History
Video game addiction has been studied since the 1980s, and has seen a significant increase in the number of empirical studies since then.The press has reported concerns over online gaming since at least 1994, when Wired mentioned a college student who was playing a MUD game for 12 hours a day instead of attending class.Press reports have noted that some Finnish Defence Forces conscripts were not mature enough to meet the demands of military life and were required to interrupt or postpone military service for a year. One reported source of the lack of needed social skills is overuse of computer games or the internet. Forbes termed this overuse "Web fixations" and stated they were responsible for 13 such interruptions or deferrals over the five years from 2000 to 2005.In an April 2008 article, The Daily Telegraph reported that surveys of 391 players of Asherons Call showed that three percent of respondents experienced agitation when they were unable to play, or missed sleep or meals to play. The article reports that University of Bolton lead researcher John Charlton said, "Our research supports the idea that people who are heavily involved in game playing may be nearer to autistic spectrum disorders than people who have no interest in gaming. "On 6 March 2009, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporations (CBC) national news magazine program the fifth estate aired an hour-long report on video game addiction and the Brandon Crisp story, titled "Top Gun", subtitled "When a video gaming obsession turns to addiction and tragedy.
An international meta-analysis over 34 jurisdictions quantified the effect size of gender as small, with most effect in Asia, lesser in Europe and Africa, and null in North America, and further finding that economic factors, internet availability, social norms and addiction-related health factors mediate the effect of gender, with nations with a greater GDP per capita having less differences in video game addiction between genders.Comorbid psychiatric disorders act as both risk factors and consequences. Indeed, there is a strong association between video game addiction and anxiety, depression, ADHD, social phobia, and poor psycho-social support. ADHD and its symptoms, such as impulsivity and conduct problems, also increase risks of developing video game disorder. Although internet gaming disorder has a strong relationship with obsessive-compulsive disorder, it is not specific and internet gaming disorder is both phenomenologically and neurobiologically distinct, which indicates that internet gaming disorder is more characterized by impulsivity than compulsivity. Familial factors appear to play an important role, although not well understood.Some personality traits, such as high neuroticism, high impulsivity, and high aggressiveness are consistently significant predictors of internet gaming disorder, and combination of personality traits seem to play a pivotal role in the acquisition, maintenance and development of the disorder. Mechanisms
Although there is much research since the 1980s on problematic online gaming use, the mechanisms are not well understood, due to inconsistent definitions used in studies. Video game structure
Some theories focus on the presumed built-in reward systems of video games, such as compulsion loops, to explain their potentially addictive nature.