This just in: spending 14 hours a day playing Counterstrike or World of Warcraft means your offline relationships could suffer.
Researchers at Brigham Young University in Utah talked to 813 university students across the US and found that as the amount of time the students spent playing video games went up, the quality of their relationships with friends and family suffered.
"Relationship quality is one of a cluster of things that we found to be associated with videogames," said researcher Laura Walker. "The most striking part is that everything we found clustered around videogame use is negative."
Drugs, sex appeal and Raving Rabbids
Statistical analyses revealed that the more people play videogames, the more frequent their involvement in 'risky' behaviours such as drinking and drug abuse. Daily gamers reported smoking marijuana almost twice as often as occasional players and three times as often as those who never play.
The study found that nearly three quarters of male students in the study played video games regularly, compared to just 17 per cent of their female counterparts. For young women, self-worth was low if their time spent playing videogames was high.
But there is one ray of sunshine - the study found that the connection between gaming and anti-social behaviour was only 'modest' and the researchers themselves hoped that future studies would exonerate family-oriented consoles and multiplayer games.
Your comments (9) Click to add a new comment
technobrakes
January 27th
9. relationships come and go, video games are for ever.
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breastmilkbandit
January 25th
8. There has to be a link between playing with a joystick, and playing with your joystick.
Playing video games does lead to sweaty palms. Smoking pot leads to video games. Therefore playing video games is masturbation when smoking pot.
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voltronn
January 25th
7. Playing a small amount every day is no problem, its when that small amount turns into a large amount then that is a problem a big problem. Having gamed online for as long as its been possible I cannot count the amount of relationships destroyed, jobs lost, dropouts from college, health problems, even marriages failed just through the relatively small number of gamers I met 'in real life'.
These are not all nerds or 'addictive' type personalities, many regular talented sporty types, including my own brother.. getting into heavy gaming and it affecting them in ways ranging from mild to severe.
One of these days a research body with half a clue will go and interview thousands of PARENTS of world of warcraft players, then we'll all see the true scope of this. As for now the issue remains largely in denial.
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hotness
January 24th
6. No one in the study thought "hey maybe people with poor relationships escape to gaming" ?
Headline should read "Poor relationships linked to sitting on ***, smoking pot and spending time in make believe world where people don't hate you for lack of charisma and general life skills, because in this world you totally pwn"
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rolando
January 24th
5. Spending 14 hours a day doing anything is going to lead to relationship problems.Linking gaming to these problems is simply ignorant.These problems existed in humans long before video games were even invented.Perhaps they should redo their research to see if maybe these problems lead to excessive gaming habits instead of the other way around.The underlying issue is addiction and the need for moderation in everything.But it gets more attention with ridiculous headlines.And to claim that "everything we found clustered aruond video game use is negative" further demonstrates the researchers irresponsibility with their work.You can't tell me that they found nothing beneficial coming from video game playing.There are plenty of positive things involved in video game use.There needs to be a willingness to see both sides,and this research demonstrates no such behavior.Negative thought results in negetive research.
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thegilb
January 24th
4. What a waste of money. I like the way this research doesn't expand the scope a little wider to examine the impact of similar compulsive behaviour patterns outside of gaming. Also it may be noted that the research fails to recognise the fact that at least some gamers can maintain very ordinary relationships with their online friends. Drinking, drug abuse and compulsive gaming can all be linked by one common denominator - escapism; Another human factor which this research fails to notice. I think the findings in this paper are obvious and superficial and barely scrape the surface of the complex psychological factors which underlye compulsive gaming.
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