Slashdot Mirror
Study Claims 8.5% of Young Gamers "Pathologically Addicted"
schnucki brings word of new research which claims roughly one in twelve American children between the ages of eight and 18 are "pathologically addicted" to video games. The study, conducted by Douglas Gentile, director of the National Institute on Media and the Family at Iowa State University, says that "pathological status was a significant predictor of poorer school performance even after controlling for sex, age, and weekly amount of video-game play." However, Professor Cheryl Olson, who has conducted her own research into video game use, questioned Gentile's methodology, saying, "The author is repurposing questions used to assess problem gambling in adults; however, lying to your spouse about blowing the rent money on gambling is a very different matter from fibbing to your mom about whether you played video games instead of starting your homework."
How old are you?
Guess the blown vacuum tube? Pong? Space Invaders? Tetris? ...
PS education is different from vocational training, I think you have the two confused.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I guess the difference is in the psychology instead of economy. After all, it is a psych study, right?
Lying to your spouse that you gambled away the money for the rent and that you'll now face eviction is probably a little further up on the totem pole of big lies than "nah, mom, I did my homework, yeah right...".
C'mon, you never lied to your parents about your homework because Timmy had this really cool new action figure and you wanted to go there to play with it? Does that mean you were (or are?) addicted to action figures?
It could be argued the difference in the context is the same as the difference between a bullet just leaving the chamber, and a bullet having hit its target. Both different levels of progression along the same path. The day I see one of these "researches" actually looking into the reasons behind negative behaviours of gaming kids, then I will be satisfied. Its probably been done already, and was just never sensationalized by the media.
And this has been another installament of Captain Obvious!
The written word
Clothing
Housing
Electricity
Because I have lied about how much I use those things, use them to 'escape' my problems, become irritable if you take them away. (If you try to strip my clothing I will punch you.) I have also been known to avoid work to use electricity, read, etc. And trust me there are days when I use all four of those things and then do poorly at work.
Morons come up with a crappy definition then try to use it to attack things they dislike.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com