Zeus wrote:Kup, you seriously don't think that feeling the phone vibrate when it's not there signifies at least a small problem? I sometimes don't play games for a week but I don't feel my fingers phantomally pressing down buttons even though there's no controller there.
Nope, not at all. It's easy to explain, as I did, as my brain registering a false positive on random stimuli I feel in my thigh around where my phone rests. I've heard others report a similar thing. I also have no psychological dependence on my phone, evidenced by how infrequently I use it.
We're constantly subjected to lots of stimuli that our brains passively filter out - think about how much noise is present, even when it's "quiet." False positives happen with other senses, such as thinking someone spoke to you when nothing was said, or thinking you saw something then realizing you didn't upon closer inspection. The difference between receiving a phone call and playing a videogame is that of deliberate action. We
receive phone calls and texts as random events, so we have to look for them - which requires filtering out a signal from the noise. But you only press a button on a controller as the result of a deliberate choice you made; you want to move left, so you press the left button.
The standard for "negatively affecting one's life" is much, much higher than what you think it is. We're talking on the level of personal relationships and one's ability to maintain a job.
