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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."
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.
Wrong. Parents and taxpayers sacrifice money, time and effort to pay for education; if students are too addicted to X to learn anything then it's money down the drain just like gambling.
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 study, conducted by Douglas Gentile, director of the National Institute on Media and the Family at Iowa State University, "
Ya, that is a totally impartial source when it comes to video games.
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...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
'Video games' is an extremely broad category, especially when talking about addiction. The differences between a mmorpg, a fps with no artificial progress indicator, and a puzzle game need to be noted.
Most of these studies just seem to take a few random popular titles and assume the results apply to all.
Lying liars and the lies they tell — souls in need of correction whether young or old. .
True, and we all know that video game lies are just gateway lies that lead to gambling rent lies.
Put down the controller and stop the dishonesty while you still can!
So, 91.5% of young gamers are completely fine and video games in no way have altered their academic or social habits? Cool.
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...
You can advertise in this sig from as little as £99.99 a month!
There's a very important difference:
1 hour spent on video gaming is easy to recover -- do the homework tomorrow.
£300 lost in a bet is a week's wages gone.
When I used to lie to my mum and say I'd done my homework when I'd actually been playing games (or reading Discworld books) I knew I'd just have to make up the work later.
A similar lie from a child might be claiming to have gone to school, but in reality drinking cider in the local park.
Lying liars and the lies they tell -- souls in need of correction whether young or old.
Gee, you are being a bit too harsh there. A child lying to parents about what he/she is doing at a given time is often simply a defense mechanism for obtaining some privacy and a degree of control over their own life and therefore making themselves feel more adult, even though the parents might in fact know better. I would say it's a perfectly normal and even sometimes a desirable part of childhood if the parents are more protective and intrusive than appropriate for a child of a given age, as parents often are. In fact I can't think of any child I ever met who didn't do this to some degree, and they still tend to grow up to be responsible adults. It is just not even in the same category as a guy lying to his wife about blowing their rent money on gambling who is a seriously irresponsible and probably an immoral person.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
I played video games as a teenager and it never affected me at all HEAD SHOT!!! as a matter of fact my grades were above average MULTI KILL!!! and I feel that it's totally fine for kids to play video games as long as they get their homework done WICKED SICK!!!!
Jack Thompson must just love that this has come out just after his appeal was rejected without hearing...
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I'd discipline my son when he lies about homework, if only I could quit playing COD4.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
"Pathologically" would mean in this context, like in most health contexts, "having a detrimental effect on your quality of life".
Saying that something is an 'illness' depends entirely on the severity. For instance, my back isn't perfectly straight - I have a very slight scoliosis. But it has had zero impact on my life and its quality. So it's not something you would ever bother to treat medically, even if it's not 'normal'.
People tend to think of medicine in binary terms, like with infectious diseases: Either you're infected or not. But that's not a realistic way to view medicine, and in particular, it fails completely when it comes to mental disorders.
So the bottom line about whether a gaming 'addiction' is a 'pathological' addiction or not, is dependent on whether it's actually an addiction, proper. Does the person have control over it? If they don't, then it's pretty obvious that's a negative for their quality-of-life.
For the same reasons, it'd also be stupid to define a gaming addiction in simplistic terms as "hours played", etc. And I'm skeptical of this particular study; the diagnostic criteria seem pretty simplistic. You can't really evaluate whether someone is addicted or not just from a few survey-type questions. I doubt any practicing psychiatrist would, either.
But I don't see any reason to doubt the actual idea that computer-gaming addiction exists. Heck, I read about a lady who lost her life to Bingo. Yes.. *Bingo*.
Measuring a child's behaviour with adult criteria is inappropriate. When you bring up children you need to teach them to become responsible adults, they are not born with these skills and it's normal for them not having them yet. Also the parent-child relationship is nothing like being married - it is not and should not be equal. It's a lot more similar to the relationship of an adult to their employer than their relationship to a spouse.
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.
I did both. I sincerely wish I hadn't.
Experience is a bitch.
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