3887 Video Game Addiction | Cam Adair and Stefan Molyneux
"What is Video Game Addiction? Your brain loves gaming because gaming provides rapid dopamine release. Dopamine is a chemical in your brain that makes you feel happy. The more you game, the more your brain wants to game."Cam Adair is the founder of Game Quitters, the world’s largest support community for video game addiction, with members in over 70 countries.Gamequitters: http://www.gamequitters.comPersonal Website: http://www.camerondare.comTwitter: http://www.twitter.com/camerondareYour support is essential to Freedomain Radio, which is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by making a one time donation or signing up for a monthly recurring donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
Well, let's see how you feel at the end of this conversation as we come between you and your possible pixel addiction.
I'm here with Cam Adair.
He's the founder of Game Quitters.
No, it's not about stopping being a pickup artist.
It is the world's largest support community for video game addiction with members in over 70 countries.
So you want to check him out at CameronDare, C-A-M-E-R-O-N-D-A-R dot com, twitter.com forward slash CameronDare and Game Quitterers.com.
Cam, thanks so much for taking the time today.
Thanks so much for having me. Come on, it's one of the few pleasures left in the modern world when all of your university is leftist indoctrination and there aren't any jobs and heroin is dangerous.
Why would you want to take away this fun source of pleasure, progress, connection and community for so many people?
Yeah, I think that's really where there's a huge distinction that I try to make, which is I'm not against gaming.
I think gaming is fine. There's a lot of people who play, you know, up to 90% of people who game are completely fine.
But what I've discovered is there's this kind of 10% or less of the community of people who play video games who actually are struggling with it, want to quit and can't.
And we're seeing the impact on unemployment levels.
We're seeing the impact in schools.
And I'm even, you know, experiencing a lot of fathers who are not being present with their kids because they're just Kind of coming home from work and checking out to go escape into gaming.
So, you know, it's not about gaming being good or bad.
It's about if you're playing, is it having a negative impact?
And let's talk about it and let's support you if you want to get help.
Well, it's funny, you know, there was a recent solar eclipse.
And one of the things that I've noticed is a stay-at-home dad who spent, now my daughter's kind of growing out of it, but she spent a lot of time in play centers.
And the solar eclipse sort of reminded me of the fact that so many kids, what do they see of their parents, right?
Their parents, they see a phone or a tablet and some hair, I guess, on the other side.
Because when we would go to these play centers, and this is sort of a larger story, which we don't necessarily have to get into.
I just wanted to mention it. That for men, I think it seems to be a lot of video games.
For women, it seems to be a lot of social media.
Like I could see the moms barely interacting with their kids because of the lure of this dopamine hit of who likes the pictures of breakfast.
I don't know what's going on with that stuff.
But let's start to talk about how early the problem starts and how widespread it is in terms of the newest game or from the two to five set, which is really quite something.
Yeah, so we know from our own research that we've done with Dr.
Daniel King of the University of Adelaide in Australia that Our community, the average gamer, begins gaming at nine years old.
Now, that's a really important statistic because nowadays we know that people start gaming far earlier, two, three, four, five years old, and yet the negative impact that we're seeing from people who started at nine years old, now they're kind of 20, 22, 23.
What's the difference between someone who starts at nine and someone who starts at two, three, four, five?
And I believe that the compounding impact of negative impact when you start earlier Is really significant and a big study just came out in the spring from CAMH out of Ontario, which is actually where I am right now, and they found 13% of students between grades 7 and 12 report symptoms of a video game problem.
Now what's that number if you look at kids who start gaming 2, 3, 4, 5 years old and the compounding negative impact?
I think that's really where we want to be paying attention because it is a rising trend and it is something that I think is going to be impacting a lot of people.
Well, and you were pointing out that, I can't remember the exact age group, I guess it was pretty early toddlers, that there are a lot of toddlers out there, the majority know how to operate a tablet Better than they know how to tie their own shoes, which to my entrepreneurial mind means that there's a wonderful potential tablet application called How to Tie Your Shoes, but that's perhaps a discussion for another time.
But they really, I mean, you see the pictures online of the kids with a magazine trying to pinch Zoom, these toddlers trying to pinch Zoom a magazine and so on.
It really is, you know, when I was a kid, the great danger was that the sort of little 12 inch black and white dusty old TV was going to be the pseudo babysitter.
But now it just seems like, you know, fire tablets at these kids like Frisbees and you get some peace and quiet.
Well the reason why it's important to talk about is I imagine you relate to like you know when we were younger we had to go outside and play and what happened when you got kicked out of the house and you had to be outside to play is that you developed all of these intangible skills like being resourceful okay what's our environment have to offer to be spontaneous I'm outside I have to figure out something to do to be independent to be social hey neighborhood kids join us let's play some games to be creative and now we're seeing and I experience this a lot The number one question people ask me when they go to quit is,
I want to quit gaming, but I don't know what else to do with my time.
Or I want to quit gaming, but I'm going to lose all of my friends.
And they're genuine in that.
They actually don't know what else they'll do because they've never had any other hobbies or all of their friends are gamers and they don't know how to make new friends.
So there is this element of the intangible skills that actually help you succeed in life are very underdeveloped.
And it's because you're just spending all of this time gaming.
And that doesn't really transfer as much as we like to think into real life.
