Shares in Sony, Nintendo, and major games companies dropped sharply today after scientists linked playing video games with poor relationships with friends and family and increased drug use. Nintendo, long the face of family-friendly gaming, were said to be aghast and promised to immediately discontinue their wildly popular Wii system.
OK, so only one part of the above is true. A press release from Brigham Young University revealed that undergraduate Alex Jensen and his tutor had questioned 813 college students on their gaming habits and other behaviours, concluding that:
- "As the amount of time playing video games went up, the quality of relationships with peers and parents went down."
- "That the more young adults play video games, the more frequent their involvement in risky behaviors like drinking and drug abuse"
- "For young women, self-worth was low if their video game time was high."
This is of particular concern to young Alex, as according to the press release: "Jensen had hoped to find some positive results as justification for playing Madden NFL.". Ho ho, Jensen you little scallywag, trying to use science to justify your Madden NFL vice. That'll teach you.
In fairness to the authors, there is a frank admission that the correlation is 'modest' (a euphemism for 'weak'). Most importantly, there's no hint that these findings are anything but a correlation (a quick email to the university press officer confirmed this).
Correlation is a word you'll hear a lot if you hang around scientists and skeptics, so it's worth taking a moment to discuss. Scientists look for relationships between different things: taking a particular medicine and how quickly the patient recovers, the shape of an aircraft wing and its fuel consumption, religious persuasion and mental instability. However, often two things look like they are related when in fact they're not. Ginger-haired people are more common in Scotland, but that doesn't mean moving to Edinburgh will turn your hair red. So living in Scotland and having red hair is an example of a correlation. It's always important to demonstrate whether the relationship between two things is causative, or simply a correlation.
The insinuation in BYU's press release is that playing video games increases the likelihood of your relationship with friend and family breaking down, makes you a pot smoker and (for the ladies) decreases self-esteem. But it's pretty obvious that people who choose to stay in and maintain a small number of relationships are going to need something to do with all that extra time.
Now, British readers might be forgiven for wondering why a university would publish such a weak study with nothing more than correlational findings to the major news outlets. The answer to that could be that Brigham Young University is owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and is the largest religious university in the United States. BYU students are required to adhere to strict codes of conduct prohibiting extra-marital sex, alcohol, tea, coffee and porn, homosexual behaviour, wearing a beard without permission, swearing, and more, and if you think I'm making this up then read it for yourself. So these 'findings' fit neatly into an ideology that encourages a 'chaste and virtuous life.' Personally I think saving humanity by annihilating thousands of hell-spawned demons is a pretty virtuous pursuit, but perhaps I'm in the minority.
Video games already get a bad rap, and this guilt-by-association is particularly tedious. Fawning over findings that fit your own pre-existing ideological beliefs, despite their weakness or even falsity, is a dangerous game. So-called pathological science is responsible for some of the most upsetting episodes of science in history. The worst part of incomplete arguments such as this one from BYU is that it obfuscates the true causes behind human behaviours such as drug use. And when the resulting misconceptions find their way into government policy, the results are often disastrous.
Unfortunately there are still plenty of people out there trying to force square scientific pegs into round ideological holes. My question to BYU is: why? I get it that you don't like drugs and tobacco and smoking, and to be honest I couldn't care less. But releasing half-baked 'science' to support your case is embarrassing. Morality isn't something measured in SI units, so why argue from evidence?
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I believe that there is a MUCH stronger correlation between total asshattery and Mormonism...
...but maybe my Special Underwear is just too tight.
c'mon SP, misleading.
This is a Press Release for an article published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence which is by all appearances peer reviewed.
Unless you have more evidence, this is standard issue "University promoting its researchers' accomplishments" territory.
OOOOPS! I didn't realize you were The New Kid On Teh Block - now I do, and I commented without a welcome, sorry about that.
Consider yourself welcomed.
Heretic!
/obvious
... And, then again, sometimes, it only seems fair... So can I get your support for my grant request? I'm planning a correlational study into whether attending BYU is bad for your sexual partner's level of satisfaction...
Oh, c'mon... Inquiring minds want to know.
I wonder what you have to do to get permission to wear a beard?
Evidently, their Magic Underwear isn't working to stem the tide of tea drinkers and facial hair enthusiasts. This video game menace must be mighty powerful.
Ah, Doom. Hello, old friend...
I LOVE DOOM!!!!! Have you played the third one? It's terrifying.
well, if nobody else is here to say welcome and hiyadoin' then i guess i am!
welcome. thanks for joining us.
Welcome Punk,
Enjoyed the post and agree wholeheartedly. Hope to hear from someone at BYU since if you keep publishing junk, you wont get all those eager freshmen. Or maybe the name will still reel 'em in regardless.
"Morality isn't something measured in SI units, so why argue from evidence?"
For some reason people seem to think there is this huge divide between science and philosophy, but in actual fact the two diciplines each rely heavily upon the other. This is a case in point. While arguments concerning ethics may be primarily philosophical, you do need facts to ground them in order to apply them. It is all well and good to have a moral philosophy that says things like; don't hurt others, don't hurt yourself and so on, but eventually you need science to tell you precisely which actions are hurting yourself and/or others. In this case, if they want to say that there is something morally wrong with gaming, they are going to have to show that some real-world harm comes from it (unless some passage is found in the bible which can be construed as opposing gaming, at which point science and the real world would no longer matter).
I think this is more proof that Morons shouldn't play with video games. Or science.
Linking to Tuskegee? Really? The study isn't that bad. I don't even get how Tuskegee was pathological science (I mean I understand how you could say the people running the study were pathological, but thats something different).
