A history and overview of video game addiction

The past decade has witnessed a significant increase in the number of empirical studies examining various aspects of problematic video game play, video game addiction, and, more recently, gaming disorder. This chapter begins with a brief past history of how research into video game addiction has developed during the past four decades in the 1980s (arcade video game addiction), 1990s (home console video game addiction), and 2000s and beyond (online video game addiction). The chapter also overviews the features of gaming addiction, its prevalence rates, demographics and gaming addiction, negative consequences of excessive video game use, Internet gaming disorder and the DSM-5, and treatment of gaming addiction. Based on the published evidence, particularly from studies conducted in the past decade, it appears that, in extreme cases, excessive gaming can have potentially damaging effects on individuals who appear to display compulsive and/or addictive behavior similar to other more traditional addictions. However, the field has been hindered by the use of inconsistent and nonstandardized criteria to assess and identify problematic and/or addictive video game use.