So I was driving to work this morning and made the mistake of turning on a morning radio show. I'm not really sure why I did it, but for some reason I just thought I would listen to something other than music on my way to work. The people on the show were talking about things in the news and when I first turned it on I caught the tail end of a conversation about the Super Bowl. Then the host read a headline about a new study which showed that gamers were more likely to drink, more likely to take drugs, and more likely to avoid their families.
"Here we go again," I actually said out loud to myself in the car. We've heard all this before right? Don't video games also make us murderers and rapists as well? I'm surprised that they didn't bring that up too. Stuff like this has always bothered me because while I am smart enough to know when something is bullshit, there are a great number of people who read or hear things like this and take it as fact. It became obvious a few minutes later however, that they were only bringing up this "news article" in order to tease one of the people on the show who apparently was an avid gamer. I dismissed the story and arrived at work a few minutes later.
In the door. Turn on the lights. Turn on the computer. Make coffee. Sit down. Check google news. What do you think was the first article I saw?
Computer game players 'more likely to drink, ignore family and have low self-esteem' "Son of a bitch," I spoke aloud to myself for the second time. I shouldn't have read it. If I hadn't read it I wouldn't have to be ranting right now.
Let me start by pointing out that this "research" was done on 800 Brigham Young University students. That's it. Just 800 college students who go to school in Utah. The article says that 55% of that 800 were "regular gamers" (play at least every other day). OK. So we have 440 regular gamers and 360 infrequent or non-gamers. Now I'm no psychologist. I'm no sociologist. But if there are 80 more gamers than non-gamers and we are going to compare the habits and behaviors of these two groups...aren't our statistics going to be a little...I don't know...FLAWED!?!?
Now let me skip right to my favorite part of the article...
Regular gamers were also around 10 per cent more likely to drink alcohol and take drugs than students who rarely played the games.
Those who played computer games every day were three times as likely to use cannabis as those who never played, the findings, published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, show.
Let's think about this first statement for a minute. We've already established that there are more regular gamers in the sample population than non-gamers, so wouldn't it stand to reason that a 10% increase in a behavior of the gaming population might just be from there being more gamers in the total population? And there is no mention of why they assume that one causes the other. Why is it true that gamers are more likely to drink instead of drinkers are more likely to game? Because one makes for a better headline and supports their hypothesis?
The second part also cracked me up. Let's think about it. Those who played computer games every day were three times as likely to use cannabis as those who never played. Let's put aside the fact that just about the only thing to do on a university in Utah would be to smoke pot... QUIZ TIME EVERYONE!
- Question 1
Cannabis is....
A) Marijuana
B) Cocaine
C) Heroine
D) Purple zebra
If you answered A...you are correct. If you answered D...put down the joint.
- Question 2
If you are high on weed you are more likely to...
A) Build a bridge
B) Run a marathon
C) Sit on your couch and play video games
D) Purple zebra
Am I the only person that sees these statements as illogical? If I got high every day...I would play video games every day. If I play video games every day...that does not mean I'm going to get high. I do not think that is hard to understand. The problem is that there are
A LOT of people who will read this kind of thing and take it as proven facts. There are idiot parents who will keep their kids from playing games because of studies like this.
This "research" was apparently led by a Prof. Laura Walker of Brigham Young University who has a Ph.D in developmental psychology! If you were a doctor of developmental psychology don't you think you would have pointed out the same flaws I did in your method before publishing a study like this? Would you not be embarassed that something so obviously unsound and misleading was attached to your work? I would be. But apparently Dr. Walker is not. Which leads me to believe that...
- Question 3
Dr. Laura Walker of Brigham Young University is...
A) ...so desperate to publish something that she doesn't care how flawed her research is.
B) ...already biased about this subject and therfore too blind to see the flaws in her research.
C) ...an ignorant cunt.
D) ...a purple zebra.
<MetalMusicMan> Please, send all hate mail to
laura_walker@byu.edu </MetalMusicMan>
