Video Games & False Significance
Why do we long to be significant? The desire fills us all, manifested in a million different ways. Some people feel significant through athletics, others music, and others money. How we choose to satisfy this desire makes us all unique.
The majority of the significantizers exist in the real world. Video games offer a digital substitute for those real activities. If you’re into music you can become a Guitar Hero. Into sports? Try Madden NFL.
Rock Star Sensation
Tragically, gaming keeps gamers from learning the skills that actually make them significant. They become a guy playing in the living room with a cheap plastic guitar with colorful buttons. The Wall Street Journal says, “Many professional rockers, however, say the game lets them act out a fantasy that their real lives don’t quite match. Sometimes, pretending to be a rock star for a few minutes can be more fun than being one.”
Like aspartame, these games taste more potent than the real world they reflect. But are artificial at their soul.
The Wall Street Journal wrote an article that talked about how dozens of top tier bands like Korn, Incubus and Donnas became wrapped up in Guitar Hero. Real rock stars pretending to be fake rock stars. According to the Journal the band Three Days Grace struggled with Guitar Hero cutting into their recording time for their new album.
Guitar Hero gives the rock star sensation as much as, or more than being a true rock star. The game constantly gives players feedback through cheering crowds. The better you play the more they cheer. It cuts through the boredom of traveling from gig to gig and the responsibility of honing the skills needed to become a real rock star.
The game just drops you on a stage in front of an audience ready to lavish their affection on your skilled playing. If you can get the buzz playing a game, why go through the years of practice needed to become a real rock star?
This may be an extreme example since not many people can become rock stars but it illustrates the point:
Virtual activity becomes a substitute for real activity.
In the game… I’m special
After hearing me give a talk about gaming, one child admitted to his mother “In the game I’m special. In real life I’m not.” This simple statement points out a tragic truth. The more we invest in a non-existent world, the poorer we become in the real one. King Solomon said this a different way, “The man that soweth food will have his full share, the man that chases fantasy will have poverty.” Video gaming is a bad investment. Why waste your time, the most precious treasure you have, trying to level up.
Leveling up in real life
Imagine how much you could accomplish if you “leveled up” your real life abilities with as much intensity as you do your online abilities. If you spent the same amount of time studying, working, and taking risks in the real world as they do in the virtual world. How more effective would you be as a person? I can tell you that my life improved dramatically when I started leveling up my real life character. I started reading books like 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven R. Covey The book can show you how to level up your life. It changed my life.
Deep down we want to change the world. Video games tell us that we can change the world, but only it in the game. This is a lie. The truth is that you can change the world. But, it takes hard work, which you won’t have time for when you waste it online. People who get distracted by the virtual world will have little impact on the real one.
When we lack purpose we tend to squander our time on useless pursuits. The pursuit of happiness is a sign of a purposeless life. People spend their life pursuing happiness because they have nothing more important than themselves. The live for no ideal. No higher purpose.
Video Games & False Significance
Why do we long to be significant? The desire fills us all, manifested in a million different ways. Some people feel significant through athletics, others music, and others money. How we choose to satisfy this desire makes us all unique.
The majority of the significantizers exist in the real world. Video games offer a digital substitute for those real activities. If you’re into music you can become a Guitar Hero. Into sports? Try Madden NFL.
Rock Star Sensation
Tragically, gaming keeps gamers from learning the skills that actually make them significant. They become a guy playing in the living room with a cheap plastic guitar with colorful buttons. The Wall Street Journal says, “Many professional rockers, however, say the game lets them act out a fantasy that their real lives don’t quite match. Sometimes, pretending to be a rock star for a few minutes can be more fun than being one.”
Like aspartame, these games taste more potent than the real world they reflect. But are artificial at their soul.
The Wall Street Journal wrote an article that talked about how dozens of top tier bands like Korn, Incubus and Donnas became wrapped up in Guitar Hero. Real rock stars pretending to be fake rock stars. According to the Journal the band Three Days Grace struggled with Guitar Hero cutting into their recording time for their new album.
Guitar Hero gives the rock star sensation as much as, or more than being a true rock star. The game constantly gives players feedback through cheering crowds. The better you play the more they cheer. It cuts through the boredom of traveling from gig to gig and the responsibility of honing the skills needed to become a real rock star.
The game just drops you on a stage in front of an audience ready to lavish their affection on your skilled playing. If you can get the buzz playing a game, why go through the years of practice needed to become a real rock star?
This may be an extreme example since not many people can become rock stars but it illustrates the point:
Virtual activity becomes a substitute for real activity.
In the game… I’m special
After hearing me give a talk about gaming, one child admitted to his mother “In the game I’m special. In real life I’m not.” This simple statement points out a tragic truth. The more we invest in a non-existent world, the poorer we become in the real one. King Solomon said this a different way, “The man that soweth food will have his full share, the man that chases fantasy will have poverty.” Video gaming is a bad investment. Why waste your time, the most precious treasure you have, trying to level up.
Leveling up in real life
Imagine how much you could accomplish if you “leveled up” your real life abilities with as much intensity as you do your online abilities. If you spent the same amount of time studying, working, and taking risks in the real world as they do in the virtual world. How more effective would you be as a person? I can tell you that my life improved dramatically when I started leveling up my real life character. I started reading books like 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven R. Covey The book can show you how to level up your life. It changed my life.
Deep down we want to change the world. Video games tell us that we can change the world, but only it in the game. This is a lie. The truth is that you can change the world. But, it takes hard work, which you won’t have time for when you waste it online. People who get distracted by the virtual world will have little impact on the real one.
When we lack purpose we tend to squander our time on useless pursuits. The pursuit of happiness is a sign of a purposeless life. People spend their life pursuing happiness because they have nothing more important than themselves. The live for no ideal. No higher purpose.
Chicken v. Egg?
Which came first the chicken or the egg? I think this question is easily answered since a chicken could have survived without an egg, while an egg would require incubation (aka: a chicken) to survive. Whatever. No; I am not going to talk about the inherent lameness of video games involving chickens in this posting. Go ahead; exhale a grand sigh of relief.
Instead, I am going to talk about what is often (very academically) termed a “chicken and egg dilemma:” Are compulsive, addiction-prone people just drawn to video games or do the video games themselves actually promote addiction?
To answer this question, we’re going to trek down a road often fraught with boredom; we’re going to look at research. But, if you’re willing to stick with it and at least read the major parts of this post, you just might even get some great information and maybe even a fresh perspective. What do you have to loose? Two minutes?
Empirical?
Now using that word sure makes me feel scientific. No; we’re probably not going to conclusively prove that gaming is an addiction any time soon. But then again, we probably can’t conclusively probe that gravity exists, either.
The fact of the matter is that there is enough evidence to say that playing games often leads to playing more games, and ultimately addiction.
Making the link.
Nicholas Yee is now one of the foremost experts on MMORPG games (Isn’t that a weird acronym? See my endnote.). In the early days of his massive online surveys from the Daedalus Project, he performed studies relating to addiction. His report “Adiadne” on the subject revealed a very telling relationship. I referenced the study in my last post, but here’s some of the major points:
- 65% of these gamers (ages 12-17) would label themselves as addicted to the game. (Yee 2002, 3)
- 60% of gamers have played 10 hours non-stop.
- About half of young MMORPG players (ages 12-22) admit to loosing sleep in order to play the game. (Yee 2002, 2)
Another study was released in ‘05 which confirmed these findings. Ng and Wiemer-Hastings, from DePaul University’s Computer Science Department, performed a study showing that:
- MMORPG players play significantly longer. (see graph)
- 80% of MMORPG players have played 8 hours straight, while only 46% of Non-MMORPG gamers have. (Ng and Wiemer-Hastings 2005, 112)
- 35% of MMORPG gamers find it easier to talk to people in the game than those in real life. (Ng and Wiemer-Hastings 2005, 113)
These number are great; they point us to a specific conclusion: people who play certain games (MMORPGs in specific) tend to be more addicted to them. If you’re really attentive, then you’ve also noticed several problems. Let’s play Blue’s Clues! Can you spot them? No; I’m just kidding. It’s just fine if you didn’t notice any problems, I’ll go into them in just a second!
