Filed under: Games
Which came first, our love of video games -- or ADD?
Here's a meaty issue -- a meaty, contemporary issue. Go back fifty years, before video games, before ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) was 'discovered', and such a story couldn't even exist. But here we are: modern day. Love it or hate it, we inhabit a world where vast and incredible leaps in the realms of technology and science occur on a daily basis. We're now, as a result, one very big international community full of gamers, where the person sitting next to you on the train is more likely to be a fellow gamer than not. And apparently -- and this might not be a shock to some of you -- according to a new report, we're picking up new and freshly-labeled psychoses from our rampant, reckless, just-one-more-hour gaming habits. Apparently.
CNET breaks down the conclusion of the report:
"A new study out of Iowa State University finds that people who play video games for 40-plus hours a week have a harder time focusing on certain tasks than those who play just a few hours a week."
You should probably read the findings of the study yourself and draw your own conclusions, but I do have one thing to add:
Considering the complexity and involvement of video games, maybe gamers just don't find real life quite as interesting by comparison?
If I could choose between going to the office and focusing on a word processor for 8 hours a day, or playing a 32-player video game that involves pixel-perfect hand-eye coordination and one-hundred percent, focused concentration all the time -- well, I think I'd choose the game. Is it any surprise that we gamers find our mind wandering when turned to the menial, humdrum tasks of the real world?
[via CNET]
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
DeoWulf said 9:15AM on 10-25-2009
Good point, but does acknowledging that fix anything? The real world is still important, regardless of whether videogames actually have psychological effects. Gamers need to suck it up and work or go to school and focus in those areas as well-- not to say that we don't. All these hype studies about gamers doing badly in such situations are misrepresentations of the greater community, I believe.
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Sebastian Anthony said 9:29AM on 10-25-2009
Hm... perhaps it's more indicative of the sameness/mundanity of real life?
There are a lot of studies coming in to suggest that by making things more FUN (more GAMEY) that productivity/involvement/satisfaction goes up.
A lot of people turn their every-day tasks into games. I suppose if you try to beat your 'number of letters written' highscore every day, it makes things more interesting...!
DeoWulf said 1:12PM on 10-25-2009
You can't turn everything in real life into a game. Besides, most attempted games are transparent efforts to encourage productivity. We turn work into games for children, but as adults I think people should just suck it up and take some responsibility. There is quite a bit of value in good, old-fashioned work, stuff that builds ethic and focus. It may not be fun, but it yields benefits beyond that of a pseudo-game. I'm all for videogames, but to me they are a limited leisure activity, not something I think the rest of the world should be modeled after.
Sebastian Anthony said 1:55PM on 10-25-2009
I don't disagree that there is some value in doing hard work -- but as more than merely a lesson in life, I'm not so sure?
One job requires you to type up notes from your boss. The other job requires you to type up notes from your boss AND keeps track of your speed AND compares you to other secretaries around the world AND rewards you with an hour off if you speed up consistently.
Are you saying the second job is actually worse? By what metric?
DeoWulf said 1:59PM on 10-25-2009
Hm. Ok. I get that.
Rob said 5:16PM on 10-25-2009
I'd agree, but spending over 40 hours a week playing games is asinine. Assuming 6 hours of sleep a night (which is probably less than what someone who plays games for 40 hours a week gets), that would mean that about a third of the subject's waking time was spent playing games. That's rediculous; most people don't even have that much free time, much less 40 hours to devote to pressing buttons.
chris nolte said 11:45AM on 10-25-2009
biggest load of BS ever. I didn't play video games as a young kid and I was diagnosed with ADD.
When I read a book without medication, it will take me 2 hours to read 20 pages.
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p-diddy said 12:21AM on 10-26-2009
Uh, I think the point is that video games are ONE of the major causes of ADD, not THE cause of ADD. Because so many people did play games as a kid, they developed ADD whereas they would not have, but for the video games.
Just because you developed ADD without being a gamer as a kid does not debunk their theory.
tm said 11:59AM on 10-25-2009
So, how long did it take them to realize things costing millions of dollars and designed by professions specifically to be immersive, entertaining, and engaging would hold the attention of someone with ADD more than daily life?
Should have just asked anyone with ADD.
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w00t said 4:02PM on 10-25-2009
I think its time that we started referencing studies when referring to them to prevent some confusion.
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Sebastian Anthony said 4:44PM on 10-25-2009
As in how I linked to the report? Or do you mean something else?
Shawn said 5:21PM on 10-25-2009
"Are you saying the second job is actually worse? By what metric?"
Yes, to me that would be worse. In case of first job, I can type up notes and browse news or whatnot to keep my attention shifting and therefore keep myself engaged and avoid mental exhaustion from typing all day. I'm the type of person who prefers manual labor to spreadsheet work, because manual labor either keeps you engaged and on your toes, or allows your mind to wonder off while the hands keep busy.
