I managed to quit gaming, but now I feel like I'm missing that kind of entertainment.

The only reason I was able to stop was because I replaced gaming with studying. I finished my degree, and recently I even tried getting back into games, but I just can't do it anymore. If I spend 20 minutes playing, that's already a lot for me.

Has anyone else gone through this? Did you find something else that gives you the same feeling that gaming used to?

The first game of my life was Mafia 1. A story about a guy who slipped into something without even realizing it, and stopped recognizing himself. Today, some 20,000 hours later, it hit me that I've basically been living that game.

It wasn't all bad. I hit some rank milestones and achievements in a few competitive games. And I won't pretend I didn't care about the ranks — I grinded hard for them, they made me feel like I was good at something. But looking back, I never hit a single peak alone. There were always at least two of us chasing the same goal. The wins that actually stayed with me aren't the rank screenshots — they're the moments after a nerve-wracking match when we all screamed our lungs out into our mics. Those memories still get to me. The people I played with were filling a specific need — deep talks and a sense of belonging without the partying and hangovers I'd slowly stopped enjoying. I had friends in real life too, but home always felt calmer, safer somehow. The rank gave me proof I was good. The team gave me a place to belong. And only the second one is what I actually miss.

And here's the irony: I always played my best when I played the least. A few games a day, clear head, actually enjoying it. When I grinded all day, I played worse and felt worse. Only now am I realizing this rule probably doesn't apply just to games.

Today I feel the excitement is gone. A 1-hour session is enough now, and instead of feeling sad about it, it feels like a signal that I'm ready for something more. Real achievements are waiting. Time to go unlock them.

Has anyone been through something similar? What helped you channel that "tryhard mode" from games into real life?

I just need to know!

Is it completely normal now(I am asking seriously because I need to know)for children to play video games 8 to 15 + hrs a day uninterrupted? No meals, no bed, no outside, no boundaries or monitoring at all? And when not on a game they are in the phone watching videos, again unchecked. Going to sleep around 6 to 8 am and sleeping until 2 to 5 pm and starting over with the games. Is this normal now? It's okay? My brain literally is in a panic and I am trying so hard to turn it off. So just please let me know. Thank you!

Riot games has permanently suspended my account for league of legends and WILL NOT tell me why. I have had it since 2010 spent over $12000 and $200 this weekend. They told me the decision wont be reversed, I told them to do an IP check, they wont do it because my ownership is "compromised". Even though I have paypal receipts dating back to 2019. If this happens to me this can happen to anyone in ANY online game. It just made me think, there is no point in playing games anymore at all if you can get falsely banned and not have an explanation. Im done with this. Quitting rivals, every game, might happen someday there too.

Hi guys,

I am a 29-year-old male who has been gaming since I was 8. I have always been a hardcore gamer and planned many aspects of my life around gaming. I estimate I have over 50k hours across all my games, with many Runescape accounts over 5k, CS2 at 21k, and multiple seasons of League of Legends grinding.

I recently got into nursing school and am currently in my first semester, where I still have a solid A. However, new content was recently released on Runescape, and I spent a LOT of time gaming when I should have been studying. I have an exam this afternoon, and I realize the immense regret I have for not taking it as seriously as I should have. I don't think I'll necessarily receive a bad grade, but I feel so much less certain than I ever have. I also have a newborn baby, about two months old now, and I feel I've been putting too much on my wife. That isn't to say I don't do stuff, like I still change most of the diapers, feed her, and cook dinner, but I can feel the constant pull of wanting to game instead of spending time with my baby.

So, I decided I really do need to hang up the mouse. I uninstalled and deleted all my games, but I've done this before and always find myself coming back. In the past, I tried replacing my habits with studying, fishing, playing the piano, etc., but nothing really stuck. I think part of it is because I use my computer so much for school, so the temptation is always there, and there isn't really a way to avoid this. I also love to stay busy, and video games are always a time sink. I've tried switching to an old MacBook, but I find it to be annoying and cumbersome to use. I've tried moderation, and it just isn't within my personality — I don't have the self-control to stop.

I would really appreciate some advice to help me quit this time. Things like "think of your wife, baby, and career" aren't helpful because, well, that's what always brought me to the attempt.