Problem 1: Date
Yep. These studies are a little… well, old. Yee’s study was done six years ago, which means that some of the high schoolers he polled now have Master’s degrees. The Ng and Wiemer-Hastings study, on the other hand, is only about three years old, so it’s good for verifying that Yee’s studies still hold true. However, there is another problem that plagues Ng’s results.
Problem 2: Quantity
Both of these studies are surveys, which means they rely on quantity rather than quality. Yee did an exceptional job of getting a large number of respondents. That’s one of the reasons he’s a top expert. Yee consistently has about three to four thousand participants in his surveys.
Ng and Wiemer-Hastings are computer scientists, not psychiatrists. They only got 91 respondents. Now that’s a problem. Both studies, however, share a flaw that is more fundamental than any of these minute details…
Problem 3 (the big one): Correlation is not Causality!
Yes! The chicken or egg dilemma. You knew it would be coming back! The truth of the matter is that all surveys share this same weakness. Surveys, often academically termed “cross-sectional studies,” can tell us who is doing what but not why. Jeffery Goldstein, in testimony before congress, stated the fundamental problem with cross-sectional surveys: “Correlation is not causality, no matter how tempted one may be to argue otherwise.” (Goldstein 2000, 4)
Here’s the problem: we have no idea whether people who have addictive personalities just tend to be drawn to MMORPGs or if MMORPGs themselves are addictive. How can we resolve this?
A solution?
When Dr. Jeffery Goldstein, of University of Utrecht, testified before the US Senate, he focused around whether virtual violence was likely to result in real world violence. His conclusion was that there is not near enough evidence to support this claim. Five years later, Douglas Gentile prepared a literature review for the National Institute on Media and the Family. His report, once again, focusing around violence, but also addressed study methodology. His insights are very useful.
According to Gentile, there are three major types of studies (Gentile 2005, 7) which I believe can be narrowed down to just two. The first type of study is cross sectional surveys, which attempt to get answers from as many people as possible. The second type is a laboratory study that takes a few participants and carefully observes them.
A survey is able to get quantitative results. It can show correlation but not causality. On the other hand, a lab study is able to prove (at least somewhat) that one thing caused another in these cases. Therefore, in order to solve the Chicken and Egg dilemma, I need to find an experimental study.
Breakthrough!
I was researching at the Life Sciences Library at the University of Texas (go Horns!) when I stumbled upon a study from Joshuah M. Smyth, who is in the Department of Psychology at Syracuse University. His study was entitled “Beyond Self-Selection in Video Game Play.” Basically, his laboratory design was made to rule out pre-existing conditions that could cause addiction to the game.
Imagine your one of the hundred participants that were selected to be in Smyth’s study. You’re 18-20 years old. When you sign the liability waver form, you think that you just might become the next Incredible Hulk when they inject you with green radioactive goo. You breath a sigh of relief as you are informed that this is an experiment being run by the psychology, not the nuclear, department. You exhale with joy as you’re informed that you will get to play video games and be monitored for a month! But here’s the hitch: you have to play the type of game that you’re assigned. And it had to be an unfamiliar type of game.
This was what made Smyth stick out to me. His study assigned participants to play a type of video game that they had no previous experience with. This rules out the possibility that they had a pre-existing “addictive personality” that lead them to choose to play MMOs. So what did they find regarding video game play and addiction?
The results of the Smyth’s inquiry where published in October of last year. He said that the MMORPG players where significantly different from other players. They enjoyed the game more, but that enjoyment came at a price:
“The MMORPG group differed significantly from other groups after 1 month, reporting more hours spent playing, worse health, worse sleep quality, and greater interference in “real-life” socializing and academic work. … MMORPGs represent a different gaming experience with different consequences than other types of video games and appear to pose both unique risks and benefits from their use.” (Smyth 2007, 717)
And thereby the results of the cross-sectional studies mentioned above were verified by experimental testing. Smyth’s study helps us to say with more confidence that we have answered the “chicken and egg” dilemma regarding video games.
Conclusion
So what? Why should anyone who doesn’t have a Ph.D. care about these studies? Here’s the point that I want to make by showing you all this evidence. While some people certainly are more addiction prone, games can also be designed to be addiction prone. We cannot completely blame the player as many gaming companies contend, because games can be, and are, designed to be addictive.
If you think this may be the case for you or a loved one, please take our free addiction test.
Resources
Endnote: When I refer to “literature,” I’m not talking about that subject in school. I mean the body of written works on the subject of gaming. When I talk about MMOs, I mean Massive Multiplayer Online games. Finally, MMORPG (now that’s a horrible acronym, hu?) stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games.
Goldstein, Jeffrey. “Effects of Electronic Games on Children.” Testimonial Statement to US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, Mar. 2000. commerce.senate.gov (no longer available).
Gentile, Douglas A. “Examining the Effects of Video Games from a Psychological Perspective.” National Institute on Media and the Family Nov. 2005. http://www.mediafamily.org/research/Gentile_NIMF_Review_2005.pdf.
Ng, Brian D. and Peter Wiemer-Hastings. “Addiction to the Internet and Online Gaming.” CyberPsychology & Behavior 8.2 (2005): 110-113. (accessed via Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. Publishers).
Smyth, Joshua M. “Beyond Self-Selection in Video Game Play: An Experimental Examination of the Consequences of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game Play.” Cyberpsychology & Behavior 10.5 (2007): 717-721. (accessed via Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. publishers)
Yee, Nicholas. “Ariadne.” Oct. 2002. NickYee.com. http://www.nickyee.com/hub/addiction/addiction.pdf.
MMO: A Minor’s Massive Obsession
Originally written as a composition assignment, 8 April 2008.
Cyberspace must be running in its own time zone. What starts as “just a few more minutes to finish this level” soon becomes an hour. When Olivia and Kurt Bruner kept hearing this from their son while he was playing games, they set out to discover the problem. They concluded that video games are like “the digital drug” (Bruner and Bruner xxi).
Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) games are especially similar to drugs; not in their chemical makeup, but in the way they affect the young brain. MMO may as well stand for a Minor’s Massive Obsession because of the addiction it can become for many minors who find virtual reality more fulfilling than modern reality. In a way gaming also resembles alcohol. It isn’t evil, and actually can be beneficial, but can easily be overdone.
Contents
- Definitions:
- Addictive or Not Addictive… That is the Question
- A Nasty Acronym with a Nasty Side
- Pixels… or People?
- Tossing Schoolwork for the Game?
- Why Work Out when I can be a Digital Athlete in Seconds?
- Am I Ruining Reality for Virtual Reality?
- The Digital Drug?
- Fast Food Fulfillment
- Risky Playtime
The Problem of Addiction:
Why Games are Addictive:
Addictive or Not Addictive… That is the Question
The pillar upon which the case for gaming addiction rests is the definition of addiction. Addiction is an overused word in modern language. Its meaning has become ambiguous at best.
The modern mind immediately thinks of some homeless looser who can’t hold a job because he is hooked on drugs. This mind is certain that a person who plays video games fourteen hours per day is addicted but isn’t sure where to draw the line in cases that aren’t as severe. At the same time, gamers often use “addictive” as a synonym of fun.”
Nicholas Yee, one of the foremost psychological experts on online games, provides a more objective, though not perfect, definition: “a recurring behavior that is unhealthy or selfdestructive which the individual has difficulty ending” (Yee 1). The only problem is that it lacks any definition of what is “destructive” and contains no specific median through which addiction may be measured.
For the purposes of this paper, addiction will be defined in terms of time. If an individual habitually spends time on an activity such that it interferes with time that is necessary for other more important activities, it’s safe to say that this individual is addicted. Therefore, the test for online video game addiction becomes whether time spent playing MMOs or MMORPGs interferes with other more important activities such as schoolwork or sleep.
A Nasty Acronym with a Nasty Side
MMORPG (how’s that for a nasty acronym?) spells out Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. Some examples of these games are Dungeons and Dragons, EverQuest, which is sometimes jokingly called “NeverRest” because of its addictive nature, and Second Life. These games literally give players a “second life” and another role. They become problematic when the fantasy role becomes the player’s main role.
Even though only about one in ten gamers play an MMORPG, they’re the most likely to become addicted (Khan 4). A survey performed by Yee found that 65% of these gamers (ages 12-17) would label themselves as addicted to the game (Yee 3). The next question would be whether they truly are addicted by this paper’s definition.
Pixels… or People?