With option two, if your typing is tracked, then not only does it add to the stress of competition (what if you're competing against 100 secretaries?), but it also gets in the way of doing things proper, as you may become obsessed with your letter count that the quality of your writing goes out the window. Not to mention "Game Over" if you're the worst of the competition.
Also, imagine telling your boss you've "rage quit" your report xD
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Sebastian Anthony said 5:43PM on 10-25-2009
Easy on! I never said you'd be competing against other people...!
Multiplayer games are something else entirely. Even I would argue that they might not be so healthy.
But single player games? Hell yeah :)
I don't know if many people rage quit single-player games btw...! But they might throw their controller/keyboard out the window...
kojo87 said 10:00AM on 10-26-2009
@Shawn: i am the exact same way. i never did very well in school because i could not work at one thing for an extended period of time unless i have other things i can switch between like you said. i hated going to high school for 35 hours a week but the additional 40 hours a week i spent working at a restaurant didn't bother me at all. i always thought that was just the way my brain was wired. then some time in my junior year they tell me the reason i need to always shift my focus was because i had ADD. next thing i know they got me on 30mg Ritalin capsules and i can sit and pound out a 5 page paper in 2 hours. but im also counting how many times the kid next to me in class drops his pencil and getting totally overwhelmed at work because there is so much going on at once. i gotta say im not really sure one way of functioning is really better than the other. maybe i really have ADD, maybe i don't. either way im not taking those pills any more.
maybe they would tell you that you have ADD too. but if they did would you really want to "fix" the way your brain works?
hazard said 6:19PM on 10-25-2009
"finds that people who play video games for 40-plus hours a week have a harder time focusing on certain tasks than those who play just a few hours a week."
Amazing. Next they'll be telling us that people that eat fruit and vegtables and get regular excercise are healthier than those that don't.
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jim said 6:39PM on 10-25-2009
DeoWulf is right on with his posts.
Chris they never said video games caused ADD. They stated that people who play games 40+ hrs showed ADD like symptoms more than those who played less.
This can suggest that video games cause ADD but it can also suggest that people with ADD are attracted to games more than others.
Either way, video games are probably just another vice to fill a void if you play anywhere near 40hrs a week.
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Mason said 7:16PM on 10-25-2009
It saddens me that they still perform ridiculous studies on the human mind, possibly one of the most complex systems known. It isn't video games that create these ADD like symptoms, but the mind itself. It doesn't matter what the medium is, the mind will focus more on one activity more than another.
Why do we give children toys? Children who have smaller attention spans will focus on the toy, rather than do nothing of any interest to them and be bored. When the child is bored, the child complains, or the child gets into some form of trouble.
Likewise for the adolescent or the adult. All it comes down to is simple: "What are you committed to?" For some people, they are more committed to video games, thus, they spend more of their mental capacity focusing on, you guessed it, video games. The rest of their attention has to be shared between the rest of their tasks. If one is excited about a WoW raid, or a CS:S event later that night, odds are, their attention is going to be focused more on the video game than that AZ:123 spreadsheet on employee pay. However, that spreadsheet still being important to being able to pay for that video game, it ALSO is going to take up a lot of the attention of the person. So on top of balancing Game, and Spreadsheet (though with less will,) the person is going to also focus on other, much less important tasks such as their feet being cold because they wore sandals on casual Friday in the middle of December; or Sandy talking to them about a new deadline for the bonuses.
How much attention can one spare? If people had an infinite amount of attention they could spare, humans would more or less be gods, able to do everything at one time, within physical limits.
But it doesn't matter what the focus is. For some it is video games, for others, it's that date they are going to go on later. For others it may be renovating their house, raising their children, rebuilding a car from parts, or whatever else.
The study is just another way to project video-games in a negative fashion. Like using GTA as a scapegoat for bad parenting. Shit gets old... shit gets old.
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Sebastian Anthony said 7:20PM on 10-25-2009
Shit gets very old, you're right :)
The 'finite attention' thing is about as close to the truth as we can get right now. With more ability to keep attention on a multitude of things, comes power. Inability to keep attention, weakness.
I suppose mastery of a given subject is all about being so good that you don't require so much attention to perform a given task -- so you can focus on other things. Big difference between the handyman that can make some shelves, and the master that can do so in an aesthetic and well-engineered fashion, while talking about his experiences in the war, and drinking tea...
edward said 3:01AM on 10-26-2009
I seem to remember reading something that talked about using games to treat adhd. http://www.qc.cuny.edu/COMMUNICATIONS/NEWS_SERVICES/RELEASES/Pages/welcome.aspx?ItemID=1259
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Sebastian Anthony said 9:08AM on 10-26-2009
I think what we learn from this is... it's a little harder to attribute and describe the activity of the brain than some scientists/psychologists think.
And that games are cool.