Oh, yeah. I know the glorious anarchy of childhood is something that has largely fallen by the wayside.
And I've noticed this as a parent, too, that neighborhoods are pretty empty.
You know, there's lots of this blue flickering screen death going on inside.
But as far as just being outside, I mean, you know, it's nice for you to put us in the same demographic.
But when I was a kid, of course, you were you had to go outside because inside was pretty deadly.
I mean, I love to read, so I got a lot out of that.
But you came home from school, you know, you did a little homework, and then you just went out.
And you were out till, you know, the streetlights came on, you came home.
My mom used to ring this giant cowbell out of the window to sort of call us home.
And then often you'd go back out again.
So it was a combination of the outdoors being much more interesting than the indoors, combined with that challenge of being broke.
Because now, you know, being a parent is like being this ATM, like everywhere you go, you got to spend money.
But when I was a kid, we had no money, and so you had to go out, and you go out into the woods, you got some sticks, you might have an old mattress that someone left there, and you have to create a world of imagination.
And that has been shown.
I think free play in nature has been shown to be one of the prime determinants in the development of empathy and also self-regulation.
You know, in video games, the rules are imposed by the environment.
Whereas if you're free playing in nature, you kind of have to come up with the rules, you have to enforce the rules, there's ostracism, there's rewards, there's a whole complex It's a series of negotiations that go on which don't exist in the digital world.
Exactly. And the big insight that essentially I believe I've had is that people are gaming for specific reasons.
And it's not just because they're fun, although that's part of it, but it's because of the needs that it fulfills.
So it gives you a need to escape.
It gives you a need to socially connect.
It allows you to see growth and progress, and it also allows you to see a sense of purpose.
But you'll get all that through instant gratification.
And we know that when you focus on instant gratification, you will be less successful over time than if you focus on delayed gratification.
And so what we see a lot is our brains now, the more we gain, the more we're focused on instant gratification.
We want everything now, now, now, now, now.
And that doesn't really help us actually be able to succeed in the world because the world doesn't really work like that.
Sometimes you actually have to put in some effort over the long term to develop something.
And where I think parents are kind of making the mistake is they see their toddler or their kid Who is able to, you know, do some stuff on an app and they're all excited like, wow, my kid's a genius.
But you're not thinking about the long term impact of having them be so focused on screens and not have other hobbies and not go outside and actually develop real skills.
And I think that's really the conversation.
Well, and when I was a kid, I remember I used to go into the there was such a sort of computer lab in my junior high school.
I used to go in on Saturdays and we worked with computers, but The games were pretty primitive, pretty boring, and so the gaming and computers used to be a gateway to learning how to code.
And there was deep-level assembly language, machine-level language coding going on there.
And now, of course, the computers are so sophisticated, so complex, and particularly with tablets, of course, there's the in-app purchases, try-forever kind of thing.
So you can always get a new game.
So the incentive to start working with computers in one format that can lead you to a more detailed understanding of how they work that might have some professional opportunities.
I mean, I ended up as a software entrepreneur based solely on my initial love of Star Raiders on the Atari 400, which then had me learn how to code.
But that avenue doesn't seem to be, I mean, you get a PS4, it's not like you're going to start working on your own game, at least it's not very likely.
Right. And I think, you know, what we see a lot is the justification of, well, I'm gaming because I want to be an esports star.
You know, now I'm going to get a scholarship at school and it's just not really realistic.
But there are a lot of interests that you have in games that you can transfer in other things like programming or other technologies.
Right. And so that's a big part of what we try to focus on is, look, You're interested in games.
You're interested in technology.
Just transfer that into something that, you know, the amount of hours that you put in the programming, if you put in the same amount of hours that you put in the gaming and the programming, you would be amazing, world-class.
But what have you really got out of all the years and hours and day after day after day into gaming?
You really haven't gotten much other than you've been entertained.
And I think life is a lot more about trying to find things that really leave you feeling fulfilled and not just entertained.
Well then, of course, entertainment is an important part of life.
But the problem is, of course, when entertainment begins to shoulder aside the necessary steps and progress that we're supposed to have in life, that is when I think it becomes an issue.
And you've talked about this question of dopamine, right?
So we are really working on trying to understand how the dopamine system works and how this kind of drip-drip Of course they are.
That's how they're designing these games.
They designed the games to be as immersive and interesting and engaging as possible.
Here's the thing. With mobile apps, that changed a lot of the way that these games are designed.
So I like to share the example of turn-based delays, which is you're allowed to play a game for a certain amount of time, let's say 30 minutes, and then it pauses you and says, you can't play anymore unless you pay, say, a dollar an hour or wait 24 hours.
Now, if they had this same game design in movies, let's say you went to watch a movie on Netflix and they gave you three minutes, you watched three minutes of this movie and then they stopped it, they paused it and they said, You either have to pay $3 now or wait 24 hours.
In the moment, you just want to watch the movie.
You don't want to wait. And so you're like, okay, fine, I'll pay $3.
And that's how they're designing these games now where they just say, okay, we'll give you a little bit, but as soon as you're actually interested, now we're going to stop and you have to pay for it.
And I just think that same type of game design was not something that, you know, in desktop games or in PS4 or In movies and more traditional entertainment, that was never integrated.
But now, because it was integrated into mobile apps, it's almost socially acceptable.