The first stop in testing for adolescent addiction was the subject of a 2004 editorial by Brent Staples, who holds a doctorate in behavioral sciences. Does online play interfere with the interactions players have with other people?
Yee’s study on the subject, which relied on the participant’s honesty, showed that the majority of MMORPG players don’t think their habits interfere with their social lives, academic performance, or health (Yee 6). There is quite a bit of reason to doubt their word. According to Staples, studies have shown that the amount of time spent with family was halved for every hour spent online (Staples 71).
Not everyone is negatively affected by online gaming, just like not everyone is affected by alcohol. Most of the scientific literature, however, has concluded that quite a significant number of adolescents not only grow anti-social, but also neglect school and even their health to play the game.
Tossing Schoolwork for the Game?
Many studies have negatively correlated performance in school to time spent gaming (Gentile 17-19). There is no wonder because when students spend time gaming, they can’t spend that time on homework. The recent study from Hope Cummings and Elizabeth Vandewater found that male gamers spent 30% less time reading than their non-gaming counterparts and that female gamers spent 34% less time doing homework (Cummings and Vandewater 688).
This is not to say that school and technology should never be mixed. According to Douglas Gentile’s literature review, studies have found that students who use computers actually have greater academic success, but those who use the computer for gaming purposes lost that success (Gentile 18).
These studies specifically dealt with younger students, but it’s clear that gaming habits also translate into problems in college. A survey from the Pew Research Center questioned students of higher education regarding gaming and schoolwork. The results were startling. Ten percent of the survey’s respondents admitted to playing specifically to avoid schoolwork. Even more disturbing were the unintended consequences. Almost half of the respondents to this study said that playing games kept them from studying (Jones et al. 1).
Why Work Out when I can be a Digital Athlete in Seconds?
By the definition in this paper, gaming could be called an addiction if it significantly interferes with an adolescent’s health. This is because health takes time, time many obsessed gamers don’t have. Sleep is a great example. About half of young MMORPG players (ages 12-22) admit to loosing sleep in order to play the game (Yee 2).
The American Medical Association has also expressed concern regarding the overuse of video games in general and its effects on health. According to the twelfth report at their 2007 meeting, excessive gaming has been linked to epileptic seizures, obesity, and musculoskeletal diseases (Khan 3). “Indeed, there is even a form of tendinitis named ‘Nintendinitis,’ caused by repeatedly pressing game-controller buttons with one’s thumb” (Gentile 20). All of these health problems are directly related to the time spent playing video games. Addicted MMO gamers will invariably game even at the cost of their health.
Am I Ruining Reality for Virtual Reality?
Ignoring one’s social life, schoolwork, and health in order to play with a flashing screen clearly isn’t logical. Digital games certainly have their place, but they have stepped out of it in the lives of many modern adolescents. That would actually include mine. I wasn’t a “hard-core” gamer, but I certainly have let games get in the way of more important jobs. This experience left me with a question: what is so addictive about moving lights? I found two answers. Gaming, especially online, is both chemically stimulating and emotionally fulfilling.
The Digital Drug?
Most adults have no idea what is going on when they see their adolescents being lost in the online game. Often puzzled parents simply dismiss it as “just a game.” Yet, for many addicted teens, it’s more than just a game. It’s “life” in the same chemical way that cocaine is “life” to a drug addict.
Video games actually release many of the same chemicals in the brain that drug addicts thrive on. The first study to track a neurological chemical known as dopamine in the human brain using a PET scan was conducted in 1998 by British scientists who used video games as their experimental variable. The results they found indicated that the amount of surplus dopamine, the same chemical stimulated by cocaine, doubled when their subjects played a video game (Koepp et al. 267). This evidence led Dan Costa, an editor at the pro-gaming publication PC Magazine, to conclude:
“Video games are not like cocaine, your brain thinks they are cocaine. And if you doubt that, try to take the controller out of [my son’s] hands before he reaches a save point.” (Costa)
Fast Food Fulfillment
Addiction to online video games is not only a chemical phenomenon; it can also be an emotional attraction. In a very real sense, MMOs artificially fulfill the basic goal of adolescents: to grow up.
Take, for example, the situation of the Bruners provided at the beginning of this paper. The Bruners finally wrote a book for parents on the gaming experience. They state that the “role playing elements of video games tend to draw a child back repeatedly, in part because the child has adopted a temporary replacement identity” (Bruner and Bruner 51). For adolescents specifically, the identities they play in many MMOs give them a thrill of adulthood without the risks of adulthood.
Risky Playtime
While playing an MMO certainly isn’t evil, this seemingly innocent pass time can put reality at risk. Role playing games are super-sized versions of what we think reality should be. Compared to the glittering world of Second Life, “real life” is rather dull. Compared to the dopamine rush of EverQuest, schoolwork is boring. MMO addiction often throws adolescent lives by the wayside, promising to replace them with the lives of digital heroes. It certainly can be like a digital drug.
References
Bruner, Olivia, and Kurt Bruner. Playstation Nation. New York: Center Street, 2006.
Costa, Dan. “Turn It Off, Kids!” Editorial. PCMag.com 4 April 2007. 8 Mar. 2008 http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2109568,00.asp.
Cummings, Hope M., and Elizabeth A. Vandewater. “Relation of Adolescent Video Game Play to Time Spent in Other Activities.” Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine 161.7 (2007): 684-689. 8 Mar. 2008 http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/reprint/161/7/684.
Gentile, Douglas A. “Examining the Effects of Video Games from a Psychological Perspective.” National Institute on Media and the Family Nov. 2005. 7 Mar. 2008 http://www.mediafamily.org/research/Gentile_NIMF_Review_2005.pdf.
Jones, Steve, et al. “Let the Games Begin.” Pew Internet and American Life Project 6 Jul. 2003. 7 Mar. 2008 http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_College_Gaming_Reporta.pdf.
Khan, Mohamed K. “Emotional and Behavioral Effects of Video Games and Internet Overuse.” 2007 AMA Annual Meeting. Council on Science and Public Health, June 2007. 8 Mar. 2008 http://www.ama-assn.org/ama1/pub/upload/mm/467/csaph12a07.doc.
Koepp, M. J., et al. “Evidence for Striatal Dopamine Release During a Video Game.” Nature 393.6682 (1998): 266-268.
Staples, Brent. “What Adolescents Miss When we Let Them Grow up in Cyberspace.” The McGraw-Hill Reader. Ed. Gilbert H. Muller. 9th Ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006. 70-71.
Yee, Nicholas. “Ariadne.” Oct. 2002. NickYee.com. 7 Mar. 2008 http://www.nickyee.com/hub/addiction/addiction.pdf.
The Hidden Dangers of Computer and Video Gaming
Originally Published in the THSC Review
by Thomas Umstattd, Jr.
“Come on, Mom. … Just a few more minutes; I’m almost done with this level.” Parents have all heard it: a child’s pleading to get just a little more time to play. I know. I was that child.
When I lived in a college dorm, my room was across the hall from a gamer, whom I will call “Dominique.”He played the computer game World of Warcraft for sixteen hours or more each day. He stopped going to class and eating at the cafeteria, and he withdrew from anyone outside of the game. He took only brief breaks to pick up fast food to eat while playing. The artificial greatness of gaining Level 70 replaced the adventure of following Christ in his life. How could someone become so consumed by a mere game?
The Problem
Unfortunately, Dominique’s story is not an isolated occurrence. Nearly 2.8 million gamers play for thirty hours a week or more. Some of those gamers play for as many as sixty, or even eighty, hours a week. Oh, and gaming is not just for kids anymore. According to the Entertainment Software Association, gamers are thirty-three-years-old, on average, and sixty-nine percent of American heads of households play digital games.
It gets worse. Imagine those hard-core gamers as parents and spouses. The resulting impact on their families is similar to any addition: neglect, abandonment, and divorce. There are online groups, such as EverQuest Widows and World of Warcraft Widows, which together have over 10,000 members. Many of these women believe that they have lost their husbands to gaming addiction. While some have filed for divorce, others feel separated by a digital chasm that they cannot cross, and they do not know what to do. They are bitter, hurt, and angry. Their stories would break your heart.
One woman posted the story of how her husband quit work so he could have more time to play. After a while, he hardly talked to her as he spent his entire day in the digital world. When she went through a difficult pregnancy, her husband was so glued to his game that her parents had to move in to care for her. Now her son is two years old and has spent maybe twelve hours of quality time with his father—ever. Her grief is palpable as she describes feeling abandoned, a single mom in the presence of her husband.
