Study says video game addiction is not generated just by playing
Video game addiction should be considered as a symptom of a separate problem. They have not seen that playing a lot is self-addicting.
When several months ago we commented that the World Health Organization added addiction to video games as one of the diseases to be treated as soon as personal, emotional, psychological or physical problems of notable severity are generated. This will allow people who suffer from it to be treated in order to lead their life. A lot of people took it personal attack, that they didn't seem to understand that it doesn't mean, for example, playing marathon sessions every day that you get off work once the housework is done. It is not just gambling, but there is a dependency on gambling habits.
Another study clarifies that addiction is part of a bigger problem
A recent study by the Oxford Internet Institute has found that video game addictions are likely the result of external pressures and deeper psychological problems. It is based on data from more than 1 teens and their therapists who found that those affected by excessive gambling were likely using the pastime as a refuge, rather than being directly negatively affected by it. The study responds to the World Health Organization's decision earlier this year to classify gambling disorder as a disease in the 000th Revision of the International Classification of Diseases.
Professor Andrew Przybylski, research director at the Oxford Internet Institute and co-author of the study, said previous research on this topic "he has not been able to examine the larger context of what is happening in the lives of these young people. This is something we seek to address with our new study. For the first time we apply motivation theory and open science principles to investigate whether the psychological needs and the satisfactions and frustrations in everyday life of adolescents are linked to an obsessive or unregulated gambling commitment. Based on our findings, we do not believe that there is sufficient evidence to justify thinking of gaming as a clinical disorder in its own right.
The study found no evidence to suggest that excessive gambling leads to problematic emotional or behavioral problems. In fact, the researchers concluded that gambling habits likely reflect whether basic psychological needs are being met or whether there are other people's problems. When comparing adolescent gambling habits with information provided by the therapist about the emotional and social health of the test subjects, the researchers found that there was little evidence linking obsessive gambling with negative adolescent outcomes.
The study also found that most teens played at least one game online daily; that less than half of daily online gamers reported symptoms of obsessive gambling; and that daily players spent an average of three hours a day playing. An amount that would accumulate at least 21 hours a week, more than half a working day and that could be considered excessive gambling.
Dr Netta Weinstein, Senior Lecturer in the Cardiff University School of Psychology and a co-author of the report, said they urged healthcare professionals to take a closer look at underlying factors such as psychological satisfactions and everyday frustrations to understand why. what a minority of the players feel that they must participate in the games in an obsessive way. The study supports previous research by Przybylski's team in this field, which suggested there was a weak scientific basis for video game addiction. Following the findings of this latest investigation, Przybylski said they needed better data and the cooperation of video game companies to get to the bottom of it all.
Earlier this year, Dr David Zendle from York St John University told a parliamentary inquiry into immersive and addictive technologies that gaming companies should share the objective data they have on things like lootboxes and other monetisation models that exploit weaknesses. According to the researchers, “We are playing blind, lighting little matches and seeing little pieces of the images that surround us. Large companies have flashlights to see the problem. They should let us use their flashlights«.
During another session of the same research, a representative of Candy Crush's development team, King, said that the company would be willing to share data with researchers as long as they were "subject to normal trade protections", meaning that the most useful data would be off limits. The research also accused many gaming companies and organizations of being "deliberately obtuse» in the face of the problem of addiction by taking advantage of patterns to fall into addiction since they usually have psychologists on the payroll to study the addiction patterns and exploit them.
Study summary
As we warned when explaining what the WHO considers video game addiction and what it would imply if it were treated, playing for several hours does not generate addiction and physical and emotional dependence on video games. The study as such collects that there are external factors in which the study has not investigated and claims that these are the factors that make a person or do not generate that dependence that causes them to have physical, emotional or social problems due to video games.
The fact that it is used as a refuge from other problems is what the research highlights. This would cause a person addicted to video games to be treated and what external problems they have to generate that dependence on video games will be looked at. Sentimental, work, family, economic problems and more can generate a state of weakness that makes one consider dedicating all their time to video games because they make them forget those problems and large companies usually take advantage of these addiction patterns to obtain greater economic profit . With what, as we said: if you have a stable life, no matter how much you play, if you can leave it for a while without problems, you do not have any addiction; It would only be so when giving up video games is a problem and time is spent above other needs; and therapists would look at what factors led to that extreme dedication.
Source: GamesIndustry