And you have these kids who are spending hundreds and thousands of dollars.
I get emails every single day from parents who say, my kids stole $1,000, $2,000, $3,000, $4,000 with my credit card paying for these apps.
And we see it all the time.
And I think that's where these game companies have state-of-the-art psychologists, Designing these games with all the latest research to make them as engaging as possible.
And they can say, look, we're just designing games to be fun, but where is the ethical responsibility?
Or are they doing anything to also help people who are potentially having struggles and problems?
Are they doing anything to support them?
And currently, I'm not aware that they are.
Right, right. Now, there is, of course, to me...
This generational gap, because the games, you know, again, when I was a kid, it was like a little monitor.
Sometimes the games were ASCII text on the old 2K PET and so on.
They weren't that immersive, and they certainly weren't social, right?
Like the sort of online gaming came in, you know, years and years after I first started playing video games.
So there was no real possibility of Any kind of social interaction during gaming, maybe those little typing in sort of network games or whatever of Doom and so on.
But that's really changed now to the point where people, you know, they're part of a clan, they're part of a tribe, they feel like they're part of a community, but it's not exactly freeform discussions.
It's not revelations about your thoughts and dreams and ambitions and ideas.
It's like, let's band together to kill that dragon and we'll call ourselves a community.
But that seems to me not what a community really is.
Gaming is a social community.
It's a place where people feel welcome, they feel safe, they feel accepted, and there's a very strong sense of us versus them.
Society has stigmatized gaming, and gamers, they've said, you guys are virgins, losers, you guys are wasting all your potential.
And gamers feel very strongly about the games that they play, and they feel very misunderstood.
And so what's happened is it's created this opportunity where gamers go online They're surrounded by friends like my people who understand them and who get them and now for them to move on from that is literally for them to move on from their tribe where they're gonna lose all of their friends.
They're gonna lose who they hang out with and that's hard.
Imagine you're a 15 year old kid and for you to quit gaming is for you to no longer have anything in common with anyone at school because everyone at school talks about gaming and you're just magically supposed to give that up.
It is. You know, one thing we have a very strong resistance to, and for obvious reasons, is moving from stuff we're really good at to stuff we're really bad at.
That's why I do a lot of philosophy on the show, not a lot of freeform jazz ballet, because I want to stick with the stuff I'm good at.
Now, of course, if you've been gaming for the age of 15 for 10 years, you're really good at gaming.
And what you're not good at is necessarily talking to girls or talking to boys.
You're not very good at sports, perhaps.
You're not very good at making jokes or having social contact and so on.
So asking people to give up their particular cave of competence and wander out into the bitter winds of a steep learning curve is asking a lot, particularly of teenagers.
Exactly. Especially when that it's not just the lack of skill development in other areas, but also a complete society in a different community that does not understand you and has never shown you any respect and has even, you know, the school shooting narrative that's been dominant in the media for a long time around video games has only kind of caused them to feel even more misunderstood, right? And so there is a very strong resistance that they have, even though they want to quit.
So here's a stat that we found from our study.
84% of people in our community knew they had a gaming problem over 12 months ago and have had over three episodes of a gaming problem throughout their life and yet they still play despite negative impact.
And it has a huge part in them having to give up the thing they're good at and their social community to go into this other side that has never understood them and they're not very good at.
And I think that's really what it's about.
Gaming is like the topic.
Gaming is the activity that they're doing with their friends.
It's not necessarily just about the games.
It's about everything else. Well, and when there is an emergence of these kinds of problems in society, yes, of course, we do want to put individual responsibility and so on.
But there's also a society there as well.
And I think that a lot of trends within society has led towards people preferring video games to non-video game activities.
Just sort of off the top of my head, I think school quality has gone down.
I think that boys, I just did a show on this recently, that boys are facing a lot of negative judgments and hostility sometimes from largely female audiences.
For teachers, there is, of course, drugging boys rather than improving the system.
And there is, you know, single moms, no fathers wanting to feel like you're competent at something without a male role model.
For some people, it's gangs. For some people, it's online clans as a way of finding their particular identity and community.
And last but not least, of course, there is this snowball effect.
So when I was a kid, if you stayed in, you were the odd one out.
Now I think you say, okay, that's it.
I'm going outside. Enough for the video games.
I'm going outside. And you wander into this tumbleweed strewn wasteland of bedroom communities where there are no kids out on the street.
I don't know if it's because of this fear of danger, although kids are safer now than they've ever been.
But there's also just, well, if no one's outside to play with, I guess I'll wander around an abandoned lot for 20 minutes and then go back in because there's nobody there.
Yeah. And I mean, what I see a lot is like teenage rejection.
So a lot of boys are being rejected as a teenager.
That hurts. And instead of actually having to be with that and kind of transcend that, they can just escape into gaming, escape into porn, and just use the internet for everything else.
And so what we know is that most people in our community don't just struggle with gaming, but they also struggle with porn.
And then all the rest of their time, they're just browsing the internet.
And that's over 50 hours a week between all three of those that they're spent just completely checked out.
And I think that's really what What we want to be looking at is, why are all these boys checking out from society?
We know that young men in their early 20s, their employment rates are dropping sharper than any other group right now.
And this economist from Chicago was like, where are all these boys?
If they're not in school, they should be working.
