Video Gaming an Addiction?

I always tend to read the news on Yahoo and CNN when I'm up late at night and as of lately, I've been seeing this articles of the possibly of "calling excessive video-game playing a formal psychiatric addiction." I'm not exactly sure what to think of this. I realize that today's children, teenagers, and young adults stay in doors more and use the TV, computer and video games as their form of entertainment rather than going out in the yard and playing tag or I don't know working in the yard if you're an old teen/young adult. However, to put video gaming into the same category or at least compare it to alcoholism is kind of extreme in my opinion.

A lot of young people, college students and even some older people have been playing the online video game World of Warcraft since it's release back in 2004. I mention WoW as the game of choice, because it seems that any time an article about excessive game playing comes up WoW is mentioned, anyways... I, like most of the people have played, have put off school, friends, family, being outside to play the game instead; I have been holed up in my room for many hours just sitting at the computer playing. Does this mean I was addicted? My mom would say yes. My family would say yes. I would say yes to a degree because I always have/had the choice to stop...I wasn't playing the game because it was something that I absolutely NEEDED (not like an alcoholic NEEDS his beer), I played because I was bored, I had nothing else to do: what is so wrong with playing a video game (whether it be for 10 minutes or hours) after going to classes all day (college student) and/or going to work a PT job afterwards?

Everyone has their own personal reasons for playing WoW, as they do for playing other video games. If you're a younger child, then the parents need to take more responsibility and turn the damn TV off when they think enough is enough. Encourage them to go outside instead or just take the games away completely. As for those of us that are older and enjoy gaming, it really isn't as extreme as these articles are making it out to be and I wish they'd stop. Like I said, a lot of us do it because we're bored or after a long day of classes/work it's OUR way to relax and chill out...you just have to make the decision for yourself when to stop.