 Hey everyone welcome to the Nintendo Prime and we're going to talk about something that's been I guess in the news over the last couple of years and really it's been going on for as far back as I can remember and that is the debate over video games their place obviously in the world and the media and their place in terms of what do they call violence in people and actually what in particular we're going to talk about today is about the World Health Organization and how they classified video game addiction as an actual mental disorder and there is a difference between addictions and disorders you can be an alcoholic but it's not necessarily a mental disorder a mental disorder could be something like bipolar disorder and stuff like that but now video game addictions actually being classified as something like bipolar aka it's like a pre-determined thing in our head that that's actually a mental disease and I always thought that this classification or at least from what I can remember of it was a little bit of a misunderstanding because I honestly think that being addicted to video games is much more similar to being addicted to recreational drugs or being addicted to alcohol and stuff like that or really anything gambling whatever it happens to be whatever you're addicted to food that's been a problem for me for a long time I don't really view it as like a mental disorder I've never felt like it was a mental disorder some of its cause you know through bad parenting parents not monitoring their kids and what they're consuming and what they're doing and not putting limits and restrictions until that kid grows up and could put limits and restrictions on themselves and realize that maybe they shouldn't just be playing video games for 12 plus hours a day every single day of their life or whatever the case might be and we there's been lots of stories I guess out there in like China and Korea just you know where people are actually like dying at internet cafes because they just don't leave 24 hour internet cafes and it's a little bit insane to me when you think about what video game addiction can do to some people but again this is classified video games as a potential to be addicted to and I think as human beings we are addictive personality wise some people are more addictive personality wise than others but I think in general there's like a trait inside our brain that makes us addicted to certain things and not all of those things are considered bad I do think as an example if you find someone to fall in love with and you enjoy the feeling you have around them I'll happy you are around them that can be an addictive feeling and you're gonna want to be around that person more and more and that's not necessarily a bad thing now there are times that it can be a bad thing go too far and even become obsessive and all that but again different people different strokes for different folks so not all addictions are necessarily bad addictions but I do think that we as human beings are just addicted to feeling good about whatever it happens to be and I've always been a firm belief that video games just are the more of an addiction like alcohol like you know recreational drugs stuff that works not really a mental disorder it's just something that if you don't have it in moderation or don't learn how to some self control you can have issue with and I don't even think video game addiction is necessarily always bad there's the extreme end where you're not taking care of yourself not paying your bills that kind of stuff and that end is bad but I also think there's a point you know like when I was a kid I used to escape to video games I used to escape to games like the Legend of Zelda they get away from things like my parents fighting and and other stuff like that or stresses in life I think video games can be a great stress relief they can be a great escape from reality even as an adult I find myself at times just enjoying a good game you know whether it be what I remember of Breath of the Wild or Mario Odyssey or something or going back to my childhood you know with Secret of Mana and stuff like that it was really nice to just get into these worlds and engross yourself and just kind of forget about all the stress and all the stuff that's happening around you sometimes even in the same room when I was a kid so I don't think that video games are truly a mental disorder I think there might be mental disorders associated with some people that get addicted to them but I don't think that video games themselves are a disorder but again I don't I'm not a researcher I'm not a scientist I'm at you know a college or university that's able to prove or disprove whether that that's okay so I think it's a hard thing to prove or disprove anyways it's kind of like how there's been that big debate over you know do video games cause violence and that's been going back to like when I remember when I was a kid in the 90s you know with Grand Theft Auto and and Doom and Duke Nukem and stuff where people were like hey is this you know are video games causing violence or causing school shootings and it's been a really interesting debate because a lot of shooters do play video games but not all of them do so is the correlation really there and then you know did the video game really cause it or were they have done it regardless of the video games or did it desensitize people and there's evidence both directions and there's no definitive answer other than we just don't know because the human psyche is constantly changing and everyone is affected by things differently and I think that's what makes such a thing like saying video games are a mental disorder or video game addictions a mental disorder such a concerning thing because everybody's different and it affects people differently the amount of serotonin your brains are getting or whatever the case may be is different well we have a study now that kind of supports us as gamers of it being more of an addiction not necessarily a disorder and I found this on Nintendo life so let's just give it a look here says a new study says external issues are more likely to blame for gaming addiction not gaming itself so this is probably something I agree with but I'm gonna fully meant I have bias in this conversation because I am a gamer and I enjoy video games and I obviously don't like a negative light being painted around a medium that's been so important to my own mental health and stuff like that so scrolling down there says a new research study conducted by Oxford University has found insufficient evidence to suggest that gaming should be classified as a clinical disorder which is what the world health organization has done and notes gamers who are heavily affected by the problem are likely to be suffering from wider unrelated issues and this is what I mean by you could get addicted to something or have all these things happen but really the ones that have an issue or have a problem probably have some other disorder or some other mental illness that would have manifested in a different way if it if it wasn't video games and it was some something else the study comes as a response to the world health organization to classify gaming addiction