And he found that 75% of the time that they used to spend working is now spent gaming.
And from a quality of life measure standpoint, they're not even unhappy.
In fact, they're content, which makes sense.
Gaming versus work.
Gaming sounds a lot more fun than that.
But what happens is when they start reaching 30, now they realize how far behind they are in life, and their peers are getting married, they have jobs, they have successful lives, and they don't.
And I think that's where that contentment leads to depression, leads to anxiety, and leads to a lot of mental health issues.
Well, of course, you know, there's this parallel parts of our brain, I think, Cam.
Let me know what you think. So there's a part of our brain that doesn't know the difference between simulated reality and reality, right?
I mean, that's why Especially with these, like, 32-inch 4K monitors, a GTX 1080 card, and whatever it is going on.
I mean, it's really, really vivid.
I mean, I played the Dune 2016, I think it was.
I mean, that is some seriously vivid stuff, and it's really quite a long way from Space Invaders.
And so there's part of our brain that doesn't really get the difference, which is why porn works, because you think that there's sexual stuff going on, which sort of just picks us on a screen.
But there's another part of our brain, maybe it's like a deeper gut level or lizard brain, which is like, it's not real.
It's not real. It's not real.
And this one part of our brain that's like, wow, this is vivid.
I'm going to get dopamine from stuff that isn't really real.
And there's another part of our brain that keeps undermining that tower of Babel, so to speak.
And it's like, it's not real.
And eventually that lower part does work out, which is, I think, why the sense of depression and alienation and despair goes on.
But of course, I think where the addiction comes from is when you're recoiling from your life.
Of escapism, the first place you want to go is escapism.
Right. And the way I relate it is, you know, gaming fulfills these needs that we have, whether it's escape or social connection, you know, a sense of growth and progress through instant gratification or a sense of purpose.
But the level of dopamine you get in games also rewires your brain to want that level of stimulation.
So if gaming is here and real life is here, real life is boring if you're used to gaming.
And that's where we see people who they go through a 90 day detox period, which is kind of what research shows you need for your brain to come back to levels.
That's where over the course of 90 days, they start to realize like, wow, actually real life isn't so boring.
It's actually really interesting.
I know that we always know the truth.
So when we go to bed at night, we know whether we're living our lives in alignment or not.
We can pretend that we're not, we can kind of delude ourselves, but we always know the truth.
And I think that's why we see these boys who Eventually do come to the community.
These are guys seeking help on their own.
No one's telling them to come to this community.
They're searching for it literally by typing how to quit gaming into Google.
They always know the truth and they know whether or not they're really happy.
But what's inspiring is when you give them tools to help them understand what's really going on, the amount of power that they have to actually make changes in their lives is really profound.
Just to touch on the aspect of your brain not knowing the difference.
I don't know if you've played with VR at all, but I have.
And when I was playing with the VR, There was one game that we were on a roller coaster.
And even though I consciously knew I was sitting in the chair, when we went upside down, physically, I felt nauseous.
I felt like I was upside down.
And my body couldn't tell the difference between me seeing an immersive experience of a roller coaster and actually being on a roller coaster.
And I think that's really, really interesting.
Well, it's not like our evolution anticipated any of this wired technology.
Just by the by, you can do this even without VR. I remember many years ago when I was working up north, gold panning and prospecting and so on, I was sitting on the back of...
We were pulling all these drill bits out to where we were going to do some drilling, and I was sitting on this little sled on the back of a snowmobile.
We were going through the trees, and it was a fairly long way to go.
And I was kind of bored. And I thought to myself, wouldn't it be kind of cool if we were absolutely, like if the world was flat, we were upside down, and I was looking not at the treetops, but at tree roots hanging over a giant ocean like it was on some floating island.
I was just sort of messing around with my head, right?
And then when we came To the edge of the trees and went out on a frozen lake.
All the trees vanished, and I literally felt like I was about to fall.
I cried out and held on like iron because I did talk to myself into this weird perspective that my body then reacted to as if it was real.
And that's just something I was talking to about in my brain because I was bored, let alone, you know, wired directly, 360 degrees, audio, visual, the whole thing.
I mean, man, when they combine, you know, VR, porn, sex robots and so on, I mean, there's going to be these giant craters where, like, Productive testicles used to be.
Well, we're already seeing all these boys escaping in the porn, and they're like, I'm fine with it.
You know, overall, like, they're more or less okay with it.
And when you add these other technologies into it, I think we're just gonna see this mass migration of guys just checking out from society, which is, you know, part of why I don't think that's necessarily healthy.
And I think if we actually heal what's really going on, we can kind of bring everyone together.
But the challenge is Gaming is a fully immersive experience, and we know how much we desire flow state.
So I love to surf, and the reason I love to surf is because when I am on top of a wave and I drop into it, there is no other thought I can have.
I'm constantly looking for waves, and a wave is about to kill me, so I'm unable to think.
It's the best meditation I've ever found.
Gaming is very similar. You're fully immersed in the experience.
But what happens is when you turn that game off and you look around, Your life is in the exact same place it was before you started playing the game.
And if your life isn't going so well, or your life is a bit of a mess, or you're experiencing a lot of challenge, of which you're now trying to escape in the gaming floor, that's not being fixed by you continuing to game.
