How much time do you spend at the computer screen playing video games? Do you think you’ve become more aggressive over the years? How about your grades at school. Do you feel you’ve been able to concentrate enough to get good grades? Or are your grades falling? Are you spending less and less time with your friends and more time behind the computer playing games?

Although there’s no scientific proof . . . yet . . . a leading council of the American Medical Association (AMA) wants to have excessive video-game playing officially classified as a formal psychiatric addiction -- to raise awareness and enable sufferers to get insurance coverage for treatment.

While the AMA admits that more research is needed, a recent report prepared for a its annual policy meeting strongly encouraged that video-game addiction be included in a widely used diagnostic manual of psychiatric illnesses. The AMA fears that overuse of video games and online games could become a problem in the future for children and adults. In June 2007 Houston Chronicle report on the issue, AMA’s president, Ronald Davis, says “While more study is needed on the addictive potential of video games, the AMA remains concerned about the behavioral, health and societal effects of video game and Internet overuse.”

Delegates voted to have the AMA encourage more research on the issue, including seeking studies on what amount of video-game playing and other “screen time” is appropriate for children. The AMA's report says that up to 90 percent of American youngsters play video games and that up to 15 percent of them — more than 5 million kids — might be addicted.

Do you agree? Are you a video addict? Do think the AMA is on to something? Or is the concern misdirected or misguided? What do you think?