Can’t we make up our minds about video games?

Video games are bad for kids. No, wait, they’re not. Who’s right? Photo by Flickr user sean dreilinger.

It’s 2012, and video games have been with us for almost 40 years. Kids of all ages have been playing them for that entire time. If video games were going to cause massive changes in the behavior or psychology of young gamers, we’d know about it by now.

And yet there are large chunks of society that cling tightly to the idea that video games — violent video games in particular — are bad for kids. Take, for example, a recent article on Wired.com that asks, “Do Violent Video Games Make Kids More Violent?” In it, GeekMom writer Andrea Schwalm writes about appearing on Al Jazeera’s The Stream on the topic of kids and gaming. The show focused, specifically, on Call of Duty: Black Ops II, of which she writes:

While my teenaged sons do play some M-rated games (currently, Halo 4 and Dishonored are in heavy weekend rotation), I wasn’t familiar with the Call of Duty franchise. After watching some YouTube clips of the game online, I wondered, “Is this how foreign countries think American children spend all of their free time?”

And yet, as the host of The Stream pointed out, the truth is, the game sold $500 million in its’ first 24 hours, was a trending topic on Twitter, and is played by children. If you look at the incarceration rates in America, it seems a legitimate question: does the ubiquity of video game violence beget real-life violence?

This is the kind of ridiculous logic that sends so many people down the wrong rabbit hole. The main problem here is, she doesn’t explain who is being incarcerated — if she took a look, she would realize it isn’t kids. America’s hefty incarceration rate, in large part, is due to the massive “War on Drugs” as well as the disproportionate number of minorities being jailed; it isn’t gamer teens winding up behind bars.

Fortunately, she turns to Doug Gentile. Now, I haven’t agreed with Gentile much on this site, but there are moments where I think he’s on the right track, moments where he puts his findings in broader context, and I’m glad to see at least one mom listening:

The only way that anyone does something seriously violent is if they have multiple risk factors and limited protective factors for violent behavior, and thankfully most of our children have a great many protective factors, can consume a lot of violent video games, and still never do anything violent.

Slightly more logical is a recent Kotaku piece from Phil Owen, which asks, “Do Video Games Make Depression Worse?” Owen also turns to Gentile who, after conducting a study on just that topic — and finding evidence that video games were indeed somehow making his test subjects’ depression worse — actually argued that it’s more complex than his results would suggest:

“I don’t really think [the depression] is following. I think it’s truly comorbid. … As you get more depressed you retreat more into games, which doesn’t help, because it doesn’t actually solve the problem. It doesn’t help your depression, so your depression gets worse, so you play more games, so your depression gets worse, etc. It becomes a negative spiral.”

Still, we can’t listen to the All-Doug-Gentile-All-The-Time Channel, can we? Thankfully, we also have the International Society for Research on Aggression releasing studies that show exposure to violent media increases the risk of aggressive behavior. (Oh, wait, Gentile is on the commission.)

This is one of those times when researchers look at the existing research and cobble it together to come up with some kind of meta-finding. The problem is, most of the research to date has been slanted in the negative direction — that is, it finds some relationship between violent video games and youth aggression, but that’s because it’s what society and researchers wanted to find, and because the research showing no such links — or showing violent games’ upsides — is just beginning to catch up.

IRSA chair Craig Anderson said, “Having such a clear statement by an unbiased, international scientific group should be very helpful to a number of child advocacy groups.” But any group that includes Anderson and Gentile — whose work overwhelmingly supports the violent-game/aggression theory — can’t be called “unbiased.” Sorry, guys.

So why is all this attention focused on video games? Has the sexuality and violence vanished from blockbuster movies, television shows, or young-adult fiction? Hardly. But for some reason, there’s little to no research — or public furor — focused on those old-hat forms of entertainment. Dan Houser, cofounder of Rockstar Games (home of the Grand Theft Auto franchise, among others), recently took note of video games’ pariah status in a recent Guardian interview highlighted on Kotaku:

“We never felt that we were being attacked for the content, we were being attacked for the medium, which felt a little unfair. If all of this stuff had been put into a book or a movie, people wouldn’t have blinked an eye.”

But it isn’t all doom and gloom. Plenty of people see the good in violent video games, or at least the harmlessness.