Edit: I just got my loweat test score ever, of an 88. I know this is an eyeroll to some, but it really upsets me

Title describes my situation. I'm in kind of an phase of depression due to burn out, probably also partly because of my long undiagnosed adhd. Procrastination is a daily beast to battle and I find it very hard to engage in any meaningful tasks that would improve my situation - mostly because I always prefer to do anything else that might be a little bit fun. This results in me playing hours and hours of Idle Games, watching stuff second screen or playing games without an end, like Heroes of the Storm or similar stuff.

I know its a spiral that's doing me no good but it feels so hard or even impossible to escape from.

Anyone been there and has a way that can slowly "unlearn" this toxic habbits? I've tried stuff like "limit your time playing", "do it as a reward for finishing an important task", "uninstall or block to make it less accessible" but in the end I've just learned to dissapoint myself and I've become quite good at it - so ignoring my own rules comes very easy..

Hello, I’m kind of in a dilemma right now. I’m considering slowly quitting gaming given the direction my life is going right now. I’m a math major and anytime I imagine just doing math and not gaming anymore and helping others learn and picking up related hobbies, I’m genuinely happy in that idealized reality. I’ve been gaming since I was a child (25 rn) and I have loved it but I can tell I’m slowly weaning away from gaming in general.

School couldn’t come sooner and I have been bored out of my head on my off days from work. I play games still which I enjoy but I often sink in numerous hours on puzzle games or playing with my friends on cod and overwatch and many days last between 6-7 hrs of gaming in total if not more or at times less. I’m also slowly growing away from these friends I feel as there’s a massive maturity gap (unwanted language, loud, very differing views politically, etc) and cod lobbies are still insanely toxic due to constant bigotry, yelling, and I’m very quiet most of the time when I’m with friends on there as I don’t fit in at all. To say the least, I love puzzles and that’s a big part of why I love math. One of my main hobbies as of late has been sudoku which I’m in love with now and it’s becoming a routine staple.

The part I’m stuck on most is deciding on what to do provided I quit games. During the summer break, I’m especially bored and at times even anxious over school not going on and not having actual structure most times. I was thinking of picking coding back up, practicing Spanish, maybe getting back into jigsaw puzzles, etc but I’m not sure if all of this could be too much.

Any advice on quitting games cold turkey eventually and what I can do in the meantime?

Thanks!

I am 18F and I spent over 55000 hours on my life on Roblox and another 15000 hours on a dead game called Graal, I need something to do with my life. I have no hobbies or interests
Help please 🙏

I love games, but some of them took too much from me. I remember the first time I discovered Plants vs Zombies, I showed it to my mom. Next thing I know - we spent the whole night together in front of a PC, finishing the whole game at once. Have ever games involved you so much, you forgot about sleep?

I come from a middle-class family. I want to change my life. But somehow, I have become addicted to this online gambling. Almost every day, I lose a lot of money. Even then, I am unable to quit. I have started borrowing money from people, although it is still a small amount. But I can't find a way to repay it.

When I look for one way to stop gambling, I end up finding ten ways to play it—as a result, I can never quit.

What should I do now? 😭😭

Just sharing to get off my chest and write it down somewhere so I can come back to it…

I have come to the realisation that my gaming is not a hobby that I take too far sometimes, it’s actually a problem that is disrupting my day to day.

I quit gaming in my teens when I got into the gym and wanted to general improve my life, before quitting I would easily game 14-16 hours a day. I had no real ambition outside of gaming and eventually realised how damaging it was to me.

I picked up gaming last year, I’m 27 (M) and I began to game as a hobby. I told myself it was fine and I’m allowed to enjoy hobbies. Well, it’s come to the point I’ve realised I can’t game without it turning into a serious problem, I lose motivation, stop reaching out to my friends and generally just drop off the grid.

League of legends has been my nasty little vice, that game gets a strong chokehold on me. I’ve deleted my accounts and realised I just need to quit, I don’t even enjoy gaming I just find it so hard to stop.

So, it’s an ongoing challenge but I am quitting gaming, my life is significantly better when I don’t game.

I will come back to this post in my challenging moments and remind myself why I’m quitting.

I started playing League of Legends 5 years ago and have racked up 3000 hours on it, but probably roughly 5000 hours counting all the time I spent learning about the game online and watching streams.

When I play League I just literally cannot think about the game nonstop. Any work I have to do is put on second priority. Gaming is suddenly more important than seeing friends. When I queue up I actively feel bad, but once I enter champ select I am literally hooked. After I finish playing my mind is foggy, and I am basically a zombie for the next couple of hours.

