Functional impairment matters in the screening and diagnosis of gaming disorder

This commentary responds to Aarseth et al.' s (in press) criticisms that the ICD-11 Gaming Disorder proposal would result in moral panics around the harm of video gaming and the treatment of abundant false-positive cases. The ICD-11 Gaming Disorder avoids potential overpathologizing with its explicit reference to functional impairment caused by gaming and therefore improves upon a number of flawed previous approaches to identifying cases with suspected gaming-related harms. We contend that moral panics are more likely to occur and be exacerbated by misinformation and lack of understanding, rather than proceed from having a clear diagnostic system.