Shocking study makes teen gamers gamble, finds that their brains similar to gamblers’!

Ghent University researchers studied teen gamers’ brains — and compared them to gamblers’. Photo by Flickr user eyeSPIVE.

In dozens of studies, scientists have speculated about what’s going on in kids’ brains when they are playing video games. Numerous studies have attempted to give us this information, but with no solid results. Recently, researchers at Ghent University in Belgium took a direct approach: they rounded up 154 14-year-olds who play video games, and put them in an MRI machine to check things out.

What they found was interesting: teens who play plenty of video games have an enlarged portion of their brain associated with rewards. This portion, called the ventral striatum, is also often larger in gamblers and others who engage in compulsive behavior.

Of course, we don’t know for sure whether playing video games enlarges this part of the brain, or whether people whose brains are more developed in this area tend to gravitate toward gaming. To find that out, you’d have to take a bunch of non-gamers, make them play video games for years, and see if that portion of their brain got bigger. And it’s hard to get permission from parents to subject kids to potentially brain-altering activities. In a scientific context, anyway.

You would think that during such a study, the scientists would put kids in the MRI machine while they were playing video games to track, you know, how their brains looked.

They didn’t. They had the kids play two games in which they made bets on certain outcomes. In other words, they made them gamble.

So they started with the idea that video gaming might be somehow related to addiction or compulsive behavior, similar to gambling. They picked a bunch of kids who play video games, made them gamble, and — lo and behold — found that their brains were like gamblers’ brains!

Anyone else see the problem here?

Then you get headlines like:

“Children who love video games have brains like gamblers.”

“Study: Video games may change brain”

At least the LA Times didn’t join in the hysteria: “Frequent gamers have brain differences, study finds.” There, was that so hard?

What are parents to think, reading these headlines? They probably picture their kids pulling the lever on a slot machine or doubling down at the poker table, losing everything they have. But there are so many other studies suggesting the benefits of video games — and then there are the numerous stories from players themselves. Do gamblers talk endlessly about how gambling saved their lives? Some might. But it seems unfair to compare the two pastimes, even if there are a few similarities there. It’s certainly unfair to study gamers’ brains — but make them gamble while you do it.

Until we study their brains while they are playing video games, we aren’t getting anywhere.

Heavy-metal fan wins disability benefits for his “addiction” to music

Swedish metal fan Roger Tullgren says his love of heavy metal is a disability. The government employment service agreed, paying part of his wages.

Forty-two-year-old Roger Tullgren is like many other heavy-metal fans his age. He discovered the genre at the tender age of 5, when his brother brought home a Black Sabbath album. He’s been hooked ever since, and continues to listen to the music daily and dress in the heavy-metal uniform: long hair, band t-shirts, silver and leather jewelry, piercings, and so on.

Unlike other fans, Tullgren says his love of heavy metal interferes with his day-to-day functioning and qualifies as a disability. He spent 10 years and visited three different psychologists before finally establishing his case. Recently, he filed paperwork with the government employment service near Hässleholm, Sweden, where he lives. They have agreed to pay a portion of his wages while he works part-time as a dishwasher in a restaurant.

Meanwhile, his boss says it’s OK for Tullgren to listen to music while he works — as long as it isn’t too loud and doesn’t interfere with customers’ enjoyment of their meals.

The ageing rocker claims to have attended almost three hundred shows last year, often skipping work in the process.

Eventually his last employer tired of his absences and Tullgren was left jobless and reliant on welfare handouts.

But his sessions with the occupational psychologists led to a solution of sorts: Tullgren signed a piece of paper on which his heavy metal lifestyle was classified as a disability, an assessment that entitles him to a wage supplement from the job centre.

“I signed a form saying: ‘Roger feels compelled to show his heavy metal style. This puts him in a difficult situation on the labour market. Therefore he needs extra financial help’. So now I can turn up at a job interview dressed in my normal clothes and just hand the interviewers this piece of paper,” he said.

…

“Some might say that I should grow up and learn to listen to other types of music but I can’t. Heavy metal is my lifestyle,” he said.

I’m not going to comment on whether I think Tullgren’s approach is legitimate. As far as I’m concerned, that’s between him, his therapist, the Swedish government, and his boss. But it does speak to a certain aspect of heavy-metal fandom. For many people, especially the most dedicated, this is more than a form of entertainment. It’s more, even, than a hobby. It’s a lifestyle, a tribe, even a religion.

Given those parameters, it’s easy enough to compare participation in heavy metal culture to participation in any other culture: the Amish, Hasidism, Islam. It would be discriminatory for an employer to force someone from one of these groups to change the way he or she dresses or appears while on the job. For example, Hani Khan is suing Abercrombie & Fitch after they asked her — a stockroom worker — to stop wearing her hijab. Meanwhile, the International Weightlifting Federation recently changed its dress code so Muslim women can compete. Likewise, businesses are required to provide allowances for religious practices. Would attending heavy-metal shows qualify?

So when is it a “lifestyle choice,” and when is it one’s culture and creed? That’s a fine line to draw. What isn’t clear to me is why Tullgren went after a disability clearance rather than look at it as a fight for workplace equality. What do you think Tullgren should do?

Video games don’t make kids suicidal — but watch for signs of addiction

Shawn Woolley became addicted to the video game EverQuest before committing suicide in front of his computer screen on Thanksgiving.

Liz Woolley, a Pennsylvania mom, recently appeared on Texas television to warn fellow parents about the dangers of video-game addiction. Her son, Shawn, committed suicide in front of his computer after years battling his addiction to games. He was 20.

