A Reuters Canada report offers an overview of the study released yesterday by Douglas A. Gentile, who runs the Media Research Lab at Iowa State University in Ames. Besides glossing over what the study found, the report offers a dissenting opinion on the research from Mark Griffiths, director of the International Gaming Research Unit at Nottingham Trent University in the UK.
Griffiths says that the study has some "important flaws," not the least of which is numbers that do not quite add up.
"My own research has shown that excessive video game play is not necessarily addictive play and that many video gamers can play for long periods without there being any negative detrimental effects," said Griffiths. "If nine percent of children were genuinely addicted to video games there would be video game addiction clinics in every major city!"
He adds that the "concept" is not currently an accepted diagnosis among psychiatrists and psychologists. Part of the problem is that the study maybe capturing preoccupation instead of addiction.
The study found that children who played 2 - 3 hours a day were "pathological gamers," but Griffiths said that this amount of screen-time is normal among kids:
"One thing we have to bear in mind is that children playing video games for 2 to 3 hours a day is normal. It's displaced activities like watching TV," Griffiths said.
He did concede that there is a small minority of kids who probably do suffer from true video game addiction, just as some people are pathological gamblers.
Griffiths recommends that parents offer their children educational games instead of violent games, encourage group play, and follow directions from manufacturers such as sitting at least two feet or more away from the TV set and not playing when tired.
"I have three kids, all of who are the archetypal 'screenagers' who spend a lot of time a day interacting with technology," said Griffiths. "Basically, even when playing a couple of hours most days it is not impinging negatively on their lives."
Source: Reuters Canada
Comments
Re: A Dissenting Opinion on New Gentile Research
Wow, they were really considering 2-3 hours of gameplay a day to be a problem? Sounds like Gentile is suffering from serious generational gap like so many other critics. I mean after school and homework, kids have like 6-7 hours of free time. And when you consider games CAN be played with friends and thus not evidence that anytime you play games you are not hanging with friends, 2-3 hours does not at all seem like a problem. If we want to talk excessive I would think of spending ALL your free time on school days playing games and to the point where you are allow things such as homework to suffer.
And while I know the study did ask questions like if your school work was suffering, but if your homework was suffering while you were only playing 2-3 hours of games I would NOT say you be too obsessive about games because that still means there's like 5-6 hours that you are spending each day doing something else aside from your homework. It's less about obcessive gameplay and more like having a lack of general discipline, as you are spending your whole day on other activities and not homework... hell these people could be spending 2-3 hours of their day playing sports, but i doubt the researchers would ever claim that they are pathological athletes... Honestly that's just your typical double standard; many other activities are considered healthy and normal to do for hours on end while Video games are not... one of the biggest flaws of all these studies is they never take a close look at those activities that are well excepted by society as whole; frankly i'd imagine if they did they would find that "effects" of video games have much in common with those excepted activities