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."
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.
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.