Final Essay Inroduction

Our final essay assignment is supposed to deal with some problem created by an aspect of online culture. Obviously, this is a very broad topic that can be taken in many different directions since newly developed technologies have caused significant problems to society. Whether it be peer to peer networking entities pirating music, video, and every other type of media illegally, or people being arrested for comments on their blogs, new technology has created significant problems for society.
I have chosen to address the problem created by the extensive connectivity that the internet has provided to online gaming. Basically, the problem is that people are getting addicted to the online games that they are playing especially MMORGs, or Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games. Addiction to these games has caused severe consequences for gamers in many cases. Often, addicted gamers will lose touch with reality and spend all of their time playing the game. Addicted gamers have been known to play for days on end neglecting to sleep or eat. Addicted gamers have lost their jobs because they simply could not stop playing an online game. Students have lost entire semesters of college and high school to online gaming. In some cases gamers have died as a result of sleep and food and water deprivation because they were playing an online role-playing game.
You might think that this type of occupation would be limited to young people who have grown up with the internet and the rise of video games, but this type of addiction is also quite common in adults.
The big question with online gaming addiction is whether it is a legitimate addiction or not. Some people argue that addiction requires some sort of substance that in ingested or introduced into the body by some other physical means. These people argue that online gaming addiction cannot be considered a true addiction because there is no obvious physical dependence. However, I think that we have to consider online gaming addiction to be a true addiction because clearly people are getting addicted to online games. This means that we need to re-evaluate our current definition of the word addiction, in my opinion. After all, the symptoms of online gaming addiction are very similar to those of a physical dependency in that they both cause the addict to crave increased exposure to whatever they are addicted to.
I think that instead of saying that online gaming addiction is not a true addiction because it doesn’t fit the current definition we should instead adapt our understanding of addiction to include this new type of addiction.