What appears to be an innocent pastime can easily become a slippery slope into a life-devouring addiction. But what makes games so addictive?
Your Brain on Games
You have probably heard long, scientific words like endorphins, adrenaline, and dopamine in connection with drugs like cocaine. You might be familiar with how they can cause addictive reactions. You probably have educated your children about the dangers of addiction and warned them to stay away—far away—from drugs. What you may not know is that a gaming addiction involves the same biochemicals as cocaine.
Several British researchers did a study on the brain in which their test subjects played a game while a PET scanner monitored their brain activity. They found a “two-fold increase in levels of extracellular dopamine” while the gamers were playing. Dopamine is what gives a high similar to that of cocaine. And for good reason: it is the same chemical released when you take cocaine. Dopamine, adrenaline, and endorphins unite to form a powerfully addictive combination. This is why it is so hard to get your son to stop playing and go to bed.
Longing for Significance
However, the draw of computer games goes much deeper than just biochemicals. Gaming also artificially satisfies our longing for significance. In digital games, players do not compete for a regional high school match. They play for the Super Bowl. They do not save a cat out of a tree; the save the world. Video gaming offers an easy path to artificial greatness, without the responsibility and hard work required for true success.
I think it is this need for significance, more than the biochemicals, that entices people like Dominique. The more he played, the more significant he became in the game, and the less significant he became in the real world. This draw for significance sucked him into a virtual world as much as physically possible.
Shepherding Your Gamer’s Heart
What do you do if you have a child who is into digital gaming? There is no simple answer. Taking the PlayStation out of the living room is much easier than taking it out of your child’s heart. Your gamer may have a chemical and emotional addiction to the gaming experience, and removing the Xbox may be as effective as getting all the beer out of the house of an alcoholic.
The best thing to do depends on the age of your gamer. Removing the games or game system is more effective for younger children. If your gamer is older, he will need to understand the problem so that he can say “no” himself. I have watched many teens either count the days until graduation or just play at a friend’s house because their parents threw away the console. The PlayStation may have been out of the house, but it lingered in the heart of the gamer like a cancer.
Some gamers need nothing less than spiritual surgery, and this can only be done by the hand of the Great Physician. God did this to me by refocusing my priorities on Christ. My Web site, Cgames.com, has a test for gamers to use to examine their hearts to see if gaming has become a problem. You may find it helpful when discussing this issue. The site contains many other resources to help you deal with this difficult problem.
Thomas Umstattd, a former gamer, directs Cgames.com, a Web site and podcast dedicated to providing a Christian perspective on digital games. He graduated from twelve years of home schooling in 2004 and is currently writing a book on the dangers of digital gaming, offering a plan for action.
MMO: A Minor’s Massive Obsession
Originally written as a composition assignment, 8 April 2008.
Cyberspace must be running in its own time zone. What starts as “just a few more minutes to finish this level” soon becomes an hour. When Olivia and Kurt Bruner kept hearing this from their son while he was playing games, they set out to discover the problem. They concluded that video games are like “the digital drug” (Bruner and Bruner xxi).
Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) games are especially similar to drugs; not in their chemical makeup, but in the way they affect the young brain. MMO may as well stand for a Minor’s Massive Obsession because of the addiction it can become for many minors who find virtual reality more fulfilling than modern reality. In a way gaming also resembles alcohol. It isn’t evil, and actually can be beneficial, but can easily be overdone.
Contents
- Definitions:
- Addictive or Not Addictive… That is the Question
- A Nasty Acronym with a Nasty Side
- Pixels… or People?
- Tossing Schoolwork for the Game?
- Why Work Out when I can be a Digital Athlete in Seconds?
- Am I Ruining Reality for Virtual Reality?
- The Digital Drug?
- Fast Food Fulfillment
- Risky Playtime
The Problem of Addiction:
Why Games are Addictive:
Addictive or Not Addictive… That is the Question
The pillar upon which the case for gaming addiction rests is the definition of addiction. Addiction is an overused word in modern language. Its meaning has become ambiguous at best.
The modern mind immediately thinks of some homeless looser who can’t hold a job because he is hooked on drugs. This mind is certain that a person who plays video games fourteen hours per day is addicted but isn’t sure where to draw the line in cases that aren’t as severe. At the same time, gamers often use “addictive” as a synonym of fun.”
Nicholas Yee, one of the foremost psychological experts on online games, provides a more objective, though not perfect, definition: “a recurring behavior that is unhealthy or selfdestructive which the individual has difficulty ending” (Yee 1). The only problem is that it lacks any definition of what is “destructive” and contains no specific median through which addiction may be measured.
For the purposes of this paper, addiction will be defined in terms of time. If an individual habitually spends time on an activity such that it interferes with time that is necessary for other more important activities, it’s safe to say that this individual is addicted. Therefore, the test for online video game addiction becomes whether time spent playing MMOs or MMORPGs interferes with other more important activities such as schoolwork or sleep.
A Nasty Acronym with a Nasty Side
MMORPG (how’s that for a nasty acronym?) spells out Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. Some examples of these games are Dungeons and Dragons, EverQuest, which is sometimes jokingly called “NeverRest” because of its addictive nature, and Second Life. These games literally give players a “second life” and another role. They become problematic when the fantasy role becomes the player’s main role.
Even though only about one in ten gamers play an MMORPG, they’re the most likely to become addicted (Khan 4). A survey performed by Yee found that 65% of these gamers (ages 12-17) would label themselves as addicted to the game (Yee 3). The next question would be whether they truly are addicted by this paper’s definition.
Pixels… or People?
The first stop in testing for adolescent addiction was the subject of a 2004 editorial by Brent Staples, who holds a doctorate in behavioral sciences. Does online play interfere with the interactions players have with other people?
Yee’s study on the subject, which relied on the participant’s honesty, showed that the majority of MMORPG players don’t think their habits interfere with their social lives, academic performance, or health (Yee 6). There is quite a bit of reason to doubt their word. According to Staples, studies have shown that the amount of time spent with family was halved for every hour spent online (Staples 71).
Not everyone is negatively affected by online gaming, just like not everyone is affected by alcohol. Most of the scientific literature, however, has concluded that quite a significant number of adolescents not only grow anti-social, but also neglect school and even their health to play the game.
Tossing Schoolwork for the Game?
Many studies have negatively correlated performance in school to time spent gaming (Gentile 17-19). There is no wonder because when students spend time gaming, they can’t spend that time on homework. The recent study from Hope Cummings and Elizabeth Vandewater found that male gamers spent 30% less time reading than their non-gaming counterparts and that female gamers spent 34% less time doing homework (Cummings and Vandewater 688).
This is not to say that school and technology should never be mixed. According to Douglas Gentile’s literature review, studies have found that students who use computers actually have greater academic success, but those who use the computer for gaming purposes lost that success (Gentile 18).
These studies specifically dealt with younger students, but it’s clear that gaming habits also translate into problems in college. A survey from the Pew Research Center questioned students of higher education regarding gaming and schoolwork. The results were startling. Ten percent of the survey’s respondents admitted to playing specifically to avoid schoolwork. Even more disturbing were the unintended consequences. Almost half of the respondents to this study said that playing games kept them from studying (Jones et al. 1).
Why Work Out when I can be a Digital Athlete in Seconds?
By the definition in this paper, gaming could be called an addiction if it significantly interferes with an adolescent’s health. This is because health takes time, time many obsessed gamers don’t have. Sleep is a great example. About half of young MMORPG players (ages 12-22) admit to loosing sleep in order to play the game (Yee 2).
The American Medical Association has also expressed concern regarding the overuse of video games in general and its effects on health. According to the twelfth report at their 2007 meeting, excessive gaming has been linked to epileptic seizures, obesity, and musculoskeletal diseases (Khan 3). “Indeed, there is even a form of tendinitis named ‘Nintendinitis,’ caused by repeatedly pressing game-controller buttons with one’s thumb” (Gentile 20). All of these health problems are directly related to the time spent playing video games. Addicted MMO gamers will invariably game even at the cost of their health.
Am I Ruining Reality for Virtual Reality?