When I first read this article, the scenario sounded worrisomely familiar. Parents faced with the unthinkable — a child who takes his or her own life — crave explanations. Often, their kids’ media interests seem like appropriate targets. But it’s not that simple.

Fortunately, Woolley seems to realize that. She doesn’t appear to think her son’s love of EverQuest caused his death. More specifically, she thinks his addiction to gaming may have played a role. And to that end, she has founded Online Gamers Anonymous to help other addicted players get help.

You may recall a recent study linking video-game addiction and depression. As I said at that time, it isn’t the video games — or even necessarily the addiction — that causes depression or suicide in gamers. If anything, video-game addiction (not gameplay, but actual addiction, which is rare) is a symptom of whatever else is going on in the player. Getting help for addiction is a good idea, and the article points out some key things to look for:

Some warning signs include performance dropping at work or school, grades slipping, even a change in hygiene. “They realize they can’t live without the game and they realize they have not life with it so either way they are sort of trapped,” [recovering addict Joel] Elston says.

To be clear, lots of games entice people to play for hours. They’re complicated, and sometimes it can take that long to finish a single level or raid. People get engrossed in the story, and that’s normal. Some people will even shirk household chores or skip a day or work now and then so they can play. But when people are routinely missing work or school, avoiding loved ones constantly, foregoing basic hygiene — then it’s time to start asking questions.

Not all game addicts will take their lives, as Shawn did. But game addiction can lead people into all sorts of other activities they wouldn’t otherwise consider, so there are plenty of good reasons to get help.

Parents, have your kids ever played so much video games that you thought they were addicted? What were the signs that made you think there might be something wrong? What did you do about it?

New study links video-game “addiction,” depression

Photo by Flickr user Rebecca Pollard.

In a new study from the American Academy of Pediatrics, researchers say they’ve found a correlation between kids who are “addicted” to video games and other issues, such as being socially awkward and suffering from depression. A variety of news outlets have reported on the findings, including this piece from Reuters.

In the 2-year study of more than 3,000 school children in Singapore, researchers found nearly one in ten were video game “addicts,” and most were stuck with the problem.

While these kids were more likely to have behavioral problems to begin with, excessive gaming appeared to cause additional mental woes.

“When children became addicted, their depression, anxiety, and social phobias got worse, and their grades dropped,” said Douglas A. Gentile, who runs the Media Research Lab at Iowa State University in Ames and worked on the study.

“When they stopped being addicted, their depression, anxiety, and social phobias got better.”

According to the study itself, video-game addiction can be measured similarly to other kinds of addiction — in fact, researchers used the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual parameters for gambling addiction to measure behavior they considered addictive among gamers. Interestingly, it takes a certain amount of pre-existing psychological stuff to make someone more prone to video-game addiction: “Youths who are more impulsive, have lower social competence and empathy, and have poorer emotional regulation skills are more likely to become pathological gamers.” In other words, too much gaming doesn’t cause these problems. It’s the other way around.

Researchers also found that “although children who are depressed may retreat into gaming, the gaming increases the depression, and vice versa.” Actually, the study doesn’t show — for certain — that the gaming itself caused the increase in depression; it only shows that kids got more depressed during the same period they were also addicted to video games. Isn’t it possible that the trappings of addiction were the more likely culprit than the gaming itself? Maybe if these kids were baking cookies 5 hours a day, or doing homework 5 hours a day, or playing Candyland 5 hours a day, we’d see the same results. Has anyone studied those activities?

There’s no evidence here that the games themselves exacerbated these kids’ mental state. Given that they were already emotionally troubled before they came to video games, it’s entirely possible that these kids would have developed depression anyway. The fact that those who quit being addicted to video games felt better emotionally suggests that they were making overall psychological improvements, not just in the realm of gaming, and that seems like it would lift depression as well.

When journalists report on studies like these, they often play up the sexiest angle they can. They know, for example, parents are worried about their kids, so a study like this can catch parents’ eyes and get them reading. Reuters decided to top off its piece with the headline, “Do video games fuel mental health problems?” Instead of exploring the correlation between game addiction and depression, the headline implies that game addiction is causing it. These are not the same thing and it’s dangerous to mix them up.

Even Gentile, in a similar study he conducted in 2009, makes this danger abundantly clear in his “discussion” section:

The primary limitation of this study is its correlational nature. It does not provide evidence for the possible causal relations among the variables studied. It is certainly possible that pathological gaming causes poor school performance, and so forth, but it is equally likely that children who have trouble at school seek to play games to experience feelings of mastery, or that attention problems cause both poor school performance and an attraction to games. (Emphasis mine.)

In other words, the games may be providing a refuge for kids who are struggling in school, both socially and academically.

In college I heard this phrase repeatedly: correlation is not causation. More reporters, and more of their readers, need to keep this in mind.

There are a couple of other things worth noting about the Gentile/AAP study in the news this week. One is that Gentile is a researcher who focuses exclusively on media influences and children. Another is that, to date, not one of Gentile’s studies has found media to have a beneficial influence on kids, which implies a fairly strong bias in his work. A third is that the AAP, in 2000, issued a statement on violent media and youth claiming that such media desensitizes children to violence and “may lead to real-life violence,” claims which have since been disproven. It’s worth it to take their latest findings with a grain of salt, as well.

Gamers, did any of you get to a point where you felt like you were addicted to gaming? Were you able to cut back or even stop? While you were in your addictive phase, did you become depressed? Did you feel like gaming was the cause of your depression — and if not, what was the cause? Did cutting back on gaming improve your mood?

Parents, have you seen anything in your game-playing teens to suggest Gentile’s findings are accurate? Has your teen ever become addicted to video games? If so, how did you handle it?