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Games are fun. They provide fascinating worlds to explore and take part in, they let us do incredible, sometimes terrible things without recourse. They test out intelligence and reaction; they posit weird futures and possibilities; they let us take control of lives and bodies that we could never own or experience. They are made by artists and visionaries, they provide moments of utter transfixing beauty and resonance. The glowing sunset over the city of Los Santos in GTA V, the swoop of a dragon over the plains of Skyrim; the desperate struggle to survive in the snowy wastelands of The Long Dark; the heart-wrenching power of friendship in Life is Strange – these are valid forms of escape and experience; they tell us things.

Wrangling over what extent games are the cause or the symptom somewhat misses the point; unhealthy game play can be a signal

just like offline ones

Addiction is not a good term to be using with video games, because I would say unlike substance problems there is no substance that we're ingesting that directly affects your brain chemistry," Colder Carras told Engadget. "It makes more sense to talk about problematic video gaming.

The group of people who believe in the dangerousness of whatever they put on media eventually dies off," Ferguson remarked. "And then people stop talking about it, and they move on to whatever the next new thing is that older adults don't use and don't like."

newly defined diagnoses of Internet Gaming Disorder or Selfitis may be rooted in a modern-day moral panic. "It looks like from the data that some people probably do overdo gaming like they overdo a lot of other things -- like food or exercise or work or religion. There are even papers on dance addiction, of all things," Ferguson said. "But that seems to be more of a symptom of other underlying mental illness rather than a mental illness by itself

parents should react carefully when their children report encounters with online predators. Punishing the children — no more video games or social media, for example — could backfire by pushing them into even more dangerous places for their online activity.

88% of teen social media users believe people share too much information about themselves on social media

Teens face challenges trying to construct an appropriate and authentic online persona for multiple audiences, including adults and peers. Consequently, many teens feel obligated to project an attractive and popular image through their social media postings.

We don’t deny that new technologies come with some perils. We understand the nostalgia for the halcyon days of, say, the 1950s, when people were not yet bound to their personal technology and were free to enjoy the simpler pleasures of life, like stickball and climbing trees — and getting polio and having to wait in line at the bank to check your account balance.We doubt most people would actually want to return to the good old days. We and our children are “addicted” to new technologies because, for the most part, they improve our lives or are simply pleasurable