If Florian Buschmann got up earlier, he pulled the blinds down a bit. He didn’t need daylight for what he was planning to do. He played computers. Strategy games, browser games, first-person shooters – the student sat in front of the screen for up to 16 hours a day. He ate unhealthily, often called in sick, and his grades got worse. Friends, hobbies – the real world in general – lost their importance for him.
Today Buschmann is 21 years old. He lives in Dresden, studies psychology, runs his own company – and has written a book about computer game addiction. It’s called “Ade Avatar. Steps into freedom”. He can talk openly about his past, about how far he himself fell through gambling. “I had lost myself, my insides were completely empty. There was no joy, no sadness, just numbness.”
What Buschmann experienced seems to be becoming a problem for more and more young people. According to a new study, the number of minors with computer game addiction has increased significantly during the corona pandemic. Since 2019, the proportion of young people affected has increased from 2.7 percent to 6.3 percent last year, according to a joint study by the health insurance company DAK and the University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf.
Buschmann says that as a child he was particularly enthusiastic about the football simulation Fifa. At first it was harmless. “But then life problems came along,” he says. His parents separated, his grandfather died, and because Florian Buschmann didn’t know how to deal with it, he withdrew more and more into the online gaming world. “I’ve completely isolated myself socially,” he says. He didn’t care what his parents said about it.
More than a parenting problem
Sometimes the excessive computer games in children are interpreted primarily as an educational problem – as a lack of boundaries and rules. However, researchers warn against a one-sided view. “Of course, media education is important in families,” says Kai Müller, head of the media addiction association and head of research and diagnostics at the outpatient gambling addiction clinic in Mainz. Nevertheless, the disturbed behavior cannot always be reduced to a pure upbringing problem. Young people could definitely show symptoms of addiction when playing computer games, says Müller.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has not yet included media addiction in its list of recognized diagnoses, but has included pathological computer games (gaming disorder). According to Müller, other behaviors could also be counted as addictions, such as online shopping addiction or addictive use of social media and Internet porn. While it is mostly girls who fall prey to social media, young men in particular tend to become addicted to computer games. Additional diagnoses such as depression or anxiety disorders are often present.
loss of control
According to Müller, people with computer game addiction experience a loss of control. As a result, they can no longer freely decide whether and when to consume. “Playing becomes a fixed point in the way of life, not just a component.” Even more: “Although those affected experience the negative consequences of the behavior, nothing is changed in the behavior.” Buschmann can confirm that. “I had lost the freedom to say ‘no’.” He was addicted for about three years. When he was 15 or 16, he still took part in a student exchange in Romania. He went hiking and climbing, sat around the campfire with real people. “I’ve seen what’s possible.” But it took a while before he really woke up.
At some point he decided to give up computer games for 30 days. He persevered. Buschmann went jogging and did weight training. “I got positive feelings in the real world instead of the online world.” Therapy was not necessary, but psychological counseling and coaching was. “It was a process that took years.”
In his book, Buschmann describes other methods intended to help those affected and their families. Müller, the scientist from Mainz, wrote the foreword. Buschmann’s company “Offline-Helden” now has six employees who, among other things, go to schools to educate children about the dangers of modern media. Buschmann still needs a computer for his work. But gambling is no longer an option, he says. “I don’t feel like it at all.”
(olb)