And that's where whether you continue the game or not, or you try to moderate or not, either way, we have to begin to get really honest about where our lives are at, if they're where we want them to be, and what we can actually do proactively to shift that.
And if gaming is a fun, entertaining thing, cool.
But if it's causing us to not actually address the different challenges or issues that we have in our lives, they're not going to go away by continuing to game.
So let's talk about some of your experience, because you kind of went pretty deep into this rabbit hole.
And, you know, I don't want people to just think we're talking about the 10 percent because, you know, it's kind of like a bell curve.
It's not like everyone's fine.
And then 10 percent, boom!
It's all terrible, right? I mean, it's a continuum.
There are, of course, lots of things.
Take the time you spend gaming.
In six months, you could learn to play guitar reasonably well.
Like, you could learn another language to the point of at least being able to manage a restaurant conversation or a basic conversation.
You could learn a sport and become reasonably decent at it.
There's lots of things that could occur.
And so I don't want people to think, we're just talking about the 10%, but even on that bell curve, you seem pretty far down the rabbit hole of video games consuming most of your waking hours.
Yeah, I mean, my gaming really shifted when I started to experience a lot of bullying.
And so at school, you know, school is no longer a very fun experience for me when kids are chasing me around at lunch hour trying to put me in a garbage can.
Or on my hockey teams, you know, there was a time where I was actually spit on for an entire hour.
Now, you know, some people watching this will say, why didn't you fight back?
And, you know, I think it's easy to look back on those moments and think, yeah, that would have been a great idea.
Like, I wish I punched that guy in the face.
But when I'm a 15 year old, 14 year old boy, Who is just experiencing this trauma?
It was kind of hard in that moment to do that.
But what happened- Well, I'm sorry to just interrupt you for a sec right after I ask you a question and how rude.
But yeah, I mean, I remember when I was a kid, I was playing a video game.
I know. Yeah, I was playing a video game.
I was doing really well. Some other kid wanted to play it and unplugged the game, you know, and I called him a jerk and whatever it was, right?
And he's like, oh yeah, well, my brother's going to get you.
And then this, you know, because when you're 14, I guess maybe girls don't really understand this quite as much.
I guess for them, it's sexual development.
When you're 14, there's a huge differential.
Like the kids who've hit puberty, the kids who haven't, it is not an equal fight.
You're in totally different weight classes.
Like a friend of mine got involved with some Lebanese kid when I was in junior high school.
My friend was like, you know, all of 110 pounds.
This guy was like a troll or something.
He had hair on the backs of his fingers.
It's not even remotely close.
It's like, you know, being Danny DeVito taking on...
One of Tupac Shakir's bouncers.
It's not the same situation.
So just saying, oh, you should fight, you know, I mean, I knew kids who got involved in fights and ended up with some serious injuries.
Like, it is a no-fooling dangerous situation to get involved in, particularly given the size disparity.
So I just really wanted to point that out, that this magical thing of, oh, go to the teachers, or, oh, just fight back.
It's a lot of fantasy.
It's a lot more involved and risky than people think.
Absolutely. And I think we overestimate You know, our level of consciousness as teenagers and what we're truly really capable of.
But what happened was, you know, at school and on my hockey team's life wasn't so much fun.
And so I just escaped into gaming.
I actually ended up dropping out of high school twice, never graduated, never went to college.
And my friends were off to college and I was living in my parents' basement gaming up to 16 hours a day.
Now, of course, people always say, well, what were your parents doing?
And so my parents at one point said, you know, if you're not going to school, you have to get a job.
And so I was like, OK, cool.
Brilliant idea. Let's get a job.
But let's actually pretend to have a job.
And so every day my parents would drop me off at a restaurant.
I had a job at Earl's or a quote unquote job at Earl's where I was a prep cook that's like a restaurant.
And every day I'd have my dad drop me off at McDonald's across the street.
He would drive off. I'd walk across the street, catch the bus.
He would take me back home. I'd sneak into my window and go to sleep.
And this would go on for a couple of weeks before eventually, you know, they're like, yo, where's the paycheck?
And then I'd get another fake job and, you know, rinse and repeat.
And eventually my strategy was really just around wearing them out.
So just getting to a point where they were just like, you know what?
Like, fuck it. Like, figure your stuff out, right?
And that's because I knew my parents were like that, where, you know, their fear of losing me was greater than my fear of losing them.
Now, of course, I was bluffing, but my parents also wanted to do a good job, right?
So I was pretending to have jobs.
I was super depressed, super anxious, eventually got to a point where I wrote a suicide note, and that's a night where, for me, I knew I needed to make a change.
But the point I want to make is, Online in games, I had a lot more control over my experience.
And this is a bit of where, you know, the cyberbullying conversation that's very big right now, I have a really tough time with it because gaming for me was like, no one can bully me online because I can just, you know, block them or go to a different game, go to a different server.
Whereas at school, I couldn't control whether the school kids were chasing me around at lunch hour.
Or I couldn't control when I was on a hockey team taking a bus back from a game we were playing, and a kid started spitting on me.
That was a lot harder to control than online.
And so ultimately, gaming was kind of a safer place.
And I just gamed the game, the game, the game, and kind of just checked out from society.
But it didn't fix anything.
And eventually, I got to a point again where I wrote a suicide note.
And that's where I realized I no longer felt safe with myself.
And I really need to make a shift.
