Slashdot Mirror
Only 15% of Gamers are Internet Addicts
Huckster writes "Jeffrey Parsons - a doctoral candidate from University of Iowa has resently conducted a research on MMORPG addiction. It took a while to get the results - but they are now available.
The study found that about 15% of gamers meet the criteria for Internet addiction as provided by Kimberly Young, a leading researcher in Internet addiction. Using more strict criteria, a minimum of at least 10% of gamers met criteria for Internet addiction. Compared to national studies of Internet addiction, this numbers are somewhat elevated. However, given the sheer number of hours MMORPG gamers spend online (in comparison to the general population), even a 15% addiction rate is somewhat low.
To illustrate the point, the college student spends 10 hours on the Internet per week. The average MMORPG gamer (addicted or not) spends 20-25 hours per week just playing MMORPGs, and an additional 10-15 hours per week in other Internet use. In other words, MMORPG players are spending 4x as much time online as non-gamers."
The net mean age in the survey is more telling, I think, than the subject of the survey: MMORPG gamers.
~ 23 or 24 appears to be the net mean age of all survey groups, and in my experience, and as someone from that generation, we spend a lot of time online for many different reasons.
I'm a programmer and an information junkie who's never played a MMORPG in his life. When I was interviewed for my job last year, I was told the company was looking for someone who "lives on the web." All these people focusing on games don't realize the most obvious phenomenon: the web as a lifestyle.
I Want To Believe
While I agree that his "science" is a bit off I would have to say that if you were spending 30 to 45 hours drinking a week when the average person was spending 10 to 15 hours I would consider you abnormal.
I'd say that in many of these cases, the 20 some hours a week in the game is just displacing the 20 some hours a week previously spent watching TV. The games are not inherently evil, they just give us something to do other then watch the idiot box...
The term 'Internet addiction' is far too broad. There are MMORPG addicts, chat addicts, porn addicts and so forth. In my eyes, the biggest sign that you are addicted to something on the internet is when it starts to cause big emotional responses. If you start crying because of someone you're chatting with who you will never meet, then you have a problem. If you start crying because some other character rolled higher for an item you really wanted, then you have a problem. If you start crying during porn, you have a problem (though its probably not addiction).
I'm almost willing to bet that more than 15% of the MMORPG population is addicted to it. What other reason would a person play EQ for 5 years?
If you consider that there are alot of people (guys, as the MMORPG sample probably also involved more guys than girls) that drink a beer after their dinner, maybe even have one behind the telly, and then later in the evening one when you surf the Net... alot of people are alcoholics.
When someone tells you that you have a problem because you played a game (MMORPG or not) between 6:00PM and 10:00PM the night before. And what did these people do during the same timeframe last night? They watched TV.
Gone on the road for two weeks, working 14 days straight for a total of 145 hours. Come back and play with friends on an afternoon, what's the verdict: I play too much videogames.
It really is mainly about some people's perception of valid use of your free time. My rule of thumb is not to tell any woman born before 1980 that I even know what a computer is.
because the MMORPGers don't have a problem.
Except for the 15 odd percent that are addicted. I went to a tech college and there were all sort of MUD, MMORPG, and FPS gamers. For most of them it was a perfectly healthy recreation / break from studies. Then there were the few that ended up failing out of college because the couldn't pull themselves away from the computer.
Gaming addiction is not made up, and while some people may hype it, these scientists aren't among them. Their methods are good, and their definition(s) of addiction fall very much in line with other forms of addiction. And the number they found is about right from what I've seen personally. If anything, they have done the MMORPG group a favor by showing that 85-90% of gamers are not addicted and many are well balanced individuals.
I unsubscribed from world of warcraft yesterday. I'm a weekend player, but my friends/roommates are truly addicted to the game. Seeing them play day in and day out just made me hate the game. They go to college, and well, at least one of them is gonna flunk classes this semester due to that game. I have work during the week which leaves no time for the game, and well, I want to do something other than stare at a screen on the weekends. Anybody else unsubscribe from WoW for this reason?
I'm wondering how many of these people would be playing offline games for about the same amount of time if there were no MMORPGS? Wouldn't they be "Gaming Addicts" instead of "internet addicts"?
I know for myself that before I got sucked into the good MMORPG on the market today, I'd still spend hours at the 'puter playing "offline" games...
Go read any of the BBs out there for mmorpgs, some people call 30 hours/wk 'casual' -- that's pretty much a job. They will adamantly talk about how I'm not an addict, I have a life, a job, etc. Well, so do lots of gambling addicts and alchoholic, doesn't mean a thing. Plus they are often posting to the boards that are filled with fellow junkies, looking for reinforcement of their behavior. And there's a lot of the 'well I only play 30 hrs, so and so plays 40, he/she is clearly out of control, but I'm fine'
I am a mmorpg player. I've played a ton of the d*mn things (EQ, AO, DAoC, CoH, WoW) they can suck up all your time, cut into sleep, etc etc. Luckily, with each new one I've played I found I quit them sooner and sooner and get bored more easily. Nonetheless, I still play them WAY more than I should, they are clearly unproductive timesinks, nothing more. Yes, I've had fun and met some cool people - but mmorpgs can get in the way of more important things for sure.
Some people though, live in these things. Sad but true story - there's a friend's friend who has been playing EverCrack ever since it came out like 5(?) years ago. He's late 30s lives with his mom, has no job, and plays EQ like 8-10 hours a day. He threatens to go back to get his college degree every now and again, takes one or two classes here or there - but usually has some excuse on why he can't finish, goes back to playing f/t and just lives off his mom (who should clearly kiss his a*s out, but that's another story...)