Ignoring one’s social life, schoolwork, and health in order to play with a flashing screen clearly isn’t logical. Digital games certainly have their place, but they have stepped out of it in the lives of many modern adolescents. That would actually include mine. I wasn’t a “hard-core” gamer, but I certainly have let games get in the way of more important jobs. This experience left me with a question: what is so addictive about moving lights? I found two answers. Gaming, especially online, is both chemically stimulating and emotionally fulfilling.
The Digital Drug?
Most adults have no idea what is going on when they see their adolescents being lost in the online game. Often puzzled parents simply dismiss it as “just a game.” Yet, for many addicted teens, it’s more than just a game. It’s “life” in the same chemical way that cocaine is “life” to a drug addict.
Video games actually release many of the same chemicals in the brain that drug addicts thrive on. The first study to track a neurological chemical known as dopamine in the human brain using a PET scan was conducted in 1998 by British scientists who used video games as their experimental variable. The results they found indicated that the amount of surplus dopamine, the same chemical stimulated by cocaine, doubled when their subjects played a video game (Koepp et al. 267). This evidence led Dan Costa, an editor at the pro-gaming publication PC Magazine, to conclude:
“Video games are not like cocaine, your brain thinks they are cocaine. And if you doubt that, try to take the controller out of [my son’s] hands before he reaches a save point.” (Costa)
Fast Food Fulfillment
Addiction to online video games is not only a chemical phenomenon; it can also be an emotional attraction. In a very real sense, MMOs artificially fulfill the basic goal of adolescents: to grow up.
Take, for example, the situation of the Bruners provided at the beginning of this paper. The Bruners finally wrote a book for parents on the gaming experience. They state that the “role playing elements of video games tend to draw a child back repeatedly, in part because the child has adopted a temporary replacement identity” (Bruner and Bruner 51). For adolescents specifically, the identities they play in many MMOs give them a thrill of adulthood without the risks of adulthood.
Risky Playtime
While playing an MMO certainly isn’t evil, this seemingly innocent pass time can put reality at risk. Role playing games are super-sized versions of what we think reality should be. Compared to the glittering world of Second Life, “real life” is rather dull. Compared to the dopamine rush of EverQuest, schoolwork is boring. MMO addiction often throws adolescent lives by the wayside, promising to replace them with the lives of digital heroes. It certainly can be like a digital drug.
References
Bruner, Olivia, and Kurt Bruner. Playstation Nation. New York: Center Street, 2006.
Costa, Dan. “Turn It Off, Kids!” Editorial. PCMag.com 4 April 2007. 8 Mar. 2008 http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2109568,00.asp.
Cummings, Hope M., and Elizabeth A. Vandewater. “Relation of Adolescent Video Game Play to Time Spent in Other Activities.” Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine 161.7 (2007): 684-689. 8 Mar. 2008 http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/reprint/161/7/684.
Gentile, Douglas A. “Examining the Effects of Video Games from a Psychological Perspective.” National Institute on Media and the Family Nov. 2005. 7 Mar. 2008 http://www.mediafamily.org/research/Gentile_NIMF_Review_2005.pdf.
Jones, Steve, et al. “Let the Games Begin.” Pew Internet and American Life Project 6 Jul. 2003. 7 Mar. 2008 http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_College_Gaming_Reporta.pdf.
Khan, Mohamed K. “Emotional and Behavioral Effects of Video Games and Internet Overuse.” 2007 AMA Annual Meeting. Council on Science and Public Health, June 2007. 8 Mar. 2008 http://www.ama-assn.org/ama1/pub/upload/mm/467/csaph12a07.doc.
Koepp, M. J., et al. “Evidence for Striatal Dopamine Release During a Video Game.” Nature 393.6682 (1998): 266-268.
Staples, Brent. “What Adolescents Miss When we Let Them Grow up in Cyberspace.” The McGraw-Hill Reader. Ed. Gilbert H. Muller. 9th Ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006. 70-71.
Yee, Nicholas. “Ariadne.” Oct. 2002. NickYee.com. 7 Mar. 2008 http://www.nickyee.com/hub/addiction/addiction.pdf.
Chicken v. Egg?
Which came first the chicken or the egg? I think this question is easily answered since a chicken could have survived without an egg, while an egg would require incubation (aka: a chicken) to survive. Whatever. No; I am not going to talk about the inherent lameness of video games involving chickens in this posting. Go ahead; exhale a grand sigh of relief.
Instead, I am going to talk about what is often (very academically) termed a “chicken and egg dilemma:” Are compulsive, addiction-prone people just drawn to video games or do the video games themselves actually promote addiction?
To answer this question, we’re going to trek down a road often fraught with boredom; we’re going to look at research. But, if you’re willing to stick with it and at least read the major parts of this post, you just might even get some great information and maybe even a fresh perspective. What do you have to loose? Two minutes?
Empirical?
Now using that word sure makes me feel scientific. No; we’re probably not going to conclusively prove that gaming is an addiction any time soon. But then again, we probably can’t conclusively probe that gravity exists, either.
The fact of the matter is that there is enough evidence to say that playing games often leads to playing more games, and ultimately addiction.
Making the link.
Nicholas Yee is now one of the foremost experts on MMORPG games (Isn’t that a weird acronym? See my endnote.). In the early days of his massive online surveys from the Daedalus Project, he performed studies relating to addiction. His report “Adiadne” on the subject revealed a very telling relationship. I referenced the study in my last post, but here’s some of the major points:
- 65% of these gamers (ages 12-17) would label themselves as addicted to the game. (Yee 2002, 3)
- 60% of gamers have played 10 hours non-stop.
- About half of young MMORPG players (ages 12-22) admit to loosing sleep in order to play the game. (Yee 2002, 2)
Another study was released in ‘05 which confirmed these findings. Ng and Wiemer-Hastings, from DePaul University’s Computer Science Department, performed a study showing that:
- MMORPG players play significantly longer. (see graph)
- 80% of MMORPG players have played 8 hours straight, while only 46% of Non-MMORPG gamers have. (Ng and Wiemer-Hastings 2005, 112)
- 35% of MMORPG gamers find it easier to talk to people in the game than those in real life. (Ng and Wiemer-Hastings 2005, 113)
These number are great; they point us to a specific conclusion: people who play certain games (MMORPGs in specific) tend to be more addicted to them. If you’re really attentive, then you’ve also noticed several problems. Let’s play Blue’s Clues! Can you spot them? No; I’m just kidding. It’s just fine if you didn’t notice any problems, I’ll go into them in just a second!
Problem 1: Date
Yep. These studies are a little… well, old. Yee’s study was done six years ago, which means that some of the high schoolers he polled now have Master’s degrees. The Ng and Wiemer-Hastings study, on the other hand, is only about three years old, so it’s good for verifying that Yee’s studies still hold true. However, there is another problem that plagues Ng’s results.
Problem 2: Quantity
Both of these studies are surveys, which means they rely on quantity rather than quality. Yee did an exceptional job of getting a large number of respondents. That’s one of the reasons he’s a top expert. Yee consistently has about three to four thousand participants in his surveys.
Ng and Wiemer-Hastings are computer scientists, not psychiatrists. They only got 91 respondents. Now that’s a problem. Both studies, however, share a flaw that is more fundamental than any of these minute details…
Problem 3 (the big one): Correlation is not Causality!
Yes! The chicken or egg dilemma. You knew it would be coming back! The truth of the matter is that all surveys share this same weakness. Surveys, often academically termed “cross-sectional studies,” can tell us who is doing what but not why. Jeffery Goldstein, in testimony before congress, stated the fundamental problem with cross-sectional surveys: “Correlation is not causality, no matter how tempted one may be to argue otherwise.” (Goldstein 2000, 4)
Here’s the problem: we have no idea whether people who have addictive personalities just tend to be drawn to MMORPGs or if MMORPGs themselves are addictive. How can we resolve this?
A solution?
When Dr. Jeffery Goldstein, of University of Utrecht, testified before the US Senate, he focused around whether virtual violence was likely to result in real world violence. His conclusion was that there is not near enough evidence to support this claim. Five years later, Douglas Gentile prepared a literature review for the National Institute on Media and the Family. His report, once again, focusing around violence, but also addressed study methodology. His insights are very useful.
According to Gentile, there are three major types of studies (Gentile 2005, 7) which I believe can be narrowed down to just two. The first type of study is cross sectional surveys, which attempt to get answers from as many people as possible. The second type is a laboratory study that takes a few participants and carefully observes them.