as a mental health condition so professor Andrew I'm sorry I'm going to totally butcher this name Andrew Probilisky director of research at Oxford internet institution and co-author of the study has shared the following the world health organization and the american psychiatric association have called on researchers to investigate the clinical relevance of dysregulated video gaming among adolescents as previously studies have failed to examine the wider extent of what is going on in these young people's lives this is something we seek to address with our new study for the first time we apply motivational theory and open science principles to investigate if psychological need satisfactions and frustrations in adolescents daily lives are linked to dysregulated or obsessive gaming engagement our findings provided no evidence suggesting an unhealthy relationship with gaming accounts for substantial emotional peer and behavioral problems instead variations in gaming experience are much more likely to be linked to whether adolescents basic psychological needs for competence autonomy and social belonging are being met and if they are already experiencing wider functioning issues in light of our findings we do not believe sufficient evidence exists to warrant thinking about gaming as a clinical disorder in its own right dr. Neto Weinstein senior lecturer of the university of car to school of psychology and co-author of the report says we urge healthcare professionals to look more closely at the underlying factors such as psychological satisfactions and everyday frustrations to understand why a minority of players feel like they must engage in gaming in an obsessive way now i think this is a really important study uh because as as you're looking at it here at least you know what what we're able to see of it you know x you know you know little statements from it obviously you cannot go to the sources down in the description and try to do more research on it if you can on what's been published uh i think what's really interesting in these findings is that we're starting to see that someone's finally trying to look at what's happening in these kids lives uh i think a lot of media especially the general media not video game media but like the general media the cnn's and and fox news and all that stuff of the world uh don't understand video games at a fundamental level so what happens is these organizations put pressure on things like the world health organization to um do something about what is a perceived problem that is just looked at from like the outside looking in where you're kind of looking at okay this this person is obsessively playing video games this person's also showing um really negative behaviors uh that seem to be associated with the fact that they're obsessively playing video games and because of that video games are the problem and thus is a mental disorder uh which is interesting since video games are a digital medium and we're not like coming out of the womb um with with video game problems like we're not born with video game issues and the big thing with a lot of mental disorders is almost every single type of mental disorder um except for ptsd you know that's obviously post traumatic stress disorder that's a little different because that happens because of a trauma you actually experience uh but pretty much every other mental illness or most of the mental illnesses are something you can be born with it it's a biological issue in your brain a chemical imbalance or what have you kind of similar things that lead to depression and all that um that you can develop over time but also you can be born with it uh it's one of those situations to me that you can't really be born with a video game disorder uh because it's a man-made thing uh and it's just the entertainment medium like if we're going to start talking about how um you know video games are a disorder then why aren't we talking about how netflix is a disorder like people sit down and obsessively watch netflix for you know marathons of four or five days when they're not working why are we not calling that a disorder uh they're not doing anything productive in their lives and during that time they're just watching netflix um you know binge watching especially since netflix lets you watch like entire seasons at once of of tv shows and uh i think the same is true in a lot of other situations and we're just not properly examining those situations and i think that's a uh problem when you're taking this outside viewpoint and not actually looking at the person you're focused so much on what's wrong now okay they're playing a ton of video games have issues and you can point at parenting and other things for that but it looks bad but then you're not considering what led to it right because we're not coming out of the womb obsessively playing video games like we don't pop out of the womb with a cell phone in our hand playing video games we don't pop out of the womb with a game boy or whatever a switch whatever like we don't we're not born into this world with a problem with video games so something had to lead to that problem existing and that's what i like about this study is it's taking a deeper look at what is actually leading to people very few by the way obsessively playing video games to the point that it's actually a problem and uh really hurting their mental health and their you know their their physical health and what have you and it's turns out that it's not the video games that are the problem it's that these people are turning to video games due to other problems such as antisocial behavior bullying at schools uh stuff like that and it's interesting to take a wider scope view of this and realize the video games aren't really the problem they're the they're they're kind of like the um antidote that might be not be the best antidote right it's it's kind of uh why some some kids turn to drugs and you know weed or or meth or whatever the the case might be or why some kids turn to alcohol at really young ages when they shouldn't maybe they see their parents that the that abuse it or something i don't know i mean there's a lot of things that lead kids you know peer pressure as well to doing things that they shouldn't be doing and we don't call any of that a disorder um but video games which we you might turn to or repush to for various reasons like i was when i was a kid just to escape reality people start to not understand it and they think it's such a childish thing especially you know i'm an adult you know 33 years old there's people still that uh you know even when i was in my 20s where we're telling me god why don't you grow up and stop playing video games like um you know people probably say that i won't be as a youtuber hey you're 33 what the heck are you doing grow up stop playing video games and video games aren't this thing that are just for kids it's like the biggest entertainment medium in the entire world it's bigger than movies it's bigger than music and it's been that way for a little bit now especially with the advent of phones and people gaming on phones then people don't even look down on people for gaming on phones but then they might play games on phones