Brett Walker says he knew he was hooked to using his computer when his virtual life nearly destroyed his real life. He was unemployed, had started to neglect his personal hygiene and says he had no friends all because of his online game of choice, “World of Warcraft.”
“Whenever I went online, it really was like getting high on a drug,” said Walker in an interview with Dr. Nancy Snyderman. “I mean, I would log in and I could just feel the dopamine start coming as soon as I was typing in my password and stuff, just waiting for it to log in.”
Walker, 28, said that he started playing online games when he was 11. By his early twenties, the Texan devoted up to 16 hours a day to “World of Warcraft,” a game that has millions of players around the globe. As he got better at the game, he said, his life away from his keyboard crumbled.
“Whenever I was on the computer I would feel great,” said Walker in an interview airing Thursday, Nov. 8 at 10pm/9c on NBC's Rock Center with Brian Williams. “I was in this whole other world. I was excited. I was happy for that brief moment, but whenever I’m lying in bed at night, I would always … just think about how that day I hadn’t accomplished anything, about how I wasn’t what I wanted to be in life and that I was really, you know, miserable."
Was Walker suffering from a true addiction to the Internet or just a bad habit? An emerging area of research has developed to study those who are obsessed with logging on to the World Wide Web. Scientists say brain scans of heavy Internet users reveal changes in both the size of certain parts of the brain as well as its function. They say it is possible to become addicted to the Internet.
Brett Walker says he knew he was hooked to using his computer when his virtual life nearly destroyed his real life. He was unemployed, had started to neglect his personal hygiene and says he had no friends all because of his online game of choice, “World of Warcraft.”
“Whenever I went online, it really was like getting high on a drug,” said Walker in an interview with Dr. Nancy Snyderman. “I mean, I would log in and I could just feel the dopamine start coming as soon as I was typing in my password and stuff, just waiting for it to log in.”
Walker, 28, said that he started playing online games when he was 11. By his early twenties, the Texan devoted up to 16 hours a day to “World of Warcraft,” a game that has millions of players around the globe. As he got better at the game, he said, his life away from his keyboard crumbled.
“Whenever I was on the computer I would feel great,” said Walker in an interview airing Thursday, Nov. 8 at 10pm/9c on NBC's Rock Center with Brian Williams. “I was in this whole other world. I was excited. I was happy for that brief moment, but whenever I’m lying in bed at night, I would always … just think about how that day I hadn’t accomplished anything, about how I wasn’t what I wanted to be in life and that I was really, you know, miserable."
Was Walker suffering from a true addiction to the Internet or just a bad habit? An emerging area of research has developed to study those who are obsessed with logging on to the World Wide Web. Scientists say brain scans of heavy Internet users reveal changes in both the size of certain parts of the brain as well as its function. They say it is possible to become addicted to the Internet.
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