A survey is able to get quantitative results. It can show correlation but not causality. On the other hand, a lab study is able to prove (at least somewhat) that one thing caused another in these cases. Therefore, in order to solve the Chicken and Egg dilemma, I need to find an experimental study.
Breakthrough!
I was researching at the Life Sciences Library at the University of Texas (go Horns!) when I stumbled upon a study from Joshuah M. Smyth, who is in the Department of Psychology at Syracuse University. His study was entitled “Beyond Self-Selection in Video Game Play.” Basically, his laboratory design was made to rule out pre-existing conditions that could cause addiction to the game.
Imagine your one of the hundred participants that were selected to be in Smyth’s study. You’re 18-20 years old. When you sign the liability waver form, you think that you just might become the next Incredible Hulk when they inject you with green radioactive goo. You breath a sigh of relief as you are informed that this is an experiment being run by the psychology, not the nuclear, department. You exhale with joy as you’re informed that you will get to play video games and be monitored for a month! But here’s the hitch: you have to play the type of game that you’re assigned. And it had to be an unfamiliar type of game.
This was what made Smyth stick out to me. His study assigned participants to play a type of video game that they had no previous experience with. This rules out the possibility that they had a pre-existing “addictive personality” that lead them to choose to play MMOs. So what did they find regarding video game play and addiction?
The results of the Smyth’s inquiry where published in October of last year. He said that the MMORPG players where significantly different from other players. They enjoyed the game more, but that enjoyment came at a price:
“The MMORPG group differed significantly from other groups after 1 month, reporting more hours spent playing, worse health, worse sleep quality, and greater interference in “real-life” socializing and academic work. … MMORPGs represent a different gaming experience with different consequences than other types of video games and appear to pose both unique risks and benefits from their use.” (Smyth 2007, 717)
And thereby the results of the cross-sectional studies mentioned above were verified by experimental testing. Smyth’s study helps us to say with more confidence that we have answered the “chicken and egg” dilemma regarding video games.
Conclusion
So what? Why should anyone who doesn’t have a Ph.D. care about these studies? Here’s the point that I want to make by showing you all this evidence. While some people certainly are more addiction prone, games can also be designed to be addiction prone. We cannot completely blame the player as many gaming companies contend, because games can be, and are, designed to be addictive.
If you think this may be the case for you or a loved one, please take our free addiction test.
Resources
Endnote: When I refer to “literature,” I’m not talking about that subject in school. I mean the body of written works on the subject of gaming. When I talk about MMOs, I mean Massive Multiplayer Online games. Finally, MMORPG (now that’s a horrible acronym, hu?) stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games.
Goldstein, Jeffrey. “Effects of Electronic Games on Children.” Testimonial Statement to US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, Mar. 2000. commerce.senate.gov (no longer available).
Gentile, Douglas A. “Examining the Effects of Video Games from a Psychological Perspective.” National Institute on Media and the Family Nov. 2005. http://www.mediafamily.org/research/Gentile_NIMF_Review_2005.pdf.
Ng, Brian D. and Peter Wiemer-Hastings. “Addiction to the Internet and Online Gaming.” CyberPsychology & Behavior 8.2 (2005): 110-113. (accessed via Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. Publishers).
Smyth, Joshua M. “Beyond Self-Selection in Video Game Play: An Experimental Examination of the Consequences of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game Play.” Cyberpsychology & Behavior 10.5 (2007): 717-721. (accessed via Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. publishers)
Yee, Nicholas. “Ariadne.” Oct. 2002. NickYee.com. http://www.nickyee.com/hub/addiction/addiction.pdf.
The Hidden Dangers of Computer and Video Gaming
Originally Published in the THSC Review
by Thomas Umstattd, Jr.
“Come on, Mom. … Just a few more minutes; I’m almost done with this level.” Parents have all heard it: a child’s pleading to get just a little more time to play. I know. I was that child.
When I lived in a college dorm, my room was across the hall from a gamer, whom I will call “Dominique.”He played the computer game World of Warcraft for sixteen hours or more each day. He stopped going to class and eating at the cafeteria, and he withdrew from anyone outside of the game. He took only brief breaks to pick up fast food to eat while playing. The artificial greatness of gaining Level 70 replaced the adventure of following Christ in his life. How could someone become so consumed by a mere game?
The Problem
Unfortunately, Dominique’s story is not an isolated occurrence. Nearly 2.8 million gamers play for thirty hours a week or more. Some of those gamers play for as many as sixty, or even eighty, hours a week. Oh, and gaming is not just for kids anymore. According to the Entertainment Software Association, gamers are thirty-three-years-old, on average, and sixty-nine percent of American heads of households play digital games.
It gets worse. Imagine those hard-core gamers as parents and spouses. The resulting impact on their families is similar to any addition: neglect, abandonment, and divorce. There are online groups, such as EverQuest Widows and World of Warcraft Widows, which together have over 10,000 members. Many of these women believe that they have lost their husbands to gaming addiction. While some have filed for divorce, others feel separated by a digital chasm that they cannot cross, and they do not know what to do. They are bitter, hurt, and angry. Their stories would break your heart.
One woman posted the story of how her husband quit work so he could have more time to play. After a while, he hardly talked to her as he spent his entire day in the digital world. When she went through a difficult pregnancy, her husband was so glued to his game that her parents had to move in to care for her. Now her son is two years old and has spent maybe twelve hours of quality time with his father—ever. Her grief is palpable as she describes feeling abandoned, a single mom in the presence of her husband.
What appears to be an innocent pastime can easily become a slippery slope into a life-devouring addiction. But what makes games so addictive?
Your Brain on Games
You have probably heard long, scientific words like endorphins, adrenaline, and dopamine in connection with drugs like cocaine. You might be familiar with how they can cause addictive reactions. You probably have educated your children about the dangers of addiction and warned them to stay away—far away—from drugs. What you may not know is that a gaming addiction involves the same biochemicals as cocaine.
Several British researchers did a study on the brain in which their test subjects played a game while a PET scanner monitored their brain activity. They found a “two-fold increase in levels of extracellular dopamine” while the gamers were playing. Dopamine is what gives a high similar to that of cocaine. And for good reason: it is the same chemical released when you take cocaine. Dopamine, adrenaline, and endorphins unite to form a powerfully addictive combination. This is why it is so hard to get your son to stop playing and go to bed.
Longing for Significance
However, the draw of computer games goes much deeper than just biochemicals. Gaming also artificially satisfies our longing for significance. In digital games, players do not compete for a regional high school match. They play for the Super Bowl. They do not save a cat out of a tree; the save the world. Video gaming offers an easy path to artificial greatness, without the responsibility and hard work required for true success.
I think it is this need for significance, more than the biochemicals, that entices people like Dominique. The more he played, the more significant he became in the game, and the less significant he became in the real world. This draw for significance sucked him into a virtual world as much as physically possible.
Shepherding Your Gamer’s Heart
What do you do if you have a child who is into digital gaming? There is no simple answer. Taking the PlayStation out of the living room is much easier than taking it out of your child’s heart. Your gamer may have a chemical and emotional addiction to the gaming experience, and removing the Xbox may be as effective as getting all the beer out of the house of an alcoholic.
The best thing to do depends on the age of your gamer. Removing the games or game system is more effective for younger children. If your gamer is older, he will need to understand the problem so that he can say “no” himself. I have watched many teens either count the days until graduation or just play at a friend’s house because their parents threw away the console. The PlayStation may have been out of the house, but it lingered in the heart of the gamer like a cancer.
Some gamers need nothing less than spiritual surgery, and this can only be done by the hand of the Great Physician. God did this to me by refocusing my priorities on Christ. My Web site, Cgames.com, has a test for gamers to use to examine their hearts to see if gaming has become a problem. You may find it helpful when discussing this issue. The site contains many other resources to help you deal with this difficult problem.
Thomas Umstattd, a former gamer, directs Cgames.com, a Web site and podcast dedicated to providing a Christian perspective on digital games. He graduated from twelve years of home schooling in 2004 and is currently writing a book on the dangers of digital gaming, offering a plan for action.
Chicken v. Egg?
Which came first the chicken or the egg? I think this question is easily answered since a chicken could have survived without an egg, while an egg would require incubation (aka: a chicken) to survive. Whatever. No; I am not going to talk about the inherent lameness of video games involving chickens in this posting. Go ahead; exhale a grand sigh of relief.
