In a News Release, a study showed:Statistical analyses … revealed that the more young adults play video games, the more frequent their involvement in risky behaviors like drinking and drug abuse. Young adults who played video games daily reported smoking pot almost twice as often as occasional players, and three times as often as those who never play.
I was doing my usual, prowling around the net looking for addiction information and was looking for info on internet addiction. While this study does not really talk about that…I found it intriguing. I just wonder about the interpretation. You read. You Judge. Here goes…
“A new study connects young adults’ use of video games to poorer relationships with friends and family – and the student co-author expresses disappointment at his own findings.
Brigham Young University undergrad Alex Jensen and his faculty mentor, Laura Walker, publish their results Jan. 23 in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence.
The research is based on information collected from 813 college students around the country. As the amount of time playing video games went up, the quality of relationships with peers and parents went down.
“It may be that young adults remove themselves from important social settings to play video games, or that people who already struggle with relationships are trying to find other ways to spend their time,” Walker said. “My guess is that it’s some of both and becomes circular.”
For the record, Walker did not stand in the way of her family’s wish for a Nintendo Wii. Jensen had hoped to find some positive results as justification for playing Madden NFL.
Study participants reported how often they play video games. They also answered a battery of questions measuring relationship quality, including how much time, trust, support and affection they share with friends and parents.
But the researchers say video games do not themselves mean “game over” for a relationship because the connection they found is modest.
“Relationship quality is one of a cluster of things that we found to be modestly associated with video games,” Walker said. “The most striking part is that everything we found clustered around video game use is negative.”
Statistical analyses also revealed that the more young adults play video games, the more frequent their involvement in risky behaviors like drinking and drug abuse. Young adults who played video games daily reported smoking pot almost twice as often as occasional players, and three times as often as those who never play.
For young women, self-worth was low if their video game time was high.
And despite heavy involvement with the research, Jensen does not admit the results to his own family. For now he holds out hope that future research will exonerate consoles or games designed for multiple players.
He’s also curious how video games may affect young couples. Nearly three-fourths of college-aged men in the study played video games regularly. By comparison, just 17 percent of their female counterparts played more than once a month.
“The gender imbalance begs the question of whether chasing a new high score beats spending quality time with a girlfriend or wife,” Jensen said.
Walker teaches in BYU’s School of Family Life. Her colleagues Larry Nelson and Jason Carroll are co-authors on the study.
The new study stems from Project READY, a broad effort looking at young people and the transition to adulthood. The project began in 2004 with an extensive survey of college students around the country. Researchers are beginning another phase of the project that will follow a new batch of students over time. Reports by Project Ready researchers have been published in academic journals such as Journal of Youth and Adolescence, Journal of Adolescent Research, Journal of Family Psychology and other peer-reviewed publications.”
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
As much as I applaud the study’s results, isn’t it pretty much common sense that if you isolate yourself and do nothing but interact with an inanimate object, that eventually, your people skills would erode? That why my kids are only allowed a very limited time when they play our Wii.
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This article is well written, but has a misleading title. The article itself makes clear that video games and relationship quality are connected, but makes no claim that video games cause bad relationships.
Rather, it could be that people who struggle in relationships tend to gravitate to video games as an escape. The following quote emphasizes this point:
“It may be that young adults remove themselves from important social settings to play video games, or that people who already struggle with relationships are trying to find other ways to spend their time,” Walker said. “My guess is that it’s some of both and becomes circular.”
There’s no connection between video games and relationship quality. It’s as silly as saying that violent movies make you a criminal, or that romantic movies make you a great romantic lover. Let’s be serious for a second, if we may.
I’ve never played video games, and never will. And guess what, I’ve been an alcoholic and have had lots of troubles when I was young. And the geeks that did, in my classroom, all got to become successful people, with careers and lots of money. That doesn’t make me say that video games make you rich, so why would you say that they make you prone to addiction?
Well I think that there is a connection between video games and relationship quality. Think about it, your relationships aren’t going to have much to them if you are addicted to video games and play them constantly…then you aren’t spending time with your family/friends/significant other…now I don’t think video games make your relationship bad by any means…but it does hinder your relationships.
I would have to agree. Most video games are addicting to the point that the person becomes withdrawn from their social life and tends to spend more time playing the game. Most of the time they do not want to be disturb. This is where arguments begin.
very well written..hhmm..it depends on a gamer, their are other gamer even though they played most of a time they still didn’t forgot they obligation as a human or a family man..
I don’t think there is a direct relation between Video Games and Relationships. Although, time away from friends and families and significant other because of video games is a factor of bad relationships.
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Hi,
Thanks for your tips. It definetelly helps. It’s getting harder and harder to find do-follow blogs.