Keith Bakker, director of Amsterdam-based Smith & Jones Addiction Consultants, is opening a detox clinic for gamers.

Bakker already has treated 20 video game addicts, aged 13 to 30, since January. Some show withdrawal symptoms, such as shaking and sweating, when they look at a computer....

"We have kids who don't know how to communicate with people face-to-face because they've spent the last three years talking to somebody in Korea through a computer," Bakker said. "Their social network has completely disappeared."

I, of all people, hate to be the voice of reason, but gaming does not destroy social skills. Neither does it improve them. I play far more games than is healthy, yet I'm a really sociable guy. Social skills are largely in-grained, but they are just as largely about getting over any nagging insecurities you might have and just getting out there. Gaming doesn't make you anti-social any more than sitting alone in your apartment all day makes you anti-social: at worst, it's something you do while you are already a recluse from the hot world of martini bars and sultry dance club babes.

The entire thing is suspect. I'm an avid reader; I'd probably be in sweats if someone told me I couldn't read for a month. This may be an addiction of a type, but unlike drugs or gambling, enjoying entertainment media doesn't ruin lives, no matter what that smug idiot Jack Thompson says. You don't treat gaming, you treat the problems, fears and phobias that might cause someone to seek sole refuge in games. Unlike heroin, going cold turkey from games isn't going to cause a creepy Baby Mario to advance upon you, upside-down across the ceiling. Florian Eckhardt

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