While his story might be a bit more extreme than most, I don't think his is unique.
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
Exactly.
"My kid isn't a disruptive, impolite, disorganized little jackass. He's sick! Dare suggest anything else, and you might impune my parenting abilities."
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Addiction is merely a manifestation of some kind of avoidance to some kind of personal problem.
Trust me, I know personally what I am talking about.
People don't get addicted to things that don't have a relatively short to immediate form of positive reinforcement. Its not that big of a deal until it becomes a big deal. If your able to be happy and eat and have a place to stay and MUD for 23 hours a day. Go for it. If there are other things that you want to do and achieve (hence unhappiness) then go for that.
I think "addiction"s are so blown out of proportion. So much effort is wasted treating the addiction, that the real problems never get addressed. Addictions are merely symptoms of problems. They are rarely ever serious problems except when one is physically in danger. Its common for people to have an addiction at some point of time in their lives. Even for the middle school girl that obsessively writes the boy's name that she is "going with" over and over again on her notebook. Its fairly normal.
This is where I have a problem with all the puritanical crap out there.
According to medical research, one or two pints of beer (or glasses of red wine) per night is a healthy practice, reducing the chances of heart disease and alzeimer's while reducing stress.
According to AA, two or three pints a night means you are an alcoholic.
There's an overlap here, which means either 1) One side or the other is full of crap, or 2) Mild alcoholism is good for you.
In either case, I enjoy beer or wine with my dinner on a regular basis, and if that makes me a drunkard then so be it.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Aside from the use of checkboxes instead of radio buttons, one big problem with that test that it requires you to have decided whether or not you're addicted before you actually take the test. Too many of the questions involve the phrase "because you were online," and in order to accept cause/effect like that you need to have already drawn your conclusion.
Variable Reinforcement. ..or whatever psychologists call it. You don't get the same loot every time you kill the same monster. You get random loot. Sometimes you get a lot of silver from it, sometimes a little. Sometimes you get nothing.
In World of Warcraft, when you take up a profession (example: herbalism) you will initially find it easy. You will *randomly* fail to harvest a plant sometimes, but you can try again with no penalty. Every time you succeed, you go up one skill level. The randomness makes it much more addictive, because it prevents you from getting too bored. At higher skill levels you nearly always succeed in harvesting a plant, but you might (or might not) get a point as a result.
If you get a treat every time you press the lever, you'll get bored quickly. If you hardly ever get a treat, you'll get frustrated. If you get a treat sometimes and no treat sometimes, you become addicted. (The most obvious example is slot machines).
If you study the design of MMORPGs, you'll find that this principle of variable reinforcement is found everywhere. Of course they don't do it *specifically* to make the games addicting--they do it to make them not boring and not too frustrating. But it's no surprise to me that some 10-15% of players meet clinical definitions of "addicted". I'm probably one of the addicts, having played World of Warcraft for at least 500 hours since Christmas.
Fellow slashdotter nbCaffeine and I had Kimberly Young as a professor for our "Intro to Business Information Systems" class, which, as CompSci majors, we were taking towards an easy minor in BIS. The course was really more of a 100 level thing, as we discussed the various components of computers, basic network topology, and server-client basics.
Throughout the class, she would constantly venture off on tangents about her work in studying "Internet Addiction", and what a terrible thing it is... She's published a few books and papers on the topic, but in real life, she doesn't seem to be that big a superhero researcher. In fact, she's really quite amusing, whatwith the curly-afro like hairdo and the subtle woman-moustache, not to mention the thick rimmed glasses she wore. She always told stories about how internet addiction leads to marital woes, citing examples of women and men who confessed to her that they had been cheating on their spouse via online relationships. Given that that's what she mostly talked about, I would propose that her professional interest and expertise with regard to "internet addiction" predominantly center around the affects of chatrooms and IM on personal "offline in the real world" relationships. Now, with MMORPGs, one must consider how applicable Kimberly Young's research is. I can see how there would be an argument that there are parallels between say, the interactions you have with other people in a MMORPG and those with people in a chatroom.... However, if you're really into the RP aspect of those games, you might be TOTALLY different in that regard than say the person you'd be in a chatroom... You know what, maybe we could do a Slashdot Interview with Kimberly Young, if somebody tells me to go ahead, I'll send her an e-mail and then submit the idea.
Isn't it interesting how you come to recognize posters based solely on their sigs???
Most Americans are overweight, but that doesn't make it healthy. Just because it is normal to spend 4 hours a day watching TV doesn't make it healthy. OTOH I don't think anyone would argue that spending 10 hours a week practicing at a sport is unhealthy, even if it is way more exercise than is "normal".
Playing video games (even online) is a little like watching TV. You can learn things from both. But eventually you hit a point of diminishing returns where the opportunity cost exceeds the additional knowledge gained. Most people I know would think that 30 hours of TV in a week is too much. The knowledge gained from the TV would come at the cost of interactions with family/friends, sports, and other activies.
Playing video games is also kind of like smoking weed. Many people frown on it, but that doesn't necessarily make it wrong. People generally don't hurt others while high. But they often displace other activities to smoke weed, which can be a problem.
The medical profession generally agrees that you cannot get physically addicted to marijuana. But lots of people I know smoked for years because they didn't think there was a good reason to quit. The difference between this state and physical addiction seems dubious to me.
So I think that gameplaying is fine if it doesn't displace other activies, but that is basically impossible if you are playing 30 hours a week. And I think that classifying this as addiction is fair as well. If you could stop at any time but choose not to and the activity is harmful to yourself then it seems to fit the classic definition.