i told my mom. she said that was insane.
now i wonder who’s the misunderstood one

Ramen to that

Vacri: Playing a videogame does not involve ingesting a substance which could be chemically addictive. Ergo, I’m with Luke here on “Common Sense” grounds.

It’s not good science because it’s based on the flawed idea that mental stimulation by videogame is going to have the same “Addictive” properties as an addictive substance. One might as well assume that, say, crossword puzzles are “Addictive”. Or watching TV. etc.

I don’t see anyone going on about how books or comics are “Addictive”. If somone spends time reading fiction alone it’s regarded as a socially healthy and productive activity. However, if the same person then spends time alone playing a videogame in a Single Player Story, it’s regarded as a social evil akin to teenagers taking crack. Total logic failure

@vacri: @vacri: You have a point there. I’m actually glad they did this, because we now have a conclusive evidence that their hypothesis was wrong.

I guess my anger was slightly misplaced. I’m really annoyed at the media coverage this clinic was getting. It is a stupid sensationalism. These guys open a clinic to help people who obviously have some personal problems and the journalist covering the story frames it so that it looks like “ZOMG, video games your children are playing are more addictive than crack!!!1ONE!”

But I’m not sure whether this classifies as good science. I don’t know… Maybe. But I’d prefer if they set out with a hypothesis and proceeded to rigorously test it before they opened a clinic, got funding, and went to the media. You know, like a long term double blind study with a control group and etc…

From what I read this is not what they did. They opened the clinic and said “We know video games are addictive and we will provide detox and rehab – now give us your money”. Then in the last few years they noticed that their assumptions and methods are faulty. They were like “oops, we have been treating all these people wrong” and so they decided to make a press release in managed PR damage control mode before someone looks at their results and calls them on it.

So meh… But I get what you say an I agree. It is just that often it’s hard not to take things like this personal. I love video games, and play them regularly. So do my friends and family. I interact with other games both IRL and online and I have never actually met or talked with anyone who I would consider “addicted” or “obsessive” gamer. And all the people with gaming problem I have seen interviewed the media had always admitted to multitude of other pathologies or problems such as depression, axienty, bipolar disorder, abuse at home/school, other addictions and etc.

So simple observation tells me that the main difference between the healthy gamers and obsessive gamers that I know of, is that the later suffer from additional psychological ailments.

But they you get someone who does not play video games, and who does not usually interact with healthy video gamers on a day-to-day basis. Or rather they do, but they just don’t know about it. The only gamers they interact with are their patients with severe gaming related issues and fixations. I can see how such an outsider could make a hypothesis about harmfulness of video games, but I think I’m safe to say that doing this is wrong. Is it good science to base your hypothesis on a very small sample of what unbeknown to you are very special subsection of a much larger population?

If they only bothered to do a little research, they would probably notice the same thing as me and could re-define their theory. But they did not, and it took them two years to reach this conclusion. That’s sort of what I found annoying in this whole thing.

It was common fucking sense! But then again common sense is so rare these days we should really re-name it to un-common sense.

Be careful about that. Common sense, while not common enough, isn’t always right. Especially in psychology. Things “everyone knows” and that “just stand to reason” often don’t when you look at them in more detail. How many times when you code have you assumed a command would clearly, obviously do one thing, but then you spend an hour looking it up as it proceeds to do something completely unexpected?

Essentially, it looks like these people have done good science – proposed a hypothesis, tried it out, and reported on success or failure. You should be encouraging people to do this, not mocking them for trying in the first place. It is just this thing – condemnation of failed hypotheses – that hurts scientists as they become afraid to try things and report failure, instead choosing to either falsify data or not even try in the first place.

I was once asked if I was a “gamer” during an interview. Apparently they bought into the games are addicting mentality and didn’t want gamers – they felt gamers were a liability and less productive?

I should forward this article to their HR department. :) Great post.

Lol. I had never realized that it was in my own backyard, so to speak. Dutch are such nutters sometimes…
This said, don’t think the theory is going to go away or anything. The morons here still have whole TV programs dedicated to this very important issue. I mean, let’s face it, video game addiction is the most important problem in the Dutch society! The medical social security system is crumbling, the society is polarizing against our millions of migrant workers and the financial crisis might make the country face its worse unemployment crisis in the last 25 years. Yet, it’s all video games, my friends!