Health Risk of Video Game Playing Among Adults

Health-Risk correlates of Video Game Playing Among Adults:

Video game playing is believed to have negative effects on health among young adults and has become an increasing interest among researchers. Behaviors such as aggression, obesity, delinquency and poor school performance have been associated with video game playing . Many effects of video game playing remain stable into adulthood. One survey reported that many video game players (about twenty-five percent) have sacrificed a hobby or interest and about twenty percent claimed it has taken away from socialization with friends, family or a spouse and also sleep! Research thus far is informative but fails to show any sort of connection between physical and/or mental health and video games.

In short the objective of this study was to differentiate between adult video game players and non-players based on personal and environmental factors. It was hypothesized that adults who play video games would portray poorer perceptions of health, higher body mass index, and that the results would vary by gender as well. In the study the video game players and the non-video game players as well as male and female players and non-players were the independent variable manipulated by the researcher. The determinants such as depression, psychoticism or body mass index are the dependent variable or what was observed and measured after the administration of the independent variable.

The study was a survey with 562 participates aged 19-90. They were asked to answer questions based on their game usage and views. The results of the study show that video game players report more depression, and greater psychoticism than the non-players and have higher body mass index and lower health statu...

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...he study found that female players reported greater depression and lower health status than female non-players. The study also claims that females play video games for “self medication,” therefore, its more believable that the females who reported depression were playing video games to “self medicate” rather than video games being the cause of their depression.

The study provided it’s purpose in giving researchers more insight on the topic and giving them probable cause to move on to more in depth studies on the issue. The study only proved a correlation between video game players and health problems, though, the MSNBC article took this as a direct cause. Video game playing and health problems could possibly be associated, not because video games cause health problems, but because health problems, such as social anxiety disorder, cause people to play video games.