14 DAY TRIAL // In a new study, published in the January 23rd issue of the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, researchers at the Brigham Young University in the US have identified that playing video games regularly may have very serious repercussions on a gamer's personal life, as far as relationships with peers, friends and family go. The team has found that an increased number of hours spent in front of the computer playing video games means less time in the company of friends, at social events, or at parties.
"It may be that young adults remove themselves from important social settings to play video games, or that people who already struggle with relationships are trying to find other ways to spend their time. My guess is that it's some of both and becomes circular," Laura Walker, the faculty mentor of BYU undergrad Alex Jensen, who has also contributed to the new study, says. The research has centralized the answers of some 813 college students from across the country.
"Relationship quality is one of a cluster of things that we found to be modestly associated with video games. The most striking part is that everything we found clustered around video game use is negative," Walker explains. She adds that teens who play video games more than once per day are likely to smoke twice as much marijuana than their peers who play less, and some three times more than teens who rarely or never take up computer and console games.
The two researchers have also found that the quality of serious relationships between young men and women deteriorates very swiftly, if gaming is involved. The young man in a couple usually spends a lot of time playing some game, and his wife or fiancée craves for the attention she once used to get. This makes the situation very tense, and the gamer usually doesn't quit his online friends to be with his partner.
"The gender imbalance begs the question of whether chasing a new high score beats spending quality time with a girlfriend or wife," Jensen concludes.