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“Young addicts are skipping meals, playing truant from school and are even stealing money from their parents to buy the latest games.”

This sums up the current state of game addiction in the UK's county of Lancashire, at least according to an article on the website of the Lancashire Evening Post.

Written with a sense of urgency that was perhaps designed to cast a chilling effect on the reader (but will instead provoke laughs or a disgusted shake of the head from most), the piece centers on the trials of a 15-year old gamer named Jack, who “discarded his friends, neglected his school studies and survived on junk food as he embarked on marathon gaming sessions of up to 48 hours.”

A few quotes from “Jack”:

Playing on my games console was all I wanted to do and it was the first thing I thought of as soon as I woke up. I would play for hours on end without even realizing.

It was like it was a demon that had got inside my brain and I just couldn’t stop. If my parents tried to stop me playing, I would just flip.

An area mom recounted the tale of buying a Call of Duty game for her son and likened it to buying him his first shot of whiskey.

A local counselor (and therapist) named Steve Pope was asked, or offered, his opinions on videogame addiction. He began by stating:

Spending two hours on a game station is equivalent to taking a line of cocaine in the high it produces.

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People just won't stop trying to bash video games in some way.

I can't really see the relation of using an addictive drug like coccaine vs Games. There are more people suffering from drug addictions vs gaming addictions.

I think this is a dumb study since gaming improve the lives of so many people vs cocaine which ruins so many lives.

indeed, video games can help greatly if used right. I for one have played 7 hours of video games with no problems.

I don't get these people who bash video games. I know of TONS of people who play video games all the time and are currently studying in decent universities, and I include myself in that statement. Video games are just an easy scapegoat for bad parents.