No business would welcome being compared to gambling(赌博). Yet that is what is happening to makers of video games. For years parents have complained that their children are "addicted" to their video games and smartphones. Today, however, even more doctors are using the term. On January 1 this year, "gaming disorder"—in which games are played uncontrollably, despite causing harm—gained recognition from the World Health Organization (WHO). 

Are games really addictive? Psychologists have different opinions. Those who don't think so say that this is just another moral panic. Similar warnings have been given about television, rock'n'roll, jazz, comic books, novels and even crossword puzzles, but it turns out that they are not as harmful as expected.

However, supporters argue that games developers have the motivation and the means to design their products to make them extremely attractive. For one thing, the business-model has changed. In the old days games were bought once and for all. But these days, games are free and money is earned from purchases of in-game goods, which ties playtime directly to revenue (收益). For another, games-makers combine psychological theory and data, which helps them maximize the playtime. Smartphones and modern video game machines use their permanent Internet connections to send gameplay data back to developers. In this way products are constantly adjusted to encourage players' spending. The biggest spenders are known as "whales", a term that originated in casinos(赌场).

The gaming industry should realize that, in the real world, it has a problem, and that problem is growing. Now that gaming addiction comes with an official WHO recognition, diagnoses will become more common. Anyway, being put together with gambling in the public mind, whether it is fairly or not, will not do the industry any good. 

A happy beagle（小猎犬） called Bella loves Amazon boxes. It tears into them while ignoring other delivery boxes. Little Bit, a tortoiseshell cat, is similarly consumed—but by socks. It raids（偷袭） the laundry basket in the middle of the night and also paws through the open suitcases of house guests, who almost always find themselves missing a sock in the morning. Pets do some pretty weird things. But these strange behaviors often make perfect sense to the pets, said scientists who study animal behaviors. "These behaviors are not invented on the spot, " said Carlo Siracusa, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine. The pets are doing behaviors that their wild ancestors did, but they've changed them a bit to fit their new lives as pets.

Dogs can be trained to roll over and play dead. But their ancient instincts from their wolf ancestors are still there. Instincts, or instinctive behaviors, are behaviors that are done without thinking. They don't have to be learned. For example, some dogs will scratch the ground after pooping（排便）. But they＇re not trying to bury their poop. They want other animals to notice it. "They are depositing smell in those areas, " Siracusa said. "It's almost like drawing a picture with a big red marker around it, " he added.

Cats, on the other hand, almost always bury their waste. "They are covering their tracks, " says Monique Udell, an expert on human-animal interactions who works at Oregon State University. Cats are predators, meaning they hunt other animals for food. But other animals hunt them, too. So they don't want to be seen-or smelled. Mikel Delgado, the founder of a California-based cat behavior consulting service, said that many other cat behaviors, arise from cats' wild origins.

While dogs share many behaviors inherited（继承） from wolves, they＇ve also developed a few of their own. "Puppy dog eyes", the innocent look that many humans are helpless to resist, is one. Over the time period that they've lived with people, dogs have developed certain muscles around their eyes. This helps them make the adorable expressions that win over humans. Like wolves, dogs also like to lick faces. Humans think their pets are kissing them, but they are not. "It's how wolf puppies get food from their parents' mouths, "Siracusa said. "It also can be a sign of submission. When a lower-ranking individual approaches a higher-ranking one, it gets down real low and licks the dominant one to say: 'I'm not a threat to you. '"

According to a study done by University of Michigan researchers, shopping to relieve stress was up to 40 times more effective at giving people a sense of control and shoppers were three times less sad compared to those who only browsed for items.

More than half of the 1,000 consumers participating in the survey said they have impulsively(冲动地) shopped to deal with feelings of stress, anxiety or depression. Twenty-three percent of respondents said they've maxed out a credit card in the past year. Millennials, 68 percent, responded by saying they have stress spent in the past, compared with 53 percent of Gen Xers and only 26 percent of Baby Boomers.

By gender, 48 percent of men and 31 percent of women who have stress spent said they had purchased alcohol when stressed. 82 percent of women stress spent on clothing compared to 52 percent of men. Women also lead stress spending for jewelry, 42 percent, compared to 22 percent for men, with men stress spending more for electronics, 44 percent versus 30 percent for women.

In fact, shopping to reduce stress can actually help you live a healthier life by making sure that your blood pressure is lowered. Shopping to relieve stress is also known as retail therapy(疗法) as a form of regulating stress. The survey found that 82 percent had only positive feelings about their purchases and that the positive mood boost that followed those purchases was long-lasting.

However, the side effect of retail therapy, for many, can start out as a relatively harmless mood booster but could possibly grow into an impulse that uses up money and cause conflict, thereby adding a significant amount of stress to a person's life.