And that shift was about fixing those challenges in my life But in order to do that, I had to remove gaming because if I continued the game, I would just stay home and I would never try to improve my social skills or actually go work out and try to figure out how to get a job, do these different things that would actually help my life.
Right, right. I'm sorry about all that that happened to you.
It is scary stuff. And I think that the dopamine system in our lives, in our brains, is kind of designed to give us rewards for achieving control over our environment.
I mean, this is basically what we do as human beings is, you know, well, it's cold.
I'll build a fire. Oh, look, I have control over my environment.
Oh, it's raining. I'll build a shelter or a house or a city.
I have control over my environment.
Oh, I have an infection. Let me see if I can get some antibiotics, put control over my environment.
And human progress, at least from a technological standpoint, is about gaining control over our environment.
But when that is impossible, and again, I think for kids in a very unproductive and often destructive school system, you can't exercise control of your environment.
You can't even choose often what courses you want to take, what teachers you want.
The parents can't choose what's on the curriculum or what's not on the curriculum.
You're kind of a floating leaf on the endless turbulent stream of social experimentation on the young.
For propagandistic purposes often, but I think that that desire to exercise control over our environment is very healthy when we are able to apply it to things in reality.
But when, again, we substitute control over an imaginary environment, it's kind of like if you think about working out and then you work out, then the thought about working out is good.
But if you only think about working out instead of working out, then you get weaker, not stronger.
And so if the fantasy life is not a preparation for the real life, It moves you in the opposite direction, I think, than what it's supposed to.
Exactly. I'm like a poster child for the school system not working.
One of my favorite examples was I identified early in my life that in order for me to focus, I have to have headphones in.
Right now, if I was trying to work, trying to write something, and I didn't have headphones in with music on, I would not be able to focus.
It's almost virtually impossible.
In school, I identified this somehow as a teenager.
So I used to tell teachers, like, hey, when we're doing classwork, can I please wear headphones?
It'll really help me focus, and I'll be quiet, I'll do my work, et cetera, et cetera.
And they'd say, no. And I'd say, why?
And they're like, because no headphones in class.
And I'd say, yeah, but this really helps me.
And they'd say, no headphones in class.
And I was like, fuck, well, OK. The other option is I'm going to not be able to focus, which means I'm going to talk to the person next to me and distract other kids.
And eventually get in trouble. And that's exactly what would happen.
I would get in trouble every day at class and get detention and get kicked out.
And I was like, why would I go to school when I'm trying to help them help me and they're not listening?
Why would I go? I don't really feel like I need this.
And so for me, that was just remove myself from that system.
And I think there's a lot of people in this community who feel very similar where, you know, they're bored in school.
They don't feel understood. They feel like society doesn't really get them.
Constantly shamed and stigmatized.
And why wouldn't they just go into a different world online where they're surrounded by people who do get them and they're constantly engaged?
They can watch your show for hours and be entertained and really learn something.
Why would you stay in this other world?
And I think that's really what we're seeing with all these boys being completely disengaged.
Well, you kind of have to like society to want to be in society.
You know, I mean, if for you, of course, as you say, Cam, school was a torture chamber of Bullying, senseless rules, lack of ability to concentrate, and fear of consequences that were irrationally and aggressively applied, why would you want to be there?
I mean, it's sort of like saying, hey, care to join X in a verbally abusive relationship for all time?
It's like, I think I'm gonna just go kill some orcs on my screen.
And so the fact that society doesn't really seem to like boys these days.
You know, boys are considered to be defective girls.
You know, if we could only drug them into being just like girls, And so the fact that society doesn't like boys, I think, translates into boys not really liking or trusting society very much and finding much more interest and empowerment in an alternative realm.
And of course, the interesting thing about the boys' games Is that they tend to be rules-based, combat-based, victory-based, win-lose-based, you know, all the stuff that sports in a positive male role model environment used to be.
But of course, without the exercise, without the social skills.
And also the other thing I think about video games, I was thinking about this in my sort of list through the games that I've played, which has been a lot.
And I think it's interesting with regards to risk tolerance, because if you're playing a single player game, You know, something like Oblivion or something like Morrowind, I guess, with the prequel.
Well, you can just hit your F9, right?
You save the game and you go try something.
If it doesn't work, just load.
You know, and this idea that you don't really have to deal with much risk tolerance because everything can be undone, everything can be rewound, so to speak.
That's not the way it works in sports.
You don't get mulligans when you try and kick a soccer ball into a net or something like that.
So I think that Looking at risk is something you can very easily undo if it goes awry.
Well, that's not usually how life works.
Yeah, you nailed one of the really big insights that ultimately this community has really shown is, for them, gaming is a safe place for them to fail, and society is not like that.
We see it, especially for people who are unemployed and not pursuing work, is they say, well, if I apply for a job and they turn me down, that's rejection.
And it comes back to this unhealed teenage rejection that we've experienced.
I've experienced certainly a lot of it.
And instead of dealing with rejection and really being able to transform that experience in our lives, they end up just checking out and escaping and trying to avoid it.
But online, if you fail, you just try again, right?
And so interesting because gamers, especially gaming addicts, are extremely proficient at games.
Extremely good. They're world class at their games.
And there's very specific ways that they have learned to be good.
They watch games. They watch tons of streams.
