An article in last month's CyberPsychology and Behavior offers some evidence for gaming "addiction". According to the abstract (the article's content is locked to journal subscribers), the authors of Excessive Computer Game Playing: Evidence for Addiction and Aggression?, based out of Charité-University Medicine Berlin and Nottingham Trent University, surveyed over 7,000 online gamers using online questionnaires. Results indicate that 11.9% of them "fulfilled diagnostic criteria of addiction concerning their gaming behavior". Unfortunately, I can't access the article for another month from my University's e-subscription so can't tell you what the diagnostic criteria are, or how they were measured, or even what is considered "excessive".
The good news is that there was only "weak evidence" for a link between "excessive" gaming and aggression.
94% of the sample was male, and they averaged 21.11 years of age.
