Apr 28 2009
“Kids are addicted to video games!” … or not. Woops.
Last week, the Washington Post cited a study by a sir Douglas Gentile that claimed 8.5% of American youths have behavioral addiction to video games. The Post described it as “the first nationally representative study in the United States on the subject.” The Post went on to say:
The study found that 88 percent of the nation’s children ages 8 to 18 play video games. With 45 million children of that age in the country, the study would suggest that more than 3 million are addicted “or at least have problems of the magnitude” that call for help, Gentile said.
The story was shocking, and was quickly all over the media. But Gary Langer, director of polling at ABC News, was quick to question the results. Langer said, “his study was conducted among members of an opt-in online panel – individuals who sign up to click through questionnaires on the internet in exchange for points redeemable for cash and gifts.” In fact, the group that conducted the poll doesn’t even offer a sample of error - which Mr. Gentile did.
Douglas Gentile was quick to retract. “I guess I’d assumed they had gathered the population initially as part of a random probability sample . . . I missed that when I was writing this up. That is an error then on my part.”
85% of statistics are made up, aren’t they?
So the dramatic “1 in 10 teen gamers addicted” is, at best, a great exaggeration, and at worst, a flat out lie. The data was highly inaccurate, and should have never been used in something that was (and it was!) published in a scientific journal. All it indicated was that about 100 of the voluntary surveyees showed signs of pathalogical addiction. That’s nothing we can draw conclusions about.
This is why I hate the media reporting on the video game industry: they often grab data that is misinformed, skewed, or otherwise non-representative of the gaming population, and make grandious claims that end up becoming cited by the common man for years to come. Bravo for media men like Langer for rooting out the truth.
Had it been a telephone survey or even a mail survey it still would only show that xxx amount of those participants have and addiction to video games.
I have a younger brother who is addicted to world of warcraft. Yes addicted and I know of several other teens that are Addicted to it or a similar online game to the point where they live on the computer, skip school and lie to play it.
And to think I wasted all my time playing outside with real people when I was a child.
In my opinion there is a serious video game addiction problem in North America and the survey did reflect that. I mean really does it matter if its 1 in 10 or 1 in 50. Either way its a real problem that needs to be addressed.
To be honest, I completely disagree. If people have video game addiction problems, there is no need to be wasting time and money addressing them. What happened to the good old days when you could sit someone down, confront them about it, and tell them that they;re fucking up.
What’s the word I’m looking for? Ah yes, intervention.
The survey doesn’t reflect a damn thing, its not made up of factual information, and any action taken behind that would just be damaging. If your younger brother skips school to play WoW, then he probably lives with your parents, right? If WoW is getting THAT much in the way of what he’s doing, then your parents should just stop paying for it. Take the computer away. Ground him.
Its not a problem on a national level, what the problem is is that people have forgotten how to care about their friends, and in some extreme case scenarios, their families. The route that you want to take will punish the many for the mistakes of the few, and that is Jack Thompson-like shit, and it makes me want to throw up.