They maybe even hire an eSports player to help them.
They talk amongst each other.
They play a ton. They also play to specifically improve their skills.
Yet they don't take that same skill development, that same way that they have improved their skill in the game, into other areas of their life.
And there's this lack of transference between the way they approach games and the way they approach life That I just find really interesting.
And I think that, obviously, the safe place to fail is part of that.
But I also am just so curious as to why that is, that they don't take those same ways, learning tutorials, et cetera, et cetera, into other areas of their life.
And, you know, it's something I'm looking to explore a lot more.
Right. So let's talk about sort of some of the practical steps that people can do.
So let's say you're listening to this, and let's say to one degree or another, You want to reduce the amount of time you spend on games.
And if you want to reduce it to zero, that's perfectly fine.
If you want to pay Candy Crush or the toilet, who cares, right?
But if you feel that, and I think we all kind of know this deep down, if you've played a lot of games, you've done it.
There's not that much more to do.
Maybe there's a bunch of other stuff you could do.
But if you want to reduce or eliminate video gaming from your life, what are the barriers and what can you do?
Yeah, so the number one thing that I recommend is just take the 90 day detox.
So you don't even need to join our program, just take 90 days off gaming.
Now, do you mean all gaming?
More or less all gaming.
And the reason I share that is because, especially if you're someone who has never really had life without gaming, you've been gaming for your whole life, you don't even know what life is like without gaming.
And so take 90 days, take a semester off, take three months, And just explore what is life like without gaming.
And at the end of that, you can always reevaluate and reintroduce it, try moderation, go back to it or do whatever you want.
But taking 90 days is so good just to identify, you know, some other interests in life, to learn more about yourself and to create this part of your life where you understand it.
It's like a reference point for what life is like without gaming, which if you find that you're gaming, you go back to it and it begins to snowball out of control again.
You're a lot more able to bring it back to better levels if you know what that actually looks like than if you've never tried.
So first, start with 90 days.
And we see amazing results.
From a quality of life measure standpoint that evaluated 12 different areas of your quality of life, most members in our community start with 3.5 out of 10.
And after 90 days, they're at 7.
So you're looking at major improvements, Without gaming, to your time management, to your emotional health, to your mental health, to your relationships, to intimate relationships, to school, work, career.
You're looking at, like, substantial improvements to these different areas of your life.
So try 90 days.
So there's a doubling of well-being in three months.
Yes. Okay, that's got to be something that people are interested in.
Of course, there's an adjustment period.
Like, if you've ever seen a horror movie and a matinee performance and it's sunny out and you come out of the theater, it's like, ah, it's so bright, I'm like a vampire.
But you just let your eyes adjust and then you're fine.
The first, I mean three weeks especially, the first three days will be a bit intense and I just want to encourage everyone to just be with that.
You're going to experience cravings, urges to play, you're going to experience some anxiety, maybe some depression, mood swings, maybe you're feeling fatigue.
You're going to experience some stuff and what I want to kind of encourage everyone on is if you're experiencing that, it's actually good because that stuff is happening underneath your gaming.
You're just not aware of it. You're numbing it with gaming and so Especially the first three days, you'll have more intense cravings, but they will subside.
The first three weeks, one of the top withdrawal symptoms that you'll experience is boredom.
Boredom is a withdrawal symptom.
Boredom is a withdrawal symptom.
What on earth do I do when I'm not ripping the heart of a demon out through its nose in real time?
You know, there is a little bit of watching the paint dry that occurs when you take down that level of stimulation.
Right. And it's not just that you don't have other things to do, but your brain literally experiences this boredom because of the difference in the level of stimulation between gaming, which is far more than you can get in real life.
And so if you're feeling bored, give it three weeks.
And what we find is through research, after three weeks, the withdrawal symptom of boredom really subsides.
So first, commit to 90 days.
After that, you want to be really intentional with finding replacement activities.
So again, For me, I game to escape, to socially connect, to see measurable growth, and to feel a sense of purpose.
So there are three types of activities that I recommend people find when they quit gaming.
The first is something mentally engaging, right?
Programming, martial arts, a new skill, learning a new language, learning an instrument, doing something that is mentally engaging.
The second is something you can do at home when you're tired and bored from the day.
Reading, cooking, listening to podcasts, watching Stefan's show, doing things that You know, you can do when you're tired and just bored at home.
More like carpentry, working with your hands.
When you actually produce something, even if it's a picture or an article or a video, if you produce something that has tangible reality, particularly if it does good for the world or just produces comfort in your own environment, then Your body recognizes the difference between things that make stuff and things that don't.
And whatever you reduce in your life will generally be filled in with other activities.
Then if you want to increase gaming, you're going to push out those other activities, which hopefully you'll like quite a bit as well, and that'll push back against it.
Exactly. And so the third type of activity you want to find is something social.
Again, you're going to experience a shift in your social circle when you quit gaming.
Your friends might ask you to play.
And that might increase cravings.
You might have to create a boundary around that.
But finding something new, like going to meetups, joining a rock climbing gym, martial arts, yoga, something where you can meet other people will really help a lot.
That's step two. Step three is you need to schedule your time.
So essentially, a lot of what you're doing when you're trying to move on from gaming is you need to increase your awareness and increase your intention.
The awareness is, what are you actually doing with your day?
Use a schedule. Use an agenda.
