New Study on Video Game and Kids Sheds Light on Path to Addiction

The American Journal of Pediatrics published a study about children's video game playing habits in their January 2011 issue. Researchers from the University of Iowa and the National University of Singapore did a two-year study involving 3,000 children from Singapore in grades 3 and 8. The bottom line results? Nearly 90 percent of kids that play video games actually aren't addicted or even become addicted, even after playing 20 or more hours a week.

However, caution must be given to parents of kids that did qualify as addicts. The study also identified risk factors of which kids would most likely let video gameplay negatively affect their daily lives. While most kids surveyed were not considered gaming addicts, 9 percent (219 of them) qualified as addicts based on responses to questions about social phobia, school performance, social aggression and impulsivity. Similar follow up questions were given after the first and second year to all participants.

The results. The average play time for kids started off at 19 to 21 hours per week. But playing times increased slightly over the three questionnaire periods, with boys spending more time playing than girls (21 to 26 hours per week versus 18 to 21, respectively). The older kids played games less over time and only 10 percent of them played the same games they used to play.

For the addicted gamers, nearly 85 percent of them are still addicts after two years. Addictive symptoms also increased slightly more as the hours of play increased. However, only 1 percent of gamers in the study that didn't start off as pathological became addicted. This indicates that a vast majority kids that play games 20 hours a week don't actually become addicted.

Risk factors for addicted gamers were kids that had lower social competence and high impulsivity. As time continued on for these kids, their levels of depression, poor school performance, anxiety and social phobias increased significantly after two years. This could be of concern to parents of children with ADHD since impulsivity is a prevalent symptom. But once addiction stops, addicts become less impulsive.

Violent games. You may have heard that kids playing violent video games can lead them to becoming more aggressive in social situations. This game study demonstrated that it's true, but not for every child. The addicted players tended to play more violent video games over time; they also saw acts of aggression as part of the "norm." In fact, they were more aggressive in social situations and were often the victims of aggression. On the contrary, the 16 percent of addicted gamers that were no longer addicted played fewer violent games over time and actually increased positive social behavior.

What does it all mean? According to the researchers, the study may demonstrate the actual long-term effects of video games on the youth beyond the rhetoric of "video games will rot your brain". The statistics showed that the ones who are addictive gamers already had risk factors to begin with, and that the video game addiction only made them worse. However, once you get the addicted gamer to stop playing, those issues can start to go away.

Although this study was conducted in Singapore, their subjects' demographics were similar to other kids all in the United States and other industrialized countries. Given the size of the study (not just 10 kids from the block but nearly 3,000), I believe it's a likely indicator that results given can apply everywhere. Parents should monitor levels of game play and what the kids are playing. They can't make a blanket decision that games are bad. In fact, systems like the Nintendo Wii and options for other systems actually encourage social interaction, teamwork, physical play and logical reasoning. But they should also consider the child's social make up and mental well-being before allowing them to play games at length. When everything else starts to suffer, just press "pause" and talk about it.

Source:
http://www.pediatrics.org/cgi/content/full/127/2/e319