Many of us parents with older kids know the slack-jawed, glossy-eyed look that’s involved with an intense video game session. And we also know that some days we have to drag them away from the console kicking and screaming because, let’s admit it, video games are fun and often more attractive entertainment to a kid than reading or riding their bike. But would you ever think that a love of video games is a bona fide addiction? A leading council of the American Medical Association does.

The council is trying to persuade the AMA to lobby to have video game addiction classified as a psychiatric disorder and have it added to the American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic manual. They want to make the public more aware of this supposed disorder, even making treatment for it covered by insurance. According to them, it’s a wide spread epidemic possibly affecting up to 5 million kids. One mom describes her ordeal with her teenager’s addiction:

Joyce Protopapas of Frisco, Texas, said her 17-year-old son, Michael, was a video addict. Over nearly two years, video and Internet games transformed him from an outgoing, academically gifted teen into a reclusive manipulator who flunked two 10th-grade classes and spent several hours day and night playing a popular online video game called World of Warcraft.

“My father was an alcoholic … and I saw exactly the same thing” in Michael, Protopapas said. “We battled him until October of last year,” she said. “We went to therapists, we tried taking the game away.

“He would threaten us physically. He would curse and call us every name imaginable,” she said. “It was as if he was possessed.”

Besides the threat of violence, does this sound that far off from the daily battles with stubborn teenagers that take place in homes across the globe? Comparing alcoholism to an obsession with video games seems a bit of a stretch, even if I don’t necessarily buy the whole “alcoholism is a disease” bit.

But even so, these teenagers wouldn’t have become “addicts” in the first place without a little enabling from their parents. An alcoholic wouldn’t become one without having access to copious amounts of booze. A kid won’t become a sugary cereal addict without being constantly served it for breakfast. And a teenager won’t become addicted to video games if strict limits are enforced as soon as the Xbox enters the house (if it’s even allowed to invade in the first place).

My version of treatment for “video game addiction” involves a sledgehammer, a garbage can, and a swift kick out the door into the backyard.

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