Wander through the halls of a Tufts dorm on any given night and you are bound to see at least a few students huddled around a computer or a TV ensconced in a video game.
According to a Report of the Council on Science and Health, 70 to 90 percent of American youth play video games, and many Americans continue to play video games well past their childhood. But what happens when the line between virtual reality and real life becomes blurred?
In recent years, new research on playing video games has focused on whether or not excessive video game use can be considered an addiction akin to alcoholism or drug abuse. Some rehab centers have begun including video game addiction therapy into their services. In fact, the psychiatric hospital McLean, which is located in nearby Belmont, offers a Computer Addiction Service to patients.
Whether or not too much gaming can be classified as an addiction, the mix of excessive video game use and the rigors of an elite academic institution has become a problem for some students at Tufts.
Jean Haley, a counselor at the Tufts Counseling Center, said that while she does not know anything specific about video game addictions, she has seen Tufts students with video or computer game addictions.
"I've met with a few students who have identified that they feel addicted to it," Haley said. "They're not able to do the regular life basics that they need to."
Junior Issac Emmanuel is one such student. After playing World of Warcraft (WoW), an online, multi-person role playing game, for the first time at a friend's house during his senior year of high school, Emmanuel said he became addicted during his freshman year at Tufts.
According to Emmanuel, WoW is addictive because it is impossible to ever fully complete. Once a person's character in the game reaches the highest level, the character can always be further improved by acquiring new items, killing more enemies and engaging in player to player combat. As a result, once they have reached the highest level, players' reputations directly correlate to the amount of time they spend playing the game.
Emmanuel was initially hesitant to purchase WoW because he did not want to pay the monthly user fee, but a friend eventually convinced him. Addicted to the game during the summer before his freshman year at Tufts, Emmanuel decided to quit playing WoW before school started.
But despite his efforts to quit, Emmanuel began playing six to seven hours a day again toward the end of the semester. He quit again before finals, but picked it up once more when he went home to New Mexico for winter break.
This time, however, Emmanuel was hooked.
By the end of his second semester at Tufts, Emmanuel played WoW nearly every second that he was awake. He ordered in for nearly every meal and rarely left his room or attended classes.
"I was feeling very deadened," Emmanuel said. "My real life was my computer game."
Though Emmanuel remained friends with the same group of students, he said that while he was addicted to WoW, he spent little time socializing face-to-face, preferring instead to interact with the people he knew online.
Emmanuel attributed his changed social behavior to the nature of WoW. In the game, a player can talk with other players by pressing the control key and the down arrow on his computer and speaking into a microphone or headset. Emmanuel said that on the days when he did eat with friends from Tufts, he would find himself unconsciously pressing his hand down when he spoke.
"It had gotten to the point, where, in an unconscious matter, it was more my real life than my real life," Emmanuel said.
Emmanuel said that because he has friends who can play WoW casually, he believes that his obsessive tendencies made him vulnerable to addiction.
"Something about my personality got me into it," Emmanuel said. "There are people I know who don't get addicted. I think it's partly my OCD tendencies - the desire to complete everything ... but I think it's more than that. I don't really know what it is about my personality that got me into this."
Senior Chris Van Lenten was also addicted to WoW, but he said that it did not affect his social life or his relationships.
"I would never have said it was a big part of my life," he said. "It never had an emotional resonance with me. If someone had asked me what was important, it would never have been on the list."
Two summers ago, Van Lenten said that he played WoW for at least five hours every night. But because he is a member of the Beelzebubs, Van Lenten did not have time to play as frequently during the school year, so he played inconsistently. Several months ago, Van Lenten lost interest in the game and decided to quit for good.
Like Emmanuel, Van Lenten said aspects of his personality made him more prone to devote excessive amounts of time to the game.
"I think it's more my personality than the game itself," Van Lenten said. "It's dangerous with certain personality types ... It's a way to escape from the s--t you have to do."
Van Lenten also linked his video game-playing side to his tendency to avoid his work, describing himself as a chronic procrastinator. He said that if he had not been playing WoW, he would have been participating in other activities besides his school work.
"My grades would not be stellar even without WoW. I will always try to find ways of sabotaging my work," he said.
Like Van Lenten, junior Chris Chammas played WoW in order to pass the time - but unlike Emmanuel, Chammas said his tendency to neglect schoolwork does not negatively interfere with his academics, and that he can perform well in school without attending his classes frequently. Instead, he "does things to waste time" during the day, such as watching TV, going into Boston and playing video games.
During the fall semester of Chammas's sophomore year, he said that he played WoW at least six hours a day. While Chammas said that playing WoW negatively affected his grades, he did not classify himself as addicted because he said the game did not prevent him from socializing.
"I wouldn't say I was addicted, but playing six hours or more a day is pretty bad," Chammas said.
For Emmanuel, unlike Chammas, his excessive video-game playing prevented him from doing most of his school work during his second semester. When finals came, Emmanuel tried to catch up, but at that point it was too late.
"I did really badly," Emmanuel said. "I did badly enough that I seriously had to reevaluate what I was doing."
Worried that he would not be able to succeed at Tufts, Emmanuel decided to take a semester off from the Hill and enrolled at the University of New Mexico, where he could be closer to his family and work to break his addiction. Three days before classes started in Alberquerque, Emmanuel said he lost interest in the game and quit entirely. After what he described as a "ridiculously easy" semester at UNM, Emmanuel decided to return to Tufts.
Since his return to the Hill, Emmanuel has enjoyed his time at Tufts, replacing his video game addiction with a new obsession: hip hop music. A few weeks ago, Emmanuel performed for the first time as a rapper at the Tufts Burlesque Troupe performance.
Though Emmanuel is doing well now, he said that his addiction to WoW has made him wary of other addictive substances like alcohol and nicotine. He said he does not drink or smoke at all and does not plan to.
"I think to myself, if I can't handle a computer game, what would I do if I got addicted to alcohol?" he asked.
For those Jumbos who may be struggling with a video game addiction, Emmanuel suggests that they quit while they can.
"Not everyone gets addicted, but if you do, you can't play. You just can't. You have to go cold turkey," he said. "Don't delude yourself or you're just going to be like the alcoholic who thinks that because everyone else drinks casually, you can."