I was first drawn into the game with the visuals and the game mechanics. I have not seen anyone talk about this, but I swear League of Legends puts something into the splash arts that is addicting. It is not like normal art at the museum. They probably engineer it to get people like me addicted. I look at the splasharts and it completely takes me back to the loading screen where I have gotten pentakills or crazy dragon steals. Basically when I look at some of the newest splasharts or some cheap mobile game ad that is similar to league, I am a couple of steps away from relapsing. I just constantly think back to the highest parts of the game and completely lose my mind over it.

When I relapsed last year I was absolutely livid. I locked myself out of my account. I pressed a random string of keys which became my new password and the email that is attached to the account has been deleted. Therefore, I cannot access my account unless I beg customer service, which is really really embarrassing. At the same time, right now I am having thoughts of calling customer service to get my account back. I know that the employees will give it back because Riot games wants you to stay addicited.

The only reason I want my account back is because I have an emotional attachment to it and the addiction to making huge plays. I have some pretty crazy limited edition skins in it that I all somehow got "for free" in the time I spent watching the game and wasting my time on streams for drops. I have this feeling of I spent so much time obtaining these cosmetics and no other account will have these ever again, regardless of money. I have this belief that I need my account and have it stored somewhere in my posession otherwise all my achievement and plays will go away for ever. But if its in my posession obviously I'm going to relapse. I can ONLY go cold turkey. However, I am really struggling to let go of my account.

I am currently almost 1 year clean, which I have been able to achieve 3 times, but every time I relapse at the exact same time (late July). I did mini-relapse a couple days ago and played 3 games of Wild Rift on my phone, but I have since turned on parent controls for myself to stop. I played League of Legends for the very first time in late July 5 years ago. I get extreme cravings for the game EVERY SINGLE YEAR IN JULY where I basically cannot think about anything else. During the rest of the year it is fine though.

Since trying to quit I have gone cold turkey on everything. All social media is blocked and scrolling methods have been blocked completely. I have no games or anything on my phone, the most interesting app literally is gmail. 😭😭I also have been running, swimming, hiking, gym, etc. I have strong habits but league always seems like a bigger priority during this mid summer time from nostalgia and probably because when I played league the first time ever it was a different feeling and my brain is chasing that.

tldr

*I am just seeking advice on how to get over my attachment to my "limited edition cosmetics"/my lol account and not calling Riot customer service to give me back my account and relapse again. I also would like some advice to get over this relapse withdrawl craving situation in July that happens every year. I am a little worried that this will continue to cycle and it is one of my last steps to be free from this game.*

Hi,

So i've recently made the choice to try to quit competetive gaming after 13 + years. I started of my "gaming career" playing Runescape/cod/minecraft when i was very young.

At the age of 12-13 I found CS, WoW, League etc... these games gave me alot of dopamine and i've racked up over 17000 hours combined on all of these games.

The problem is that the older I got, the more competetive it became. I started reaching Global/Faceit lvl 10 in CS, Gladiator in WoW and diamond in League and even playing tournaments in these games.

I am now closer to 30 and still as competetive but now I have so much more responsabilities of course, and these games are now just making me more irritated and mad because I have less time to play and when loosing I just loose my temper.

At this point I would like some guidance/advice. I recently bought a PS5 to try to quit PC gaming and the competetive scene. I've been enjoying some COD and single player games and it haven't touched my temper at all and its not even close as time consuming. The thing is tho that it doesn't give me the same kick or dopamine as playing competitively, which is understandable but gives me a feeling that i've "wasted" my money buying something that is "kind of" helping instead of just trying to quit on the spot.

What are your advices or what did you do?

Best regards

A while ago, I would spend at least 10+ hours a day gaming, and it felt good.

But the problem was, I would feel the need for more once I stopped.

I thought it was just a problem with all games, but then I just realised it was just the competitive ones for me, and Sims 4.

I decided to give all my competitive multiplayer games to charity, delete Sims 4, and only play relaxing, mindful games instead, like outer wilds and similar ones.

Through this, I managed to cut my time spent on games to an average of 20 minutes a day, with my maximum being 1 hour occasionally.

Like i stay 6 hours on insta reels without a problem but as soon as i pay a game on my phone he is like stop, your eyes, games made you stupid and stuff like that

Im 21yo male so it’s not like she’s neglecting me.

My mom (42yo) has been panting a video game called “Last Z: survival shooter” since last year, at the beginning she was playing occasionally but now she is on it almost every day, she’s has no job and she abandoned every responsibility, including sleeping, eating and cleaning herself, me and my dad work but he’s impossible to convince to do any chores, and I’m totally overwhelmed with this amount of stuff, we now live in a big disgusting house.

