This article is relevant in the routine medical setting (1). In my neurological practice I increasingly encounter adolescents whose school performance is impaired by sleep disorders and headache syndromes, resulting from excessive use of the internet.
Explaining internet-related disorders as behavioral addictions with associated mental disorders places the focus on the affected person’s pathology. What is not described is that internet games are intentionally conceived in such a way that they target human weaknesses, such as satisfying the need for sensation seeking, building up tension and excitement, maximizing rewards, stimulating risk taking behavior, crude instincts such as shooting and killing. People’s vulnerability is exploited in a systematic way. Essentially, only humans with pronounced executive functions and/or a supportive parental home can resist such temptations.
Jan Stubberud and the author studied patients with myelomeningocele and hydrocephalus with reduced executive functioning, emotional perceptions, and deficits in the area of theory of mind, which may cause severe maladaptations and endangerment through internet games.
Goal Management Training (GMT), a Canadian approach to training the executive functions, can improve these deficits to a significant degree (2, 3).
The subtle exploitation of human weaknesses increases the dependence on internet games. Consequently, not only those affected should be treated, but more stringent laws should be put in place to prevent internet addiction.
The phenomena of gaming addiction are not new. One example is a medieval game (“Doppel-Spiel”), in which dice were thrown for money, which pulled large parts of the male population under its spell, to the extent that families were ruined, even more so than by alcohol misuse. The problem was only stopped by a total ban (4).
Some thought should be given to sensitizing the political institutions to the problems of internet gaming so as to develop adequate measures for the adolescent generation.
References
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