Be very intentional.
I'm going to learn this new language for 30 minutes.
I'm going to go watch this show for an hour.
I'm going to go to the gym for this time.
Be more intentional, be more structured because you want to avoid this sense of like, well, I have nothing else to do.
So gaming can't be any worse than me just sitting around on the couch, staring at the ceiling.
So you need to have other activities planned.
And I'd recommend like 30 minute blocks, 60 minute blocks, being out of the house as much as possible.
All of those things will help a lot.
And then the final step is definitely try to surround yourself by a support community.
You don't even have to join ours.
Go on Reddit. Go to Stop Gaming on Reddit.
Join the Stop Gaming community.
There's a ton of people from all over the world who are on the same journey and having a support system where you can actually talk about what you're experiencing, especially if you journal about it, will really support you because you're processing your experience.
You're clarifying your emotions.
You're clarifying your thoughts.
You're getting it out instead of having to kind of experience everything on your own.
What about the question of relapsing, which of course is a natural part of any addiction reduction.
How do people handle the relapse issue?
Relapse happens. It happened to me.
It happens to a lot of people.
When you relapse, the important part is that as soon as you're aware that you've relapsed, don't continue it.
Get back on track right away.
Be honest about it.
Reach out for support. But more than anything, look at how many days did you get to?
So tracking your days is very helpful.
Let's say you got to day seven.
You got to day seven? Can you beat day seven next time?
And if it took you three days for you to stop, let's say you relapse and you game for three days, Can you beat that score as well?
Where if you end up relapsing next time, can you get back on track in a day?
Can you get back on track in a couple hours?
The more you can actually play with those numbers and be aware of them, I just find that really helped me.
And ultimately, relapse happens, but what's most important is that you just get back on track and you learn from it.
Relapse happens for a reason.
Maybe you were experiencing anxiety, cravings.
Maybe your friend asked you to play.
How did you justify it?
Really actually reflecting on all of that is really important for you to learn from it so that you can be more successful in the next time.
And there is, I think, something that is important, and it's sort of larger existential and society-based.
Yes, society needs some work.
Society needs some fixing.
Society needs just a few tweaks from the ground up.
If you are abandoning society and entering into a virtual world of inconsequentiality, and that is the fundamental thing about video games is that they are inconsequential.
You don't end up with anything.
You don't have anything that you can show.
You've lost a lot of time.
And again, the fun is, and again, no one's degrading fun and video games in moderation, blah, blah, blah.
But society needs some fixing.
And if you are moving so heavily, I can't do anything to improve society.
I can't do anything to make other people's lives better.
Society is beyond fixing, beyond saving, and therefore I'm going to go galt digitally.
And that I think is a mistake.
It's not the case that society is beyond fixing.
You're an example of that, Cam. I mean, you had this addiction.
It drove you to near suicidality.
You pulled back from it.
You've given great TED Talks.
You've got a great website.
You're really, really helping thousands, if not tens of thousands of people to overcome something that is crippling them.
Society is not beyond saving.
Society is not beyond fixing.
You can have an effect.
To make the world a better place.
But retreating into the digital world of inconsequentiality is a profound act of surrender and of giving up.
And I think eventually your body just catches up with you and say, okay, well, if things are that bad, what could be good in our lives?
Right. And I think what you want to look at is, are you living a life where you're actually taking responsibility for the experience that you're having?
And apathy is something that I really struggle with a lot, and I see it a lot in our community.
And apathy leads to just consuming.
Because you're just like, oh, whatever, nothing matters anyways.
But there is a huge impact that you can have.
And I personally just try to be an example of that.
I think you're a great example of that.
Your show has a huge ripple effect across the world.
And you're creating something with this.
And so for everyone watching, how can you be more of a creator and not just a consumer?
Everyone here has ideas of different things they want to do, different projects, different goals that they have, different ways that they could impact society.
Start somewhere.
Start somewhere. Start a project.
Go start a podcast.
Go learn to create an app.
Develop a program. Do something.
But just come from a place of creation and not just consumption.
There's nothing wrong with entertainment.
There's nothing wrong with consuming.
That's all good. But the balance between if that's the only thing that you do and you're never actually creating anything, I think that's where we get into trouble.
And so, you know, everyone watching this, you have an amazing ability to make a difference And I think that you should.
And of course, while you're fighting imaginary bad guys on the screen, some of the real bad guys are taking over the world.
And that's going to make your world a whole lot less fun when you wake up from the day.
So I wanted to thank you so much for taking the time today.
Please check out GameQuitters.com.
It's CameronDare.com.
And of course, Twitter.com forward slash Twitter.
Cameron Dare, thank you so much.
I strongly urge people, you know, you either maybe have it yourself, or it's a little more than you want, or you know someone.
Like, this is something, and if you're a parent, it's essential.
You need to get educated about this stuff.
It is a very profound and important modern phenomenon with great opportunities for progress.
You know, technology gives us all of these good and bad It inflates the angels and the devils at the same time.
And we know where the angels are.
It's part of this conversation, part of what we're both doing.
The devils are pretty clear. We need to identify them.
And Gamequitters.com is a great, great place to start.
So check it out, no matter what your relationship to gaming.
Thanks again, Cam, so much for your time today.
Thanks so much for having us. And this conversation was an incredible gift.
