Addiction: Greatest Freakout Ever

A lot of us have seen the video of the kid who goes nuts and freaks out because his mom cancelled his World Of Warcraft account. If not heres the link to that video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YersIyzsOpc

Can you make the assumption that Stephen the kid from the video has an addiction due to his obviously extreme reaction after his mom cancelled his WOW account or for the sake of the subordinate terms in addiction ill say withdrawal? I think you can definitely make an argument that he has an addiction to this video game after just seeing his withdrawal because it shows implications that he also touches on some of the other addiction subordinates.

First off we will start will salience, which is whether the game is important to him or not. This is clearly implicated by his reaction to not being able to play it because who would freak out that bad about something that is not important to them. The second one is tolerance. You cannot really say by just seeing this video that he plays an unhealthy amount but I think it is pretty safe to say he probably does because his mother cancelled his account for it, which could have just been because of how he acts when he plays. The third one is mood modification, which is the reason why people play. This also can’t be determined through just watching this video, as we don’t know why he plays. The fourth one is withdrawal, which is the unpleasant feeling you get if you cant play anymore and this reaction or unpleasant feeling is clearly displayed by the way he acts after not being able to play anymore. The fifth subordinate is relapse, which happens if after a period of non-use you fall back into these habits. This also cannot be determined by just watching this video because we would have to know if he got his account back and if he went back to bad habits. The sixth one is conflict, which tend to be interpersonal. This is also shown in the video as he yells at his brother and is very upset with his mother because she was not ok with him playing the game anymore and cancelled his account. The last subordinate problems, which are more serious things like dropping out of school can somewhat, be implied that it is apparent. This is because during the video he starts to harm him and say that he is going to run away both of which could fall under this subordinate.

After all of this through the implications that his extreme withdrawal reaction I believe you can say that he has a video game addiction. This is because the implications show that he possesses four of the seven subordinates and sense addiction is polythetic that is enough to make it an addiction.

Reference

Downs , Edward . "Addiction ." COMM 3560: Video Game Entertainment. . University of Minnesota Duluth. Power Point , Duluth . 2 May 2013. Class lecture.