A nine-year-old girl has been sent to rehab after she wet herself while refusing to stop playing the video game Fortnite.
“She was so hooked to the game she wouldn’t even go to the toilet,” her mother told a reporter. “My husband saw her light on in the night and found her sitting on a urine-soaked cushion playing the game.”
Fortnite has been played by 150 million people around the world this year.
The popularity of video games is so acute and addictive that the World Health Organization has now included “gaming disorder” in its classification of diseases. This disorder results in “significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas of functioning.”
Three reasons video games are so popular
In a recent study, 86 percent of video game players at least attended college. More than 8 percent completed graduate school. Video games are popular with every age demographic and with both men and women. They represent an $18 billion industry in the United States.
What does their popularity say about our culture? Why are they so alluring?
Obvious answers include the appeal of escaping real-life problems and the mental and emotional stimulation many gamers experience. But there’s more to the story.
Dr. Scott Rigby (PhD in clinical and social psychology) has been researching the appeal of video games. After several years spent investigating behavioral data and in-house studies from video game companies, he has identified three key components.
The first is our need for competence, a desire to master a situation. A second is autonomy, a desire to control our actions. A third is relatedness, a desire to matter to other people.
According to Dr. Rigby, video games offer powerful opportunities to meet all three needs.
Focusing on the third, anthropologist Alex Golub points to the collaborative appeal many video games offer. He joined a World of Warcraft group, participating four hours a night, four…
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