformative social catalysts are always feared by those that lack familiarity with new cultural and technological developments. Stale contempt for progress resonates throughout history. No doubt Kauffman's concerns were voiced by a previous generation when Rock 'n Roll and television began to transform the fabric of American social identity, or when jazz and beat poetry invented a new kind of self expression before that. Could it simply be that no matter the era, children invoke self-affirming defiance as they grapple with the challenges of individuality and learning what it means to be an autonomous adult? Old people have been accusing young people of being impulsive and direspectful for the entire length of recorded history, so I'm inclined to believe that it has very little to do with gaming.
