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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."
Hey, how about maybe the poor school performance was due to the fact that school is boring ( it is pretty much just memorising facts and figures ) and the more bored the child is, the more likely he is going to do something interesting/exciting like, I don't know, gaming?
Seriously, why does the blame always go one way?
The disappearing pencil trick. Let me show you it.
My grades sucked and there were no addictive computer games in my youth (or if, no addicted youngster had the money to feed the machines). Some study...
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Dare I say it? Learning is boring for the feeble minded.
School !== Learning, I know. But you still have opportunity to direct your learning to some extent. Geeks may be more interested in the algorithms used in Egyptian calculation techniques than in the types of candles they used; or the method of production of black powder rather than who was using it, etc..
If nothing academic interests you try and steer yourself towards practical subjects.
If you're not going to play the school game then you should spend your homework time working, working on what you plan on doing to earn money, contribute to society and feed yourself with. You have to be at school, you don't have to get good grades, YMMV.
Never played a game where you had to churn away at earning rupees?
The difference is of degree, not kind. Losing $200 that you had planned to spend on a nice dinner with your wife at a poker table is more analogous to occasionally lying to your mom about homework. Borrowing $30K from a loan shark and blowing it all on Baccarat is like failing out of MIT's EE program because you couldn't be bothered to pick up a textbook or attend any lectures.
Even if it is true, games cannot be villified by these findings. Addiction as described by TFA is used as a means of escape, it even says so in the body of text, and if games didn't exist then some other medium would fill the void.
Before the widespread popularity of computer games (yes I'm that old) it was TV that my parents were sure I was addicted to. Now my loved ones are sure it's games, and to a lesser extent alcohol. If you ask me I'm just finding things to pass the time...
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The difference in what you can expect as a result. If you didn't do your homework, you might think it will have some tiny effect on your final grade, which doesn't bother you much. If you blew the rent money, somebody is definitely going to notice, and you are lying to yourself when you think you can win it back before it comes home to roost.
She's not saying that skipping homework is a good way to spend your time; just that the student in question doesn't need to be "pathologically addicted" to think it's not a big deal.
How does that compare to general addiction exposure ? For example to people doing gambling how many % are addicted ? To those doing drug from time to time, how many % are addicted ? How many doing any hobby fall into an addicting loop ? Or evena re addicted to TV ? If the aforementioned % are lower or higher maybe it would tell something, but 8.5% EVEN if the methodology was correct, is a nonsense absolute number telling us nothing.
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That a professor can use words like 'repurposing' TBH.
Back on topic though, I was probably addicted to them when I was a teen. I even used to hop on my moped and whizz over to the arcades in my lunch break when I was at work then spend hours on my Atari 400 in the evenings. All my money went on games (and when I wasn't playing video games I was probably shaking the D6's in a Traveller game). OTOH, I had peers who just spent all their money on getting drunk or buying new albums. Almost everyone, especially at that age has something that they really get attached to. That's not the problem. Making sure you ALSO do the important stuff is the key.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Old people are pathologically addicted to using the word "addiction" to make anything they don't like sound scary. The brain can adapt to virtually any stimulus and once removed, will not function as well without it. So if you go for long countryside walks every day and enjoy it, then you get injured and can't do it for a few months, you'll miss going for those long countryside walks. That's completely different to chemical addiction you get from heroin or nicotine, but then most people can't tell the difference.
You thought you could break the laws of physics without paying the PRICE?
I know you are joking, but disciplining children for lying might not work.
Please, this is now as useless as doing studies to see how much tv is being watched in each household....in the 70s ok, it was when it was become the staple for home entertainment.
Now we all know the TV is as much a part of a household as the toilet. No need to review any more
studies about how TV is this or that, we have all accepted it as normal part of our American culture.
Now , we move on to computers, since the 80s it has become more and more popular, to the point now of having multiprocessors at home (mini mainframes if you will). Even if you do no play games, but you download mp3s or listen to music, or download movies or watch them on your computer, or email, or read the news, or read up on specific information for homework related stuff, you will still have a sh*t load of time spent on the computer per week.
It does not need any more studies about what it does, we know what it does, it educates the masses with controlled information. If I were to get you hooked on a game about learning special ops techniques, and warfare, and masked it as a regular game, guess what you could be a NAVY seals (yes they have their own game/war simulator).
So it all depends on how we apply ourselves, and what we teach our kids about the use or pitfalls of computers. DO not blindly give a kid a computer, instead learn with him what is possible for his age, and let him see the possibilities that are there other then playing mario kart!!!
The onus falls on the parents, and also teaching the kid the difference between fun and practical.
where's the study on the far greater number of jocks who are "addicted" to sports and their school performance suffers for it?
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