Many people believe an addiction only involves the use and abuse of a substance such as drugs or alcohol and often overlook the fact that an addiction is a dependence involving the inability to control their behavior with a substance or in many cases an activity, causing interference in their daily life. Especially in this day and age with society’s dependency on electronics, more and more people have developed a video games addiction or a television addiction. These types of addictions are characterized by a compulsive need to play video games or watch television for hours on end greatly neglecting their social life, family, health, personal hygiene-ultimately resulting in isolation from a broader reality.
As with any form of addiction, intervention is sometimes required to help that person realize how their video games addiction or television addiction has harmed them. With this intervention, the aim is to help the person to understand how rewarding their life can be when they engage in more social interactions and outdoor living by not living their lives through an actor or digitized character.
However, identifying if a person actually has an addiction can be difficult being that almost everyone watches television or plays video games a little more than they should. If a teenage boy prefers to kill his weekend boredom with some video games it is hardly seen as addictive. This behavior becomes a concern when there is absolutely no interest in any other activity and that person may even lie about the amount of time actually being spent in their fantasy world. When a person avoids going to school, work or even physically moving it may be time for an intervention. Treatment centers have been opening up around the world to respond to this growing addiction.