🌿 RehabNest - Internet Gaming Addiction Screener
rehabnest.rxtoolspro.com | A confidential first step toward understanding your gaming habits
🎮
Free ScreenerGamingConfidential
Internet Gaming Addiction Screener
Internet Gaming Disorder is recognised in the DSM-5 research framework and formally diagnosable under the WHO's ICD-11. This confidential screener can help you understand whether your gaming habits have crossed into a pattern worth addressing, based on the same nine criteria clinicians use.
📋 Internet gaming disorder screener
Answer based on your experience over the past 12 months. Be honest. This is private and only for your own understanding.
0/9
This screener is not a clinical diagnosis. A licensed therapist familiar with behavioural addictions can provide a full evaluation.
📖 Understanding internet gaming disorder
It's not about the hours alone. There's no specific hour threshold that defines gaming disorder. What matters clinically is functional impact: whether gaming has caused real, persistent problems in work, school, relationships, or daily responsibilities, alongside specific behavioural patterns like loss of control and continued use despite consequences.
A genuinely recognised condition, internationally
The DSM-5 lists Internet Gaming Disorder as a condition for further study, and the World Health Organization's ICD-11 has gone further, formally recognising "gaming disorder" as a diagnosable condition. This reflects growing international consensus, even as research continues to refine the exact criteria.
Often functions similarly to other behavioural addictions
Game design elements, including reward loops, social obligation mechanics, and continuous progression systems, can engage the same reward pathways implicated in gambling disorder and substance addiction, which is part of why compulsive gaming can develop addiction-like patterns.
Adolescents face particular vulnerability
Teenagers are generally considered more vulnerable to problematic gaming patterns due to still-developing impulse control, combined with gaming's central social role in many teen peer groups. Family involvement often plays a larger role in treatment for this age group.
🚩 Warning signs of problem gaming
Gaming replacing sleep, meals, or basic self-care
When gaming sessions consistently displace sleep, regular meals, hygiene, or other basic self-care, this reflects a significant loss of balance worth addressing directly.
Withdrawal-like irritability when unable to game
Significant restlessness, anxiety, or irritability when gaming is unavailable, whether due to a power outage, travel, or a deliberate attempt to cut back, mirrors withdrawal patterns seen in other addictions.
Declining performance at work or school
A noticeable drop in grades, work performance, or attendance that coincides with increased gaming, especially when the person is aware of the connection but continues the pattern anyway.
Social withdrawal from in-person relationships
Substituting in-game social interaction entirely for in-person relationships, or significant withdrawal from family and friends in favour of gaming, is a meaningful warning sign. The loneliness and connection guide addresses the isolation dimension this pattern often involves.
⚕️ Getting help for gaming addiction
Cognitive behavioural therapy
CBT adapted for behavioural addictions can help identify and change the specific triggers and thought patterns that drive compulsive gaming, building structured alternatives for the time and emotional needs gaming was meeting.
Family therapy, especially for adolescents
For teenagers and young adults living at home, family-based treatment approaches that address household dynamics, screen time agreements, and communication often produce better outcomes than individual treatment alone.
Structured digital boundaries
Practical strategies like device-free zones, scheduled gaming windows, and removing devices from bedrooms can support behavioural change, though these work best alongside, not instead of, addressing the underlying drivers with a professional.
Treating co-occurring conditions
Depression, social anxiety, and ADHD frequently co-occur with problematic gaming and often need direct treatment alongside the gaming pattern itself. The dual diagnosis resource navigator covers this in more depth.
Internet gaming disorder: an emerging, internationally recognised concern
The inclusion of gaming disorder in the WHO's ICD-11 represented a significant moment in behavioural addiction research, extending formal diagnostic recognition beyond gambling to a second behavioural pattern entirely. This reflects accumulating evidence that certain gaming patterns produce functional impairment and neurological reward responses comparable to other recognised addictions, even though gaming itself, unlike substances, is a behaviour engaged in by a large majority of the population without developing a disorder.
This distinction matters: most gaming is healthy entertainment, and concern is warranted specifically when the behavioural pattern criteria, loss of control, continued use despite consequences, withdrawal-like symptoms, are met alongside genuine functional impairment, not based on hours played alone. If this screener suggests a concern worth exploring, the boredom management tool and daily routine builder can help build the structure and alternative activities that often support reducing problematic gaming patterns.
Recovery tip: If you're a parent concerned about a teenager's gaming, focus the conversation on specific functional impacts you've observed (missed assignments, sleep disruption, withdrawal from friends) rather than the hours played alone. This approach tends to produce more productive conversations than a focus on screen time limits in isolation.
People also ask about gaming addiction
Internet Gaming Disorder is included in the DSM-5 as a condition recommended for further study, meaning it has defined diagnostic criteria but is not yet a fully established standalone diagnosis in the same way gambling disorder is. The World Health Organization's ICD-11 has gone further and formally recognised "gaming disorder" as a diagnosable condition, reflecting growing international clinical consensus that compulsive gaming can constitute a genuine behavioural addiction.
There is no specific hour threshold that defines gaming disorder. Diagnosis depends on functional impact, including whether gaming has caused significant problems with work, school, relationships, or daily responsibilities, alongside specific patterns like loss of control, preoccupation, and continuing despite negative consequences, not simply the number of hours spent playing.
Yes. Adolescents are generally considered more vulnerable to problematic gaming patterns due to still-developing impulse control and reward processing in the brain, combined with gaming's central role in many teen social lives. Family involvement, rather than purely individual treatment, often plays a larger role in adolescent gaming disorder treatment compared to adult cases.