Play video games? You're probably a fat mentally ill loser

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32463904/ns/technology_and_science-games/

Study: Average gamer is 35, fat and bummed
CDC study finds playing leads to ‘lower extraversion’ in adult gamers

A new study says the average age of video-game players in the United States is 35, and oh, by the way: They’re overweight and tend to be depressed.

Investigators from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Emory University and Andrews University analyzed survey data from 552 adults in the Seattle-Tacoma area. The subjects ranged in age from 19 to 90, according to the study, published in the October issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

The hypothesis was that video-game players have a higher body mass index — the measure of a person’s weight in relation to their height — and “a greater number of poor mental health days” versus nonplayers, said Dr. James B. Weaver III of the CDC’s National Center for Health Marketing. The hypothesis was correct, he said.

The findings, he said in the article, “differentiated adult video-game players from nonplayers. Video-game players also reported lower extraversion, consistent with research on adolescents that linked video-game playing to a sedentary lifestyle and overweight status, and to mental-health concerns.”

The Seattle-Tacoma area was chosen for the study, researchers said, both because of its size as the 13th largest media market in the United States and because its Internet usage level is “the highest in the nation.” The study was done in 2006; the results analyzed in 2008.

While the study helps “illuminate the health consequences of video-game playing,” it is not conclusive, its researchers say, but rather serves to “reveal important patterns in health-related correlates of video-game playing and highlights avenues for future research.”

Female video-game players reported greater incidents of depression and “lower health status” than women who do not play video games, researchers said, while male players reported a higher BMI and more Internet use time than nonplayers.

The findings “appear consistent with earlier research on adolescents that linked video game playing to a sedentary lifestyle and overweight status and mental health concerns,” Weaver and other co-authors say in the article.

‘Digital self-medication’?
One interpretation of the findings, researchers said, is that among women, video-game playing “may be a form of ‘digital self-medication.’ Evidence shows that women are effective at mood management through their media content choices, so some women may immerse themselves in cognitively engaging digital environments as a means of self-distraction; in short, they can literally ‘take their minds off’ their worries while playing a video game.”

An implication of that, researchers said, is that “habitual use of video games as a coping response may provided a genesis for obsessive-compulsive video-game playing, if not video-game addiction.”

Among men who play video games, compared to those who don’t, “male video-game players spend more time using the Internet and rely more on Internet-community social support,” researchers said. "They also tend to report higher BMI and lower extraversion.

“These findings illustrate that, among men, the association among sedentary behaviors, physical inactivity, and overweight status observed in children and young adults may extend into adulthood.”

Both male and female video game players spend more time than nonplayers seeking friendship and support on the Internet, the study found, “a finding consistent with prior research pointing to the willingness of adult video-game enthusiasts to sacrifice real-world social activities to play video games.”

The data, Weaver said, points to the need for “further research among adults to clarify how to use digital opportunities more effectively to promote health and prevent disease.”

For children and adults, he writes, games that require physical exertion, such as “Hide and seek” and “Freeze tag” are “still probably what we need most.”

I’d like to thank the researchers for such a well-conducted, earnest, thorough, and scientific study, and I’d like to thank the fine folks at MSNBC for such a thoughtful and informative analysis thereof.

If the average gamer is 35 fat and depressed, I wonder what the top ten gamers on xbox live are like.

For children and adults, he writes, games that require physical exertion, such as “Hide and seek” and “Freeze tag” are "still probably what we need most.

If those are the alternatives they’re proposing, Ima get my gun and off my depressed self.

I’m just struck by the obvious flaws in the approach, at least its explained in that article. For one thing, Seattle-Tacoma doesn’t seem like a very representative city to draw all the study subjects out of. Secondly, there is no reference to exaclty how they came to the implied conclusion that gamers are overweight and depressed. Is that comparing the gamers to a national average or to non-gamers in the study group? And if gamers are using games to “self-medicate” then how is that different from all the non-gaming hobbies where people do the same thing? Or is collecting stamps somehow different?

It comes across as one of those attempts to look at the hobby from the perspective of someone who feels they are “above” the study group and is looking for negatives to attach to something they don’t understand or participate in.

This doesn’t even hit all of the problems with it. There’s a very small data set. There’s no randomness. There’s a disturbing and irresponsible rush to just make up an explanation for the “findings” based on their gut feeling. They score their data partly on a factor that’s completely subjective (“poor mental health days”). Not only is Seattle not necessarily representative of the nation as a whole, but they specifically chose it because it was an outlier in the possibly-related field of internet usage. They outright claim that their non-random subjects from one city are representative of the population as a whole, which is bogus. Seriously, this “study” is a failure on so many levels, so completely, that I wouldn’t be surprised if the math was fudged or the data was just made up.

Don’t people have to stay inside and not exercise and eat in Sea-Tac because of rain? Kidding. Pretty sure Seattle is rated as one of the fittest cities in the nation.

I have read that cities like Seattle that are overcast so often have higher instances of depression as the lack of sunshine can contribute to mental health issues. I am pretty sure light therapy is prescribed in some cases. Would that not skew the results somewhat and not be representative as Sarkus suggests?

Are you basing this on the study or msnbc’s reporting on the study? Because the media is pretty good at mischaracterizing study results. Just sayin. Not that I’m gonna defend the study.

I have not and will not read the study itself, but the article would have to be wrong about literally every single factual detail about the structure of the study in order for those problems to not be real.

What a lot of people don’t understand is that this kind of study isn’t just flawed, it’s literally worthless. It’s no better than if someone just said, “people who play video games a mostly unpopular fat slob losers” and called it a day, because that statement is every bit as scientific as this joke of a study.

“These findings illustrate that, among men, the association among sedentary behaviors, physical inactivity, and overweight status observed in children and young adults may extend into adulthood.”

Thank god they did the study, this is revolutionary.

Your choice not to seek out the original study, of course, but then your conclusions regarding the article have little to no credibility. Right now, you are engaging in the same critical thinking that folks who believe health care reform = “death panel.” On this issue, you are coming across as someone reaching an emotional conclusion after reading a third-hand account of something you feel passionate about, and proclaiming that’s all you need to be totally certain of conclusions and limitations of the original document.

Bash the study all you want, but your arguments would be more compelling to me if they were grounded in facts from the source.

Yeah, some real earth-shattering work here. Next they will tell us eating junk food will make us fat.

The media is terrible at reporting science, as we all know. So we have no idea how they’ve extrapolated, misquoted, and just generally butchered this study in order to sensationalize it into a story.

There is one thing that bothers me though. Why is socializing through the internet considered introverted?

Sorry, let me be clear: the study hasn’t been published yet. I didn’t realize that the journal it’s in is free, but it apparently is… but I doubt I’ll be tracking it down a month from now. Sorry, it’ll have to toil in obscurity like every other piece of shit position study that some moron decides to do. But here, the objective facts from the article:

Investigators from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Emory University and Andrews University analyzed survey data from 552 adults in the Seattle-Tacoma area.

Unless this is not actually true, there are two huge red flags in that sentence alone: the sample size is small, and it was conducted in one city, which means that the results can only really be applied to that city, if in fact they hold water at all.

The hypothesis was that video-game players have a higher body mass index — the measure of a person’