It was an unbalanced program, I'll disect it as thus.
Firstly they went into a totally unproved medical condition which is nowhere near being confirmed or even called an addiction as it has shaky evidence at best and no peer reviewed evidence or anything more than hyped news stories backing it with the assumption it was true.
Fundamental...Scientific...Flaw
If someone makes a claim, you don't assume it's true unless proven otherwise you assume it's FALSE until proven otherwise; see Russels' Teapot or any basic philosophical thought experiment.
All in all it led to massive confirmation bias, all the sources were for and even then they were few and very, very shaky. Mostly saying 'it may be a problem' and that games are addictive 'in a small minority of cases' and they acted like it was a worldwide epidemic (BBC journalism alarmism at its best)not only that but the presenter was a constant source of slippery slope and no true scotsman fallicies. His entire argument was 'Kids these days don't do what we used to' 'The only acceptable thing for a child to do at 18 is go to parties' etc then didn't defend those positions from the growing rate of teen deaths from alcohol poisoning and Britains alcohol problems, the idea that children 'should' be going to parties or playing football is also laughable. In the 12th century the same argument could be applied to a child playing football, a 12 year old in that era would be expected to be a squire and begin training to become a killer. If they were a girl they could probably expect to be married within 1-2 years, imagine how that logic would go today, the entire argument is subjective and of no value in any intellectual debate. Opinions =/= Truth.
Secondly they used South Korea as an example yet their national sport is basically Starcraft/Gaming and they have a huge culture built up around. It's almost insulting bigoted to declare an entire countries sport/culture *wrong* because its not what you think is the norm. Times change, some people hate football and sports, some people love them. Now those who aren't athletic have a different 'sport' to play which involves just as much skill but far less work. I know people who just play sports and nothing else, who just read and do nothign else or do work and nothing else. People are different and one human might find reading for 10 hours a day fun while another may play 10 hours of games a day, it's their own fault if their reading/game playing/sports get in the way of their schoolwork/work, these people aren't addicted they just want to do something fun and easy rather than actually do work, just like y'know, the majority of the human race. Sometimes you get someone who can't pull themselves away from a game/book/sport, it's just since games aren't socially acceptable yet because 'Back in my day they didn't exist' they get massively demonized and anyone who plays them for more than a few hours a day is destroying society and responsible for all murders in the nation.
Then the program goes on to say that kids get mad when you take something they enjoy away from them (NO! REALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLY?) hasn't any of the editors been around or had a child, they go into tantrums when you stop them going out/watching tv/playing football/playing yet when one has a tantrum because of a game or the internet its ADDICTION!!!!!1111!!!ONEELEVEN!!!1.
And to sum up they say internet speed = video game addiction, facepalm. Talk about a hilariously bad false syllogism.
1) Video game addiction exists (Assumed)
2) Video games are on TEH INTERWEBS (Just no.)
3) Therefore More INTERWEBS SPEED = Moar ADDICTION
Eurgh, sometimes I think that they are actually just the ultimate trolls.
Then at the end he makes some kind of Palin-esque appeal to hearts 'I will monitor my childrens game activity because I'm a good parent, ARE YOU A GOOD PARENT'or 'YOUR CHILD COULD BE ADDICTED RIGHT NAOOOOOOOO'.
But yeah, the BBC haven't had the best reputation in their Journalism. They put a guy on the news with a 'Machine that creates more energy than you put into it' (Srsly) and pitted Ben Goldacre against some random homeopath amongst other stupid, stupid things.
- As a side note how hilarious was the scary music with face portraits 'People actually pay more concentration in a game than they do to watching TV' Ok, thanks for that insight Panorama, you pay more concentration while doing something that requires at least some skill/coordination/thinking than you do while watching some terrible TV Soap, I didn't know this and why is it EVIL?