Hobby or Addiction: Are Children Addicted to Fortnite? đŽ
Thousands of children are âaddictedâ to playing video games like Fortnite. Fortnite has 350 million players worldwide (BBC, 2022), making it one of the most popular video games in history. Children admit that they are tethered to their phones (Turkle, 2017), but what about Fortnite?
Fortnite
Created by Epic Games (BBC, 2022), Fortnite is a freemium first-person multiplayer game where 100 players compete in a Battle Royale to win as the sole survivor (Carter et al., 2020). The game is divided into 10-week seasons with time-limited challenges. Children say that completing challenges within a short timeframe is what makes the game so âaddictiveâ (Carter et al., 2020). But what does it actually mean to be âaddictedâ?
Video Game Addiction (VGA)
All addictions are caused by the disruption of dopamine production in the brain (Game Quitters, 2022). The same applies to gaming. Symptoms of VGA include impaired control over gaming, increased priority for gaming, and continuation of gaming despite negative consequences (NHS, 2019).
Children addicted to gaming often jeopardise their school, work, and friendships (Game Quitters, 2022), leaving many feeling isolated and depressed. By associating mental health problems like depression with video games, playing Fortnite has been increasingly pathologized as an addiction by the media (Carter et al., 2020), raising concern among parents.
Fortnite Addictions
Fortnite was designed by human psychologists following the Dopamine Theory of Addiction (Game Quitters, 2022). When playing Fortnite, dopamine levels are raised to such a high extent that once the player stops playing, the body struggles to replace dopamine levels (Melis, 2005). The player, and the body, become dependent on Fortnite for pleasure.
In Canada, BBC News (2022) reported that three parents took Epic Games to court for making their children addicted to Fortnite. Their children stopped sleeping, eating, and showering. In the UK, the Metro (2018) reported that one young girl had been attending psychotherapy treatment after wetting herself playing Fortnite. The child was so engrossed in the gameplay that she ceased to take herself to the toilet. Framing Fortnite as addictive has led to the creation of new disorders, which has divided scholars.
A New Gaming Disorder
âGaming Disorderâ was included in the World Health Organisationâs 2019 International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) (Carter et al., 2020). In a letter sent to the World Health Organisation, Aarseth et al. (2017) critiqued that the creation of âGaming Disorderâ would misclassify gaming hobbies as addictive problems. Not all who play video games are addicted. In fact, only 0.3%-1.0% of the general population have gaming disorders (Przybylski et al., 2017). New research is showing that children who play more than 3 hours per day of video games have better cognitive skills, including attention span and memory (The National Institutes of Health, 2022).
The benefit of gaming is sparse, and it is undeniable that many children are addicted to Fortnite. Fortnite has been psychologically designed to be addictive. But it is damaging to presume that all those who play Fortnite are VGA, given newfound research. There is a difference between a hobby and an addiction.
References
Aarseth, E., Bean, A. M., Boonen, H., Colder Carras, M., Coulson, M., Das, D., Deleuze, J., Dunkels, E., Edman, J., Ferguson, C. J., Haagsma, M. C., Helmersson Bergmark, K., Hussain, Z., Jansz, J., Kardefelt-Winther, D., Kutner, L., Markey, P., Nielsen, R. K. L., Prause, N., Przybylski, A., Quandt, T., Schimmenti, A., Starcevic, V., Stutman, G., Van Looy, J., & Van Rooij, A. J. (2017). Scholarsâ open debate paper on the World Health Organization ICD-11 Gaming Disorder proposal. Journal of Behavioral Addictions, 6(3), 267â270. doi: https://doi.org/10.1556/2006.5.2016.088
âBBC News. (2022). Children stopped sleeping and eating to play Fortnite â lawsuit. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-63911176 [accessed 26 Dec 2022]
Carter, M., Moore, K., Mavoa, J., Gaspard, L., & Horst, H. (2020). Childrenâs perspectives and attitudes towards Fortnite âaddiction.â Media International Australia, 176(1), 138â151. https://doi.org/10.1177/1329878X20921568
Game Quitters. (2022). Parents Guide to Fortnite Addiction. Retrieved from https://gamequitters.com/parents-guide-to-fortnite-addiction/ [accessed 26 Dec 2022]
Melis, M., Spiga, S., & Diana, M. (2005). The dopamine hypothesis of drug addiction: hypodopaminergic state. International Review of Neurobiology, 63, 101â154. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0074-7742(05)63005-X
Metro. (2018). Girl, 9, in rehab after getting so addicted to Fortnite she wet herself. Retrieved from https://metro.co.uk/2018/06/10/girl-9-in-rehab-after-getting-so-addicted-to-fortnite-she-wet-herself-7619324/ [accessed 26 Dec 2022]
National Institutes of Health (2022). Video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in children. Retrieved from https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/video-gaming-may-be-associated-better-cognitive-performance-children#:~:text=A%20study%20of%20nearly%202%2C000,had%20never%20played%20video%20games. [accessed 26 Dec 2022]
NHS. (2019). Children treated for computer gaming addiction under NHS Long Term Plan. Retrieved from https://www.england.nhs.uk/2019/10/children-treated-for-computer-gaming-addiction-under-nhs-long-term-plan/#:~:text=Gaming%20disorder%20is%20defined%20by,precedence%20over%20other%20life%20interestsâ [accessed 26 Dec 2022]
Przybylski, A. K., Weinstein, N., & Murayama, K. (2017). Internet Gaming Disorder: Investigating the Clinical Relevance of a New Phenomenon. The American journal of psychiatry, 174(3), 230â236. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.2016.16020224
Turkle, S. (2017). Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other (3rd ed.). New York: Basic Books.
