While, yes, there are a small minority of people who would be technically recognised as addicted to video games, it is worth bearing in mind that this is indeed a small minority of gamers across the whole world. In fact, the market we usually expect to be most 'at risk' - young adults and children - will rarely display any signs of addiction to video games more so than they would watching a favourite TV show or reading the next book in their favourite series, let alone the whole 'nation' being 'gripped' by video game addiction.
Not only is the article frustratingly exaggerative but it's taking hearsay research findings that themselves are taken out of context. So many everyday substances are said to be as addictive as heroin including, ironically, the actual sun - as in the giant orb of fire. The Sun suggests that Britain is in the grip of a video game addiction epidemic - a far cry from the reality that is a lot of people like to play video games, like a lot of people like to watch films or listen to music or read books etc. etc. etc.
To equate video games and heroin seems like a pretty perfect example of journalism jumping on the anti-gaming bandwagon. I'm not going to go on about the demonisation of video games in the media - we've all been around to see that and have our own opinions on it. But it seems that mainstream media these days will publish a story like this as a safe bet that it will feed the already prominent views held by similar papers and breed either fear or anger in its readers - both of which are valued.
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