There are people playing games everyday for 8-15+ hours a day for years. Go on twitch and see some of these kids stream almost 24/7.

Add to this people who aren't even really considered "gamers", at least not by the capital-G Gamer population:

More and more people (most often women, and often 30+) are getting addicted to "casual" games, free-to-play, pay-to-win situations.

I know one lady I accidentally introduced to a pet-type game online. She can't stop it, can't put it down, can't stop paying the freemium price, because in a sense they're holding her 'pet' hostage. She can't have a real animal where she lives, she has no family nearby, so these simulated animals are her life.

This doesn't sound so bad until you start adding up all the real cash money she's spent on the thing: plushies and stickers and clothes and add-ons. I visited her at her house not too long ago, and I could count about $300 worth of game upgrade related purchases... just around the computer!

It's not the only "casual" game she plays, either. If she travels, she has to have an internet connection, and she absolutely must log in to deal with them every day, for at least an hour.

If it made her happy, okay, I guess. But she's chronically depressed. And the thing that troubles me most is that she really is reliant on a company she has no control over. When they change something, or flash goes wonky, it throws her whole life into chaos, because her 'pets' are out of reach.

I think there's way more casual addiction out there than hardcore game addiction. Just because these people can be relatively functional. But in reality, they're just living their physical lives because they're waiting for their imaginary points to build back up, or farms to grow or whatever.

That scares me.