Gaming Addiction

Conscription may also fuel less conventional addictions. One such case was observed in the often-glorified Nordic case of conscription. In the Norwegian Army, conscripts were found to develop gaming addiction as a result of their military service. According to the 2021 study, “more than 17% showed a reliable deterioration of gaming addiction during conscription (…) 13.5% of those who were characterized as normal gamers at the beginning of service were categorized as problem or addicted gamers at the end of service.” The worst part? Life in the barracks confines recruits to such boredom and solitude, barred from pursuing their life goals, that mindless gaming becomes for a portion of them, their sole source of pleasure, and attempts to fight it would further worsen their existence.

Gaming addiction will likely have a negative impact on the training, operative ability, and task performance of soldiers. The effects are sufficiently terrible that it has previously been suggested by some researchers to use gaming addiction as an exclusion criterion for drafting. When the addicts leave the military, they bring their problems back home. Their addiction hinders them from pursuing an ambitious career, starting a family, developing healthy friendships and communal bonds, and embracing responsibility instead of seeking dopamine-rich escapism.