Instead, I am going to talk about what is often (very academically) termed a “chicken and egg dilemma:” Are compulsive, addiction-prone people just drawn to video games or do the video games themselves actually promote addiction?
To answer this question, we’re going to trek down a road often fraught with boredom; we’re going to look at research. But, if you’re willing to stick with it and at least read the major parts of this post, you just might even get some great information and maybe even a fresh perspective. What do you have to loose? Two minutes?
Empirical?
Now using that word sure makes me feel scientific. No; we’re probably not going to conclusively prove that gaming is an addiction any time soon. But then again, we probably can’t conclusively probe that gravity exists, either.
The fact of the matter is that there is enough evidence to say that playing games often leads to playing more games, and ultimately addiction.
Making the link.
Nicholas Yee is now one of the foremost experts on MMORPG games (Isn’t that a weird acronym? See my endnote.). In the early days of his massive online surveys from the Daedalus Project, he performed studies relating to addiction. His report “Adiadne” on the subject revealed a very telling relationship. I referenced the study in my last post, but here’s some of the major points:
- 65% of these gamers (ages 12-17) would label themselves as addicted to the game. (Yee 2002, 3)
- 60% of gamers have played 10 hours non-stop.
- About half of young MMORPG players (ages 12-22) admit to loosing sleep in order to play the game. (Yee 2002, 2)
Another study was released in ‘05 which confirmed these findings. Ng and Wiemer-Hastings, from DePaul University’s Computer Science Department, performed a study showing that:
- MMORPG players play significantly longer. (see graph)
- 80% of MMORPG players have played 8 hours straight, while only 46% of Non-MMORPG gamers have. (Ng and Wiemer-Hastings 2005, 112)
- 35% of MMORPG gamers find it easier to talk to people in the game than those in real life. (Ng and Wiemer-Hastings 2005, 113)
These number are great; they point us to a specific conclusion: people who play certain games (MMORPGs in specific) tend to be more addicted to them. If you’re really attentive, then you’ve also noticed several problems. Let’s play Blue’s Clues! Can you spot them? No; I’m just kidding. It’s just fine if you didn’t notice any problems, I’ll go into them in just a second!
Problem 1: Date
Yep. These studies are a little… well, old. Yee’s study was done six years ago, which means that some of the high schoolers he polled now have Master’s degrees. The Ng and Wiemer-Hastings study, on the other hand, is only about three years old, so it’s good for verifying that Yee’s studies still hold true. However, there is another problem that plagues Ng’s results.
Problem 2: Quantity
Both of these studies are surveys, which means they rely on quantity rather than quality. Yee did an exceptional job of getting a large number of respondents. That’s one of the reasons he’s a top expert. Yee consistently has about three to four thousand participants in his surveys.
Ng and Wiemer-Hastings are computer scientists, not psychiatrists. They only got 91 respondents. Now that’s a problem. Both studies, however, share a flaw that is more fundamental than any of these minute details…
Problem 3 (the big one): Correlation is not Causality!
Yes! The chicken or egg dilemma. You knew it would be coming back! The truth of the matter is that all surveys share this same weakness. Surveys, often academically termed “cross-sectional studies,” can tell us who is doing what but not why. Jeffery Goldstein, in testimony before congress, stated the fundamental problem with cross-sectional surveys: “Correlation is not causality, no matter how tempted one may be to argue otherwise.” (Goldstein 2000, 4)
Here’s the problem: we have no idea whether people who have addictive personalities just tend to be drawn to MMORPGs or if MMORPGs themselves are addictive. How can we resolve this?
A solution?
When Dr. Jeffery Goldstein, of University of Utrecht, testified before the US Senate, he focused around whether virtual violence was likely to result in real world violence. His conclusion was that there is not near enough evidence to support this claim. Five years later, Douglas Gentile prepared a literature review for the National Institute on Media and the Family. His report, once again, focusing around violence, but also addressed study methodology. His insights are very useful.
According to Gentile, there are three major types of studies (Gentile 2005, 7) which I believe can be narrowed down to just two. The first type of study is cross sectional surveys, which attempt to get answers from as many people as possible. The second type is a laboratory study that takes a few participants and carefully observes them.
A survey is able to get quantitative results. It can show correlation but not causality. On the other hand, a lab study is able to prove (at least somewhat) that one thing caused another in these cases. Therefore, in order to solve the Chicken and Egg dilemma, I need to find an experimental study.
Breakthrough!
I was researching at the Life Sciences Library at the University of Texas (go Horns!) when I stumbled upon a study from Joshuah M. Smyth, who is in the Department of Psychology at Syracuse University. His study was entitled “Beyond Self-Selection in Video Game Play.” Basically, his laboratory design was made to rule out pre-existing conditions that could cause addiction to the game.
Imagine your one of the hundred participants that were selected to be in Smyth’s study. You’re 18-20 years old. When you sign the liability waver form, you think that you just might become the next Incredible Hulk when they inject you with green radioactive goo. You breath a sigh of relief as you are informed that this is an experiment being run by the psychology, not the nuclear, department. You exhale with joy as you’re informed that you will get to play video games and be monitored for a month! But here’s the hitch: you have to play the type of game that you’re assigned. And it had to be an unfamiliar type of game.
This was what made Smyth stick out to me. His study assigned participants to play a type of video game that they had no previous experience with. This rules out the possibility that they had a pre-existing “addictive personality” that lead them to choose to play MMOs. So what did they find regarding video game play and addiction?
The results of the Smyth’s inquiry where published in October of last year. He said that the MMORPG players where significantly different from other players. They enjoyed the game more, but that enjoyment came at a price:
“The MMORPG group differed significantly from other groups after 1 month, reporting more hours spent playing, worse health, worse sleep quality, and greater interference in “real-life” socializing and academic work. … MMORPGs represent a different gaming experience with different consequences than other types of video games and appear to pose both unique risks and benefits from their use.” (Smyth 2007, 717)
And thereby the results of the cross-sectional studies mentioned above were verified by experimental testing. Smyth’s study helps us to say with more confidence that we have answered the “chicken and egg” dilemma regarding video games.
Conclusion
So what? Why should anyone who doesn’t have a Ph.D. care about these studies? Here’s the point that I want to make by showing you all this evidence. While some people certainly are more addiction prone, games can also be designed to be addiction prone. We cannot completely blame the player as many gaming companies contend, because games can be, and are, designed to be addictive.
If you think this may be the case for you or a loved one, please take our free addiction test.
Resources
Endnote: When I refer to “literature,” I’m not talking about that subject in school. I mean the body of written works on the subject of gaming. When I talk about MMOs, I mean Massive Multiplayer Online games. Finally, MMORPG (now that’s a horrible acronym, hu?) stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games.
Goldstein, Jeffrey. “Effects of Electronic Games on Children.” Testimonial Statement to US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, Mar. 2000. commerce.senate.gov (no longer available).
Gentile, Douglas A. “Examining the Effects of Video Games from a Psychological Perspective.” National Institute on Media and the Family Nov. 2005. http://www.mediafamily.org/research/Gentile_NIMF_Review_2005.pdf.
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MMO: A Minor’s Massive Obsession
Originally written as a composition assignment, 8 April 2008.
Cyberspace must be running in its own time zone. What starts as “just a few more minutes to finish this level” soon becomes an hour. When Olivia and Kurt Bruner kept hearing this from their son while he was playing games, they set out to discover the problem. They concluded that video games are like “the digital drug” (Bruner and Bruner xxi).
Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) games are especially similar to drugs; not in their chemical makeup, but in the way they affect the young brain. MMO may as well stand for a Minor’s Massive Obsession because of the addiction it can become for many minors who find virtual reality more fulfilling than modern reality. In a way gaming also resembles alcohol. It isn’t evil, and actually can be beneficial, but can easily be overdone.
Contents
- Definitions:
- Addictive or Not Addictive… That is the Question
- A Nasty Acronym with a Nasty Side
- Pixels… or People?
- Tossing Schoolwork for the Game?
- Why Work Out when I can be a Digital Athlete in Seconds?
- Am I Ruining Reality for Virtual Reality?
- The Digital Drug?
