One parent of a teenager addicted to the internet wrote that she was "helpless and living in a nightmare with absolutely no support for me son, who is on a fast downward spiral.'' Picture: Calum Robertson Source: adelaidenow
AN ADELAIDE mother's harrowing story of her teenage son's addiction to online gaming has prompted a flood of responses from News Limited readers reporting children as young as eight being addicted to the internet.
Readers around Australia have described their own battles with internet addiction in dozens of comments on the story of Karen*, whose 17-year-old son is addicted to online fantasy game Runescape.
One father, who did not wish to be named, said his eight-year-old daughter spent "80 per cent of her summer holidays'' on the family's Playstation, and hides her iPad so she can play games when they are asleep.
"If we don't hide our laptop with 'guest log-in' and password protect our other computers, she will play internet games on these in between times on the Playstation 3,'' he said.
"She has hidden our iPad in her bed to play when we are asleep, as we found out, and doesn't have meals with us when asked.
"It is just a force beyond our reckoning. At first it allowed us to get our ridiculously busy work lives in order but now I am concerned that, with ourselves psychologically wedded to our work and investments, she is psychologically wedded to her games.''
Another parent of a teenager addicted to the internet wrote that she was "helpless and living in a nightmare with absolutely no support for me son, who is on a fast downward spiral.''
Another commenter said they knew a middle aged woman who ``neglected her daughter and threw away her 20 year marriage'' to play online for up to 20 hours a day.
South Australian 17-year-old Melanie Bennett said she dropped out of school at 15 and developed an eating disorder after becoming addicted to shooting game Counter Strike Source, which exacerbated her underlying obsessive compulsive disorder.
Ms Bennett said she played the game every day before and after school for up to six hours at a time before her father cut off her game account, sending her into a spiral of depression which culminated in anorexia.
"I was failing school and I needed to feel achievement in another aspect of my life,'' she said.
"The real issue was having something I was good at and when I could no longer play the game and be good at it, I turned to losing weight as the thing that I could be good at.
"The game was addictive because there was a ranking system and I was addicted to being one of the top ranking players.
"I felt like nothing was good enough so no matter how much I lost or how good I was at the game; I would never be satisfied.
"I could never stop playing or stop starving because I couldn't feel satisfaction.''
Ms Bennett, who is still recovering from her anorexia and planning to return to school this year, said she sympathised with Karen's story, saying that internet addiction needed to be taken more seriously.
"Internet addiction isn't the illness; it is a symptom of a mental illness,'' she said.
"In my case, it was a symptom of my obsessive compulsive disorder. But with that being said, internet addiction needs to be taken more seriously.
"I still feel drawn to the game and very addicted but I am not allowed to play which is very frustrating. Some people can play those types of games and not get addicted but not for me.''
Associate Professor Paul Delfabbro from the University of Adelaide's school of psychology, who has co-authored a report with Dr Daniel King on the psychological effects of internet addiction, said video games can be as addictive as pokie machines because they operate on the same brain processes.
"Because of the similarities between video games and pokie machines, there's a likelihood there are similar processes involved,'' he said.
"All forms of addiction you look for two things: pathological behaviour and evidence of harm. The typical characteristics of pathological behaviour is the loss of control, you can't resist the urge to start the behaviour and you find it very difficult to stop once you've started.
"In video games people have the sense that ... the next event or outcome or solution is just around the corner, so they keep on going back to it all the time.
"That's one of the similarities between pokie machines and video games - is that people have to keep on doing it.''
Mr Delfabbro said certain personality types were more prone to video game addiction than others.
"The sort of characteristics we're looking at are things like perfectionism, obsessiveness, proneness to rumination, the sort of things that make people dwell on things,'' he said.
"Also procrastination, people who use video games as a way of getting away from responsibility.''
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