14 DAY TRIAL // Online game addiction. Booooring!, right? You're probably saying; "Heard everything about it, seen all the tragic cases, know what it involves." Well, just so you can really say you've heard them all, the latest study conducted on more than 400 online gamers by the School of Health, Psychology and Sport, shows that incidences of addiction could be 10% lower than some currently accepted classification schemes suggest.
It is said that internet-related addictions often classify people as addicted by using symptoms that are also used in the diagnosis of gambling addiction. Yet Dr Charlton believes that some of these symptoms don't quite fall in the gambling addiction category: "This is my second research project in this field to confirm this outcome; that several symptoms researchers had thought were important in diagnosing computing-related addictions were actually only indicative of high, but non-addictive, involvement. This means that taking them into account when conducting research gives an incorrect result - 10% higher than is correct."
So, in an online survey on more than 400 gamers who were regularly playing a game called Asheron's Call, the research project discovered some players confessed their time online led to arguments at home and negatively affected their work and social life. On average, they were spending 18.5 hours a week online playing. One of them even claimed to be spending 100 hours a week online. The subjects were 85% men. These were the results: -more than 40% said their social life was suffering -30% recognized gaming was interfering with their work -40% said it was causing arguments at home -50% confessed they were not getting enough sleep -35% said they missed meals to carry on playing.
So although the study showed that playing MMOs doesn't leave the same marks as gambling, it's still a matter of great concern, only lower than previously thought:... "while our research suggests online gaming may not be as addictive as research has previously suggested, gaming addiction is a real issue for some people who find gaming seriously affecting their lives," said Dr Charlton. So be careful out there kids. If you don't have a gambling issue, that's good, but throwing your lives down the drain for a MMO like World of Warcaraft doesn't make you any better either.