If violent video games — first-person shooters, say — are such lousy influences, then how are they capable of engendering sympathy? Jens Stober, a game designer and PhD student in Germany, is developing a video game in which players can assume the roles of Australian border guards or foreign refugees. Stober has written other border-centered games, such as “1378,” in which players can assume the roles of border guards or refugees fleeing East German communists. In that game, the guards can shoot fugitives, which earned Stober death threats.

But, as with many games, it’s all in the eye of the beholder:

[Stober] claims [the games] actually penalise players for shooting, and that the main aim is to educate people about political issues using game mechanics.

“You can have a gun, you can use it, but if you use it you will lose points and lose the game,” he says.

The players who are refugees must cooperate to evade the border guards while the guards try to arrest them. Along the way, the game dishes out educational factoids designed to provoke deeper thought about the issues.

Another recent article, by Brian Hampel for Kansas State University’s The Collegian, makes quite a different case for violent video games and society as a whole: he argues that our media is so violent because, well, we just like violence: “Popular culture isn’t a thermostat that dictates our tastes and trends; it’s a thermometer that shows us tastes and trends that already exist in the cultural zeitgeist,” he writes.

But his conclusions come quite close to things I’ve said at Backward Messages before, so I’d like to close with them:

It turns out that the real [culprits] behind youth violence are depression, delinquent peer association and negative relationships with adults. Who would have guessed?

…

You wouldn’t know it from watching news networks’ coverage of school shootings, but it’s true. Not only is violence not caused by the media, but it’s also in decline. I guess it’s easy to get the impression that we’re violent by watching the news, which could very well be the most violent medium of all.

Hardcore video-gaming: is it saving kids from violent street life, or ruining a generation?

In Somalia, boys face more danger out on the streets than they do in front of the game console. Is that true elsewhere? Photo by Flickr user tkru.

Somalia has been known for years as a place of extreme violence and lawlessness. Since civil war broke out in 1991, all people were at risk, but particularly young people, who faced either being recruited to fight or being caught in the crossfire.

Now that some cultural sanctions have lifted, Somali boys are playing video games — and many adults are glad. Well, kind of:

Some parents say the video games are helping to keep teens off the street, which in turn lowers the chances they might be recruited by al-Shabab. But many teens admit to skipping class to practice their gaming skills.

Although there are downsides to skipping school, of course, there’s one major upside: schools are where kids are most likely to be recruited into the al-Shabab militia, where they would be required to fight.

Mohamed Deq Abdullahi, a father of two teens, watched his boys play a soccer video game in a sweltering parlor on a recent sunny day. He sees the boys’ new hobby as a beneficial development.

“This is his daylong activity because I don’t want him get bored and go to war,” Abdullahi said. “The busier they stay the more tired they get and the more they ignore violence.”

The article doesn’t say so, but I suspect there’s another benefit to these kids’ gameplay: it allows them to process the violence of the past 20 years, all they’ve ever known, in a safe way, without real-life consequences. That’s much healthier for them than getting behind a real machine-gun and being told to fight their countrymen.

In that light, what can we make of a recent CNN article blaming video games (and porn) for “ruining a generation of young men?” It claims that too much gaming sets up players (only male players, for some reason) for addiction — specifically, “arousal addiction,” where gamers need more video games to reach the same “high.”

Oddly, the article cites Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik as a prime example of this phenomenon, even though he doesn’t exemplify the average gamer at all:

Norwegian mass murder suspect Anders Behring Breivik reported during his trial that he prepared his mind and body for his marksman-focused shooting of 77 people by playing “World of Warcraft” for a year and then “Call of Duty” for 16 hours a day.

… Except that it’s not clear whether Breivik was telling the truth. After all, in his manifesto he advised people who were training for similar terrorist attacks to claim they were keeping themselves busy with video games, when in fact they were planning things out. It’s also worth noting, in light of the Somalia piece, that if Breivik had been playing video games all day on July 22, 2011, 77 people might still be alive.

It’s true that playing hours upon hours of video games is likely to have some consequences. Kids who play this much miss out on other things. But it’s important to remember that they’re also getting many important things — positive things — out of that gameplay, and that the things they’re missing out on might be much, much worse. Somalia isn’t the only place where kids can get caught in the crossfire. In inner-city areas where gangs hold power, the risks for kids are quite similar. Research shows there’s less youth violence and crime in places where video games are easy to come by.

What “ruins” kids more: playing video games until their arms are sore, or jailtime and violence?

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?