My Video Game Addiction (Part 1)

Do you or anyone in your family play Plants versus Zombies on Xbox? If not, keep reading. If so, I have a couple questions for ya: Do you prefer to play as Plants or as Zombies? And which character is your favorite? 

Why am I asking you these questions? Because I am a PvZ addict.

My family was first introduced to Plants versus Zombies, or PvZ, about 5 years ago when we were visiting old friends. The father and 10YO son were way into what seemed like a very silly video game. The husbands and sons played PvZ, off and on, all weekend long. And, when my own 10YO son received an Xbox for Christmas, PvZ was the game that came with it. 

For weeks, my husband and son played PvZ whenever they got a moment alone. Soon my teenage daughter was playing it too. It wasn’t long before my 8-year-old son followed suit.

When I nagged them to stop wasting all their time playing ‘that stupid game’, they insisted I play; but I adamantly refused. I’d had my video-game addiction experience in graduate school, when I played Myst for 3 days straight instead of working on my thesis. At least Myst tested your memory and critical thinking, I thought, which was a huge step up from this cartoon battle between PLANTS and ZOMBIES. Plus, it was scary to me that something so ridiculous could hold their attention for so long and so often. But more than anything it annoyed me, and I started to feel left out.

Then, for Christmas, my mother gave my son an Xbox Live Membership. Now they could play with and against real people, not just the computer. It was a whole new ball game, and it only added to the stress in our family.

They did eventually get bored with it. The plants are the underdogs by design (duh!); and the more often you play, the more powerful your characters become - so if your team’s bad or you don’t play regularly, you’re bound to have a frustrating experience. Plus, there are only 4 sets of gardens to play; once you’ve played ‘em all, the scenery never changes.

I finally played PvZ for the first time towards the end of our Live membership. It costs $60 to renew per year; so we weren’t renewing (and I’d told my mother not to get the kids another one). It was a good thing the membership ran out; because, now that it was an MMORPG, I suddenly realized how much fun it was to waste time on a stupid game.

During a series of rainy days last Fall, I got a wild hair up my butt and figured, “What the heck? It’s only one year.” Yup. I purchased another Xbox Live membership. (In my defense, I thought I’d found a deal on Ebay, but I ended up paying retail price via a Brazilian company.)

This enabled me to play multiplayer PvZ again. And I played it. A lot. I now knew why my kids and husband used to play all the time. And now they complained about the amount of time I was wasting on the game.

At first I didn’t think much about playing PvZ around my 8YO son. Afterall, he’d played the game with his father and brother back when I still thought it was ridiculous. To some extent, I was making a point. Besides, he thought the game was boring now that he’d discovered Fortnight (thanks to his brother and a couple of friends). We rationed his screen time as best we could, given his third-birth circumstances; and it soon became clear, even to me, that I should limit playing PvZ in his presence. So I started playing PvZ when nobody was home. I may have been sneaking around like a closet alcoholic, but at least it limited my screen time.

Now I play about an hour a day, when the game comes to mind; and there are days that it doesn’t. I still binge sometimes. I’m looking forward to the expiration of my Xbox Live membership, which I reason will force me to do something more productive with my intermittent free time - and anything is more productive than playing PvZ.

As I’ve cut down my play time, I’ve noticed that playing PvZ makes me more irritable and anxious than relaxed. I’m sure that running away from zombies, even virtually, increases my adrenaline and heart rate; and I often find myself holding my breath under the threat of death on screen. But that doesn’t stop me from wanting to play. In fact, like a drug, it makes me want to play even more.

PvZ became my dirty little secret. 

The Xbox is on a tv just inside our front door. When I’m playing PvZ alone and hear someone approaching, I immediately turn off the TV and Xbox controller and pretend like I wasn’t just playing a stupid and addictive videogame. 

I’ve been busted a couple times - by my son’s guitar teacher and a couple neighbors whose children regularly play with mine. I fessed up. I didn’t lie. I told ‘em that it was my dirty little secret. Now, I just own it.

My son and his friends often sneak to the tv and playstation in our man cave downstairs to play Fortnight or other Internet games. I’ll let them play (with their parent's consent) on rainy days for an hour or so after school; but I am determined not to become the house where the neighborhood kids play computer games, and I tell them so. 

I also tell them that I think the visual cortex is one of the most addictive pathways in our bodies because of its direct connection to the brain. Visual stimulation isn’t a drug you have to eat, digest and distribute throughout your bloodstream; when you see something, the image goes straight to your brain.

Then I tell them how video games can quite literally rot their brains. I tell them that the human brain is in a constant state of plasticity, which means it changes all the time based on its input; so what they see, hear, do, watch, and play now will undoubtedly affect how they think and who they become as adults. I tell them that the brains of children and teenagers are changing much more rapidly than adult brains, so they should be very careful now about what they put into their brains and how often. 

Just to prove I’m not making this shit up, I’ve made all my kids and their friends watch a 15-minute 60 Minutes segment about the lucrative “Brain Hacking” industry, whose business model is to tap into people’s natural tendencies toward addiction to make them obsessively return to their apps and games or to never stop using them in the first place. 

I’ve told them that ‘Gaming Disorder’ is now an official diagnosis of the World Health Organization, and how several of my own friends’ children have behaved so aggressively toward their family as a result of their video game addictions that they have had to seek psychological help and even live in residential rehabilitation centers.

I’ve even shown them brain images of video-game addicts and pointed out the clear depletion of gray matter (active brain tissue) in their hippocampus brain regions compared to people who don't play video games. I explain to them that this is not unlike changes observed in the amygdala and prefrontal cortex of sociopaths who have become dangerous to society. (In fact, the hippocampus and amygdala brain regions are in close communication with each other and are involved in the "emotional modulation of memory".)

We’ve talked about the signs of addiction: increased irritability, heart rate, anxiety, impatience, aggression and guilt; its detrimental short- and long-term physical affects; and how to tell when you are starting to lose control over how much you use something.

But, most importantly, we’ve talked about how important it is to know thyselfand exercise moderation in all things, especially when it is difficult to do.

Maybe my PvZ addiction isn’t all bad. It’s given me a chance to demonstrate to the young people in my life, very early on, the predatory nature of Internet games and other apps and how easily even adults can get addicted. It’s an opportunity I won’t have once they fly the coop, and I’m grateful they don’t have to face the first onslaught on their own.

For part two of "My Video Addiction" series: https://www.melissarooneywriting.com/blog/2019/04/my-pvz-addiction-part-2

For a transcript of the 60-minutes segment regarding Brain Hacking: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/brain-hacking-tech-insiders-60-minutes/

For more info related to video-game addiction and sociopathy, see:

https://observer.com/2018/06/video-game-addiction-world-health-organization/

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/318839.php

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-you-make-sociopath-through-brain-injury-trauma/

https://www.livescience.com/13083-criminals-brain-neuroscience-ethics.html

For information on healthy versus adverse screen use and suggestions on how to moderate:

https://www.cablecompare.com/blog/children-and-screen-time

For more information about Internet Addiction Disorder, its symptoms and treatment:

https://www.internetadvisor.com/internet-addiction-statistics

I also wrote a news article about my concerns over screens and artificial graphics back in 2014:

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/community/durham-news/dn-opinion/article10297742.html