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Study Claims 8.5% of Young Gamers "Pathologically Addicted"

Posted by Soulskill on from the put-the-controller-down dept.

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."

4 of 296 comments (clear)

  1. Frozen Post by hcpxvi · · Score: 1, Redundant

    I would have tried for a Frost Piste, but I was too addicted to Frozen Bubble ....

  2. Re:Ya, totally impartial.... by politicsapocalypse · · Score: 0, Redundant

    /scarsam_off You are ending a scarsam_off tag so I guess that means you were not using scarsam? WTF is scarsam anyway?

  3. Controlling for sex? by El_Muerte_TDS · · Score: 0, Redundant

    "pathological status was a significant predictor of poorer school performance even after controlling for sex, age, and weekly amount of video-game play."

    Sounds a bit disturbing they were controlling for sex of 8 year olds.

  4. Re:Ya, totally impartial.... by politicsapocalypse · · Score: 0, Redundant

    That is a double negative. / indicates the end. So if that is the end of your sarcasm then /sarcasm or Its basic markup language