Gamers Are More Ashamed of World of Warcraft Than Porn

by John Kershaw on June 9, 2008 at 2:12 pm

WhoreLore, enjoyably NSFW

Dr. Jerald Block is a psychiatrist who specialises in helping people get over their addiction to a wide number of things, one of which is games. He argued recently in the American Journal of Psychiatry that “Internet Addiction” should become a professionally used term.

In a recent interview with The Boston Globe he talks about the shame a lot of gamers have when they come to him for help. He cites the socially unacceptability which games, such as World of Warcraft, have as being reasons why people find it hard to talk about.

Some people come in for trouble with Internet porn. But the computer gamers tend to be harder to treat. People feel a lot of shame around computer games. Whereas, it’s socially acceptable to have a porn problem.

He goes on to elaborate on the difference between videogames and porn.

As a society we understand that porn is something people do, and you can see a psychiatrist and get treated for it. But gaming is hard to describe to anyone else. So these people can’t explain their situation to friends.

Block also talks about how, even though the average age of gamers is around 30, most studies on gamers are carried out on adolescents, in part due to the more secretive approach a lot of adults take to their gaming.

It’s an interesting thought about WoW being more shameful than porn and how it’s mostly adults who think about it this way. But I can’t seem to shake the mental image of a mother walking into her son’s room, to see the son spin round on his chair whilst covering the screen shouting “It’s not what it looks like! It’s porn!”

Source: The Boston Globe

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