Respected experts, including doctors such as those at the American Medical Association (AMA), have spoken out about problems associated with video games. Some games are too graphically violent or are filled with sexual content that is inappropriate for children. Games can make children aggressive and contribute to attention disorders. Children who play video games a lot seem to have more trouble in school. But this AMA statement was something new. For the first time, a major American medical organization acknowledged the dangers of video game addiction.

In this article in the Washington Post entitled When the Game Is the Controller excessive video game playing is now being compared to gambling addiction:

Children and adults who are addicted to video games spend as many waking hours as possible playing games and often forgo sleep to keep playing. They lie about the extent of their game-playing and often let everything else in their lives, including school, work and relationships, fall by the wayside. They’re irritable when not playing and have checked out from the rest of the world when the game controllers are in their hands. In short, they are people trapped in a self-reinforcing behavioral pattern, people who need help.

The devastating effects of video game addiction are more easily seen in places where consumer technology is more advanced than in the United States.

Countries like South Korea, for instance, which “is about two years ahead of us, and the prevalence of game addiction in that country is chilling.”

Everywhere in South Korea, all day long, youths play online games, listen to music, watch television, record movies and surf the Web on their cellphones. South Korea has 40 government-sponsored treatment programs to deal with video game and Internet addiction. More disturbing, news articles in recent months have reported incidents of young people playing marathon sessions online, sometimes even to the point of accidental death or suicide.

But the litmus test they offer here as to whether or not your kid is ‘addicted’ seems pretty lame. I mean, what kid wouldn’t rather play video games than hang out with his parents?

An easy way to check for possible addiction is the “I’d rather“ test. Would your kids rather play games than hang out with their friends, play sports, eat or go to sleep? Would they rather play games than watch TV, spend time with family members or see a movie? If they answer yes to a disproportionate number of these questions, they may be in trouble.

You would think someone could develop a better ‘I’d rather’ test than that, and a better name for it, too.

But if this really is a problem, and it seems like it is, then it’s a problem that the video game industry, which profits so lavishly from its young, impressionable market, should be forced to deal with.

Yet again, because of corporate excess, governments are forced to regulate. In the case of gambling, where research shows that as many as 6% of all gamblers will become addicted and end-up sick and, in one form or other, wards of the state, many jurisdictions require casinos to set aside a percentage of its revenue to treat gambling addiction so the state won’t have to.

Why can’t the enormously profitable video gaming industry, given the charges against it, be required to pay for the research necessary to determine the degree to which their games are promoting sickness and what to do about it?

Corporations are making it easy for our kids to become fat, indolent and sedentary while their profits soar. The time is long over-due that they be held accountable, just as parents must be held accountable, just as governments must be held accountable.

Together, we seem to have create a crisis with our kids that is nearing the tipping point. And just like with food, we need to take video gaming a lot more seriously than throwing at it an ‘I’d rather’ test.