To answer this initial question I think is really important to agree on a definition for mental disorder, and I’m going to use this one:

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Mental disorders (or mental illnesses) are conditions that affect your thinking, feeling, mood, and behaviour. They may be occasional or long-lasting (chronic). They can affect your ability to relate to others and function each day. (https://medlineplus.gov/mentaldisorders.html)

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With that said, addiction to gaming is definitely a condition that we can register in some people, and it definitely affects thinking, feeling, mood, and behaviour. People that constantly play are usually affected by poor social skills, low self-esteem and with focus problems.

This is due to the nature of videogames, which are basically tricking our neural network to give value to something which most of the time isn’t much relevant for our life, which can be really dangerous in some cases.

This can be clearly seen in a common habit of people affected by this phenomenon: delaying meals.

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Since videogames are driven by making you mind reach the flow zone, which is this high focus state of mind in which our brain is immersed in a task and completely shut down everything else, even if the hunger stimulus presents, it gets ignored. And this happens with every stimulus which is not strong enough, leading to behavioural changes in subjects without them having any reasons to actively change them.

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Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, the psychologist who recognized and named the concept of flow, describes it  as "being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost."

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The other problem with the flow state of mind is that the dopamine reward: “[…] Flow releases a highly potent cocktail of neurochemicals that sharpen our abilities and create optimum performance conditions: […]”(https://brainbiz.com.au/the-neuroscience-of-flow/), which means that in subject with weak willpower or a difficult life (especially in children), this could lead to be their most effective and easiest way to get pleasure and enjoyment out of their lives, ignoring solutions to their actual problems.

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With this said, it’s true that defining the line that separates the hobby from the addiction is really subjective and difficult to draw, but this shouldn’t stop us from addressing the problem, as it is explicitly taking part in our everyday lives.

Ethic design measures should be taken and research should be done to instruct everyone on how to act, as right now most of parents are just going by instinct on something new they don’t have much experience on.

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