- Fast Food Fulfillment
- Risky Playtime
The Problem of Addiction:
Why Games are Addictive:
Addictive or Not Addictive… That is the Question
The pillar upon which the case for gaming addiction rests is the definition of addiction. Addiction is an overused word in modern language. Its meaning has become ambiguous at best.
The modern mind immediately thinks of some homeless looser who can’t hold a job because he is hooked on drugs. This mind is certain that a person who plays video games fourteen hours per day is addicted but isn’t sure where to draw the line in cases that aren’t as severe. At the same time, gamers often use “addictive” as a synonym of fun.”
Nicholas Yee, one of the foremost psychological experts on online games, provides a more objective, though not perfect, definition: “a recurring behavior that is unhealthy or selfdestructive which the individual has difficulty ending” (Yee 1). The only problem is that it lacks any definition of what is “destructive” and contains no specific median through which addiction may be measured.
For the purposes of this paper, addiction will be defined in terms of time. If an individual habitually spends time on an activity such that it interferes with time that is necessary for other more important activities, it’s safe to say that this individual is addicted. Therefore, the test for online video game addiction becomes whether time spent playing MMOs or MMORPGs interferes with other more important activities such as schoolwork or sleep.
A Nasty Acronym with a Nasty Side
MMORPG (how’s that for a nasty acronym?) spells out Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. Some examples of these games are Dungeons and Dragons, EverQuest, which is sometimes jokingly called “NeverRest” because of its addictive nature, and Second Life. These games literally give players a “second life” and another role. They become problematic when the fantasy role becomes the player’s main role.
Even though only about one in ten gamers play an MMORPG, they’re the most likely to become addicted (Khan 4). A survey performed by Yee found that 65% of these gamers (ages 12-17) would label themselves as addicted to the game (Yee 3). The next question would be whether they truly are addicted by this paper’s definition.
Pixels… or People?
The first stop in testing for adolescent addiction was the subject of a 2004 editorial by Brent Staples, who holds a doctorate in behavioral sciences. Does online play interfere with the interactions players have with other people?
Yee’s study on the subject, which relied on the participant’s honesty, showed that the majority of MMORPG players don’t think their habits interfere with their social lives, academic performance, or health (Yee 6). There is quite a bit of reason to doubt their word. According to Staples, studies have shown that the amount of time spent with family was halved for every hour spent online (Staples 71).
Not everyone is negatively affected by online gaming, just like not everyone is affected by alcohol. Most of the scientific literature, however, has concluded that quite a significant number of adolescents not only grow anti-social, but also neglect school and even their health to play the game.
Tossing Schoolwork for the Game?
Many studies have negatively correlated performance in school to time spent gaming (Gentile 17-19). There is no wonder because when students spend time gaming, they can’t spend that time on homework. The recent study from Hope Cummings and Elizabeth Vandewater found that male gamers spent 30% less time reading than their non-gaming counterparts and that female gamers spent 34% less time doing homework (Cummings and Vandewater 688).
This is not to say that school and technology should never be mixed. According to Douglas Gentile’s literature review, studies have found that students who use computers actually have greater academic success, but those who use the computer for gaming purposes lost that success (Gentile 18).
These studies specifically dealt with younger students, but it’s clear that gaming habits also translate into problems in college. A survey from the Pew Research Center questioned students of higher education regarding gaming and schoolwork. The results were startling. Ten percent of the survey’s respondents admitted to playing specifically to avoid schoolwork. Even more disturbing were the unintended consequences. Almost half of the respondents to this study said that playing games kept them from studying (Jones et al. 1).
Why Work Out when I can be a Digital Athlete in Seconds?
By the definition in this paper, gaming could be called an addiction if it significantly interferes with an adolescent’s health. This is because health takes time, time many obsessed gamers don’t have. Sleep is a great example. About half of young MMORPG players (ages 12-22) admit to loosing sleep in order to play the game (Yee 2).
The American Medical Association has also expressed concern regarding the overuse of video games in general and its effects on health. According to the twelfth report at their 2007 meeting, excessive gaming has been linked to epileptic seizures, obesity, and musculoskeletal diseases (Khan 3). “Indeed, there is even a form of tendinitis named ‘Nintendinitis,’ caused by repeatedly pressing game-controller buttons with one’s thumb” (Gentile 20). All of these health problems are directly related to the time spent playing video games. Addicted MMO gamers will invariably game even at the cost of their health.
Am I Ruining Reality for Virtual Reality?
Ignoring one’s social life, schoolwork, and health in order to play with a flashing screen clearly isn’t logical. Digital games certainly have their place, but they have stepped out of it in the lives of many modern adolescents. That would actually include mine. I wasn’t a “hard-core” gamer, but I certainly have let games get in the way of more important jobs. This experience left me with a question: what is so addictive about moving lights? I found two answers. Gaming, especially online, is both chemically stimulating and emotionally fulfilling.
The Digital Drug?
Most adults have no idea what is going on when they see their adolescents being lost in the online game. Often puzzled parents simply dismiss it as “just a game.” Yet, for many addicted teens, it’s more than just a game. It’s “life” in the same chemical way that cocaine is “life” to a drug addict.
Video games actually release many of the same chemicals in the brain that drug addicts thrive on. The first study to track a neurological chemical known as dopamine in the human brain using a PET scan was conducted in 1998 by British scientists who used video games as their experimental variable. The results they found indicated that the amount of surplus dopamine, the same chemical stimulated by cocaine, doubled when their subjects played a video game (Koepp et al. 267). This evidence led Dan Costa, an editor at the pro-gaming publication PC Magazine, to conclude:
“Video games are not like cocaine, your brain thinks they are cocaine. And if you doubt that, try to take the controller out of [my son’s] hands before he reaches a save point.” (Costa)
Fast Food Fulfillment
Addiction to online video games is not only a chemical phenomenon; it can also be an emotional attraction. In a very real sense, MMOs artificially fulfill the basic goal of adolescents: to grow up.
Take, for example, the situation of the Bruners provided at the beginning of this paper. The Bruners finally wrote a book for parents on the gaming experience. They state that the “role playing elements of video games tend to draw a child back repeatedly, in part because the child has adopted a temporary replacement identity” (Bruner and Bruner 51). For adolescents specifically, the identities they play in many MMOs give them a thrill of adulthood without the risks of adulthood.
Risky Playtime
While playing an MMO certainly isn’t evil, this seemingly innocent pass time can put reality at risk. Role playing games are super-sized versions of what we think reality should be. Compared to the glittering world of Second Life, “real life” is rather dull. Compared to the dopamine rush of EverQuest, schoolwork is boring. MMO addiction often throws adolescent lives by the wayside, promising to replace them with the lives of digital heroes. It certainly can be like a digital drug.
References
Bruner, Olivia, and Kurt Bruner. Playstation Nation. New York: Center Street, 2006.
Costa, Dan. “Turn It Off, Kids!” Editorial. PCMag.com 4 April 2007. 8 Mar. 2008 http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2109568,00.asp.
Cummings, Hope M., and Elizabeth A. Vandewater. “Relation of Adolescent Video Game Play to Time Spent in Other Activities.” Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine 161.7 (2007): 684-689. 8 Mar. 2008 http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/reprint/161/7/684.
Gentile, Douglas A. “Examining the Effects of Video Games from a Psychological Perspective.” National Institute on Media and the Family Nov. 2005. 7 Mar. 2008 http://www.mediafamily.org/research/Gentile_NIMF_Review_2005.pdf.
Jones, Steve, et al. “Let the Games Begin.” Pew Internet and American Life Project 6 Jul. 2003. 7 Mar. 2008 http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_College_Gaming_Reporta.pdf.
Khan, Mohamed K. “Emotional and Behavioral Effects of Video Games and Internet Overuse.” 2007 AMA Annual Meeting. Council on Science and Public Health, June 2007. 8 Mar. 2008 http://www.ama-assn.org/ama1/pub/upload/mm/467/csaph12a07.doc.
Koepp, M. J., et al. “Evidence for Striatal Dopamine Release During a Video Game.” Nature 393.6682 (1998): 266-268.
Staples, Brent. “What Adolescents Miss When we Let Them Grow up in Cyberspace.” The McGraw-Hill Reader. Ed. Gilbert H. Muller. 9th Ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006. 70-71.
Yee, Nicholas. “Ariadne.” Oct. 2002. NickYee.com. 7 Mar. 2008 http://www.nickyee.com/hub/addiction/addiction.pdf.