longer than i play games on switch or whatever like it's it's crazy to me uh the way that the world looks down on video games and i think it just comes from a fundamental misunderstanding and i think that misunderstanding is going to change over time as the older generations that didn't really grow up with video games kind of phase out and the generations that did grow up with video games started to take over and i think that's what's leading to some of these studies are um professors and different people that are now getting into the field and hey look we don't really think video games are the cause of it but if it is let's find out and they examine the whole person's life and you start to realize oh look there's other things going on with this child uh that maybe led to the video game addiction becoming what it was and that the video games themselves are not the disorder or not the cause of anything you know these all these school mass shootings you know where some of them happen to play video games the video game didn't cause that kid to get into that mental state or um you know even if it desensitized them a little bit to violence it didn't cause them to want to match shoot there were other things other factors going on that made them want to go to their school and kill a bunch of people and all that and it's it's something that's hard to talk about and it's hard uh for the media i think in particular because they're looking for a scapegoat everyone wants a scapegoat they want something that's easy to point to and put blame on i think we all want that in our lives you know if my relationship with my fiance all fell apart you know you're gonna want to look at who's the blame and usually when it falls apart you blame the other person and that's just a way for you to process things even though it's probably everyone's fault right if you want your kids don't turn out the way you want you might beat yourself up but it's also partially a teacher's fault partially the mom's fault and the grandparents anyone who had an influence on that child's life you know bears a little bit of responsibility for how that child turned out and i think this is just a situation where the media wants an easy scapegoat and the world health organization just handed it to him without doing the proper research uh just some little perimeter researchers were if you're trying to find a problem with video game obsession and um mental you know stability of a person who's who's already obsessed with video games you're going to find that connection because that's what you're looking for but if you don't consider what led to that connection in the first place and you start just blaming the games you lose touch with the reality of of the mentality because again we're not born into this world with this addiction so it had to start somewhere something pushed them to that point to be obsessive with games and a lot of it as they're pointing out it seems to be related to antisocial behavior stuff like that not not fitting in not belonging that kind of thing and uh and video games they feel accepted and all that and uh it goes a little too far you know i battle this with my children too especially uh my my daughter i gotta battle it with her too you know not letting her she likes playing roblox on her phone but i like oh not her phone she's not a phone she has a an ipod touch and i have to limit how much she can play roblox so does her mom too we gotta limit the roblox play time because it's interacting with people online and we don't want her to who has depression and all that to turn to um random people on the internet that we don't know to deal with her problems rather her turn to us um or her doctor or whatever or therapist uh and and again that's on parenting as well and thankfully our kids are growing up with a parent in me that has all this experience of video games has this internet savvy this youtube channel my daughter i don't know if you guys know this she wants to grow up with me a youtuber i keep telling her it's a bad idea but then me being a youtuber that probably doesn't help um you know whatever she'll eventually come to me with advice and i'll probably i'll either convince her to stop or i'll end up helping her i have no idea um which way i'm gonna go with that yet hopefully i don't gotta worry about that for many years but i it's still just something to put out put out there and think about um again i don't think that video games are a problem i am biased so obviously i'm gonna agree with this study uh but i'm actually just curious what you guys think about this uh because this is a pretty serious topic this is something that is happening now and can lead to bans on video games and restrictions and censorship and i know apparently some people are upset with some sort of censorship with nintendo with tokyo mora sessions a wii u game that's uh being brought back to to switch uh and it being like the north american version which has some minor censorship in it um i don't know i guess it's a debate for another time but i think stuff like this all kind of ties in um where if video games keep getting looked upon negatively in the general media it's going to keep shaping people's perceptions of video games are bad and i don't think video games are bad even with my kids and the issues they have at times with video games i don't think that video games are bad i think as a parent it's on the parent to raise their kids right to enjoy video games and moderation um and enjoy other aspects in life and just have video games be part of that life rather than the whole so i don't know that's just me i'm sure my parents probably feel like a failure because here i am talking about video games on the internet at 33 years old and they probably don't agree with that but it's okay love you mom and dad um i'm gonna make it someday at something i don't know what maybe it'll be this youtube thing maybe it'll be something else that i get a college degree for i have no idea but i'm gonna make it someday at whatever i'm doing um all it matters is my family's taking care of and uh i am thoroughly enjoying doing this thing on youtube and i hope to keep doing it for as long as i can this actually feels great um this is my first video since my accident i don't want to talk too much about the accident um some of you guys know about it some of you don't all you all you need to know is that i am doing better i'm starting to remember most things um still fuzzy on some tv shows and movies and and stuff that's happened out in the world uh but i remember pretty much all my kids in their childhood now and i remember a lot about this channel and hopefully a lot about editing videos um because i have to edit this still and oh except you already edited my time i don't know whatever if you like this video um i guess like and subscribe uh hopefully i got more videos coming for you the last one i did uh before my accident did pretty well almost 5 000 views on that one so and that was kind of cool what rewatching that video and seeing what my thoughts were um on switch and all that so uh yeah stay tuned i hope they got more content coming for you the rest of this week catch you guys in the next video