What are the common effects of addictive gaming?

What are the common effects of addictive gaming?

Marc Kern (Addiction Expert, Director of Addiction Alternatives) gives expert video advice on: What is "computer game addiction"?; What causes "internet gaming addiction"?; Why are computer games so addictive? and more...

When you're preoccupied with a video game or something like that, well you don't have to go and negotiate with the local bully, or the girls, or whatever. You get all your needs met in this mechanical way, and in a way you're stunted in learning things you would normally learn just by being alive, and going to school, and by being out there. It stifles, because these mechanisms do seem to work efficiently, effectively and predictably and it's reinforcing, so you get an illusion that you have the skills to get out there and make it in the real world, when in actuality, you really have forgone them and you may be out of sync with your contemporaries and they have the skills, and you don't and then you're going to withdraw more into video machines, because you're further behind as the weeks and years go on.