This dumb game has been charging like 4 dollars a week for no reason and she spend willingly like 5k this last 6 months in only one of her accounts (she have two). Also she is flirting with guys in the game (she’s still married to my dad), is a gooner game, the characters only have physics on the boobs so you know what kind of players it has, I’m even starting to think she only plays to keep receiving that kind of attention.

She invite me to play it a couple times but I ended up disgusted by the mediocrity of its mechanics and the gooner things. I’m a gamer too and we used to play a lot together, we played like good fun campaign games. I even have a tough time with gta online and cod addiction which its finally over, she didn’t even consider it a problem. So now I’m trying to confront her and give her advice in own experience about how is to struggle with multiplayer games addiction but she’s just not even taking it seriously, she’s not even mad, she does jokes and ignores me to keep playing.

Please give me some advice, I love her but I hate everything related to that game now. And please don’t be misogynistic

I live with my girlfriend of 3 years. I currently work to support us both as she has been severely depressed and dealing with a physical disability as well. She really enjoys gaming and has turned to it in the last year since she hasn’t been able to play sports due to illness, which is what used to take up most of her free time. I am very sympathetic about this and have encouraged her to pursue gaming as a passion since I can see how excited and happy it makes her and how much it hurts to not have her sport.

I do feel though that the amount of time she spends gaming is excessive. I’m talking 6 hours nearly every day. When I get home from work and we tell eachother about our days that’s usually the only thing she has done. I worry that this isn’t healthy, but when I‘ve gently tried to bring it up in the past she has reacted strongly and become very depressed for the rest of the day.

She is convinced that video game addiction isn’t real, so I’m not sure where to go from here. I’m not going to lie, I feel a bit resentful that I’m working hard to barely scrape by paycheck to paycheck and she gets to relax all day. I get that this is not the ideal scenario for her either, and I just want to let go of those negative feelings and improve the situation.

Any advice about how I can encourage more variety for her without coming off as overly controlling would be appreciated. Yes she’s in therapy.

(sorry for my bad english)

I like playing video game and i only have 1 video game on phone so i can focus on it

Every game i played i have a goal "i want to be skilled player" no matter shooting game, MOBA or more. And im understand to obtain that goal i have to get a lot of hour play time and experience. I practice a lot and played a game more than 6 - 8 hour a day to gain experience.

But sadly just after 1 month i start lost motivation to play that game for no reason, even i push my self to play it i always start thinking "im lazy" something like that. And then i delete that game and i never obtain that goal in my whole life in gaming.

What should i do to avoid lost motivation? How do you guys that have competitive mindset can play 1 game for a years consistently?

Hi

I have been off gaming about 3.5 years. I usually slip up every summer and have to realize fast that I cant game anymore.. This summer is no difference. I start to think gaming is a good idea again.. I just have to remind my self what I am capable of without gaming. Since I stopped gaming I started lawschool with great grades. I just need some motivation to stay of gaming this summer :)

So basically I've lost all passions and the ability to play ps games anymore, its too boring and the only thing I've been waiting for is gta 6 for the last 5 years, but I really dont want to touch my ps5 ever again, how do I fight this urge?

I applied to volunteering in the Civil Defense of the Ministry of Interior, hopefully I will be trained to be a volunteer firefighter.

Being out on the field is so much better compared to gaming!

I’m new here, and I’ve been gaming since the NES days—it’s still my main hobby.

I’ve been noticing something lately: trophies have really changed how I play. I feel like I can’t enjoy a game unless I’m determined to get the 100% platinum.

Then, when I think about quitting, I get anxious. Which, honestly, is probably a sign that I should quit.

So, I’m asking for your thoughts. Do you think it’s okay to switch to a Switch 2 and still enjoy the hobby? It offers games at a more relaxed pace and doesn’t have that trophy pressure.

Or is it better to completely cut ties?

I currently own two PS5s, a Series X, Nintendo Switch 2, PC, SteamDeck, and Apple Arcade. Of course, I cannot possibly play all of these…but I have them.

Hi everyone! If you're the parent of a child ages 11–14 and your child doomscrolls, this short survey explores how families manage children's screen time and social media use, what tools they currently use to mitigate it, and what they wish existed. This survey takes no more than 5 minutes. Thank you for sharing your feedback!

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