Mad, bad and dangerous to play: Are video games really more dangerous than Class A drugs?

http://www.independent.co.uk/

Is playing computer games as addictive as cocaine, crack, or heroin? That largely depends on which newspaper you buy. To The Sun, the addiction is like crack, to the Daily Mail it's more like smack.

But it's not only the tabloids that are convinced that gamers are in peril. The BBC's flagship investigative show Panorama broadcast a doom-laden documentary last month, telling viewers that some gamers had "played themselves to death". One poor fellow said of his pastime of choice: "I would never inflict this game on anyone. This game is a disease. It's just horrible."

Over the past year, the supposed compulsive qualities of computer gaming have made it the latest life-threatening fad. The media have been inventing demons from Elvis Presley to Eminem, and from cancerous mobile phones to the millennium bug. Video games used to make headlines for their supposed propensity for turning children into gun-toting gangsters or psychotic arsonists – "13-year-old schoolboy used petrol to set light to three vehicles after playing on the violent GTA 4: Liberty City game," as the Daily Mail has it.

Mark Reed of Heaven Media, a gaming site with two million visitors who play for an average of 28 hours a week, believes a modern leisure pursuit is under threat from the hysterical nature of some of the coverage. "Gaming is a passion and passion can lead to indulgence to the point of social indifference, but the suggestion that it is linked with crime or health issues is not founded – in fact, it's just stupid," he says. "Drugs, smoking and drink are passions that can lead to destruction. Games at worst lead to RSI [repetitive strain injury]. In fact, gaming can be one of the most socially helpful activities."

In an age where young people are often characterised as malign figures, Reed argues that adults should see the value of an activity that takes place in the home and encourages communication. "If your local council could find a way to get 100 children in a local park to interact, have fun, leave no litter and cause no trouble, it would find money to encourage it as a priority," he says.

Comparisons between crack cocaine and gaming surfaced early last year after a Swedish teenager suffered convulsions from a round-the-clock stint on the game World of Warcraft. In comments picked up by The Sun, Sven Rollenhagen of Sweden's Youth Care Foundation said: "World of Warcraft is the crack cocaine of the computer gaming world. Some people can't drag themselves away and will play it till they drop."

For all its concerns in its "addictive as heroin" article, the Mail admits a paucity of medical evidence. "While some experts reckon that 5-10 per cent of Britain's 46.6 million web users may be addicted to their computers," it asserts vaguely, "within the psychiatric world it is not yet officially recognised as an addiction."

Noelia Rotundo