"That the more young adults play video games, the more frequent their involvement in risky behaviors like drinking and drug abuse"
Did you know that 95% of serial killers have chewed gum?
And just because I have to....
First!
While this study may have failed miserably I would like to see a correlation between playing NFL games and general failure at life after college.
just to be extra snarky, I'd love to see if that correlation is stronger or weaker than that of being part of a sport team in a high-profile sport and "drinking and drug abuse"! :-p
also, hello to scienceblogs :-)
Seems to me they have not have not proven that the higher video game play was not a symptom of the issues they linked it to. We could easily phrase all the results thus:
# "As the quality of relationships with peers and parents went down, the amount of time playing video games went up."
# "That the more frequent their involvement in risky behaviors like drinking and drug abuse, the more young adults play video games"
# "For young women, video game time was high if their self-worth was low."
Yeah, I'm with you on the last question. I wonder if they'd have a media release if they found the opposite correlation. I look forward to more posts.
That headline is a perfect way to start this blog. I had read it multiple times, the phrase "Mormon Scitentists" created such a cognitive dissonance- less like "purple gorilla" more like "round square."
Kudos on the new blog!
Some video games can help people...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/414…
Welcome SciencePunk!
Quick comment on this "correlation", 1st, kind of obvious you'd find this type of correlation. Not because video games hurt your social skills (they probably can, but no more than booze, i suppose), but because, in my very biased observations, the kids playing long hours of video games were already socially inept. No friends? Blow 'em up online! Eh, that's quite an over-simplification for sure. But yeah, if you're spending all day playing video games, you better believe your girl friend's gonna get pissed.
Cheers!
JamieJ
i have never been married and am not a virgin. get pissed often, drink coffee all day and sometimes partake of tea. when i was a teenager i fiddled with a friend. didn't ask anyone if i could go unshaven. i have a foul fucking mouth... and more.
guess the mormon church don't want me... aaaawwww
Hi Frank, welcome to science blogs!
Your first post in on two of my favorite topics (gaming and the weirdness of Mormons). Plus there's sciency stuff. Even better!
As a female (although not a terribly young one) gamer, I found this part especially troubling. It seems to suggest that girls are are somehow more emotionally vulnerable to the evil effects of gaming than boys. Or worse, that perhaps girls shouldn't "risk" participating in male-dominated endeavors.
Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it bothered me. That wasn't my experience at all.
Another great game made with the same engine (but better art).
Dunno, but they shaved Brigham Young himself!
Welcome and nice post. We had some Mormons out in West Texas that took the name(phonetic) of their university too literally: Bring-em Young. When the aliens from Trifamdor start arriving, I know who I want on my side.
Mrs. Grackle: You have to get a beard card to wear a beard, which first involves going to your doctor and getting him to swear to some dermatological issue. Then you take the doctor's note/prescription/affidavit to the admin offices and apply for your beard card exemption thingie. (Or that's what you had to do when I went to a church school--some of my guy friends wanted the beard card.)
ChuckGoecke: "Breed'em Young" or "Bigamy Young" are also favourites.
Welcome to Science Blogs, Science Punk!
Of course it's altogether less surprising when you realize the theological tripe these people have to swallow to be Mormon in the first place.
I always liked the phrase "don't confuse consequence for subsequence".
personally I must agree that having young Mormons fail to reproduce by spilling their seed etc is damned virtuous thing ;)
I shall add "mormom scientist" to my list of oxymormons.
Welcome Mr Swain. More Englishicity is never a bad thing for a set of blogs.
Welcome to teh internets.
Has anyone done a study that links being mormon to being a loser? I'd imagine it would yield significant results.
The irony about your Doom reference is that one of the two original level designers IS A MORMON!
NO COFFEE OR TEA???? That does it; proof RIGHT THERE that BYU cannot possibly be a real academic institution.
Its deception. The mormon parents will cite this study when talking about their non-mormonic neighbor's children. There is little chance that the common mormon will understand that correlation doesn't equate to cause.
I lived among the mormons for many years and can attest to their disgusting use of deception to support their twisted mor[m]onic faith.
Thanks for writing your blog sciencepunk!
Welcome as well.
I find it funny that there are a lot of other things that could also "cause" diminished relationships between parents and teens, such as having a lot of friends, parents (and kids) working long hours, reading, listening to music constantly, texting, even..shudder...having different religious beliefs and being told your kids or parents are not someone you want to talk to (ala Scientology and others). Like Notagod, I have to agree that being a Mormon does not give you a good starting point to understand that correlation =/= causation, and second the deceptions that are used (try to stomach mormon "archaeology" that gets twisted to fit their theology, a particular peeve of mine).
The whole Mormon thing can be very difficult to imagine for anybody not familiar. I have a number of LDS ("Latter Day Saints", the label generally preferred by those in the church) friends and colleagues, who seem otherwise entirely rational but nonetheless are in the grip of the traditional LDS beliefs about coffee and magic underwear. The belief system would seem very outlandish to most Brits (by way of explanation, I'm a Brit, but I have lived in Oregon for many years).
WelcomeSp- May you blog well & often
Blah.
I'm with SP on this one. When stoned, video games are just about the only persuit the stonees are capable of.
The best reponse to this journal article would "and?"
Correlation- so what? Psychologist have a lot to answer for.
Why does this:
"And when the resulting misconceptions find their way into government policy, the results are often disastrous."
Link to the war on drugs?
What are you implying, that the attempt to control various substances was based on misleading science? I think you need to cite your references for that.
Journalism is increasing falling prey to the same problem as such "junk science" is. Ironic you report on this problem with an un-cited article, from a non-authoritative blog which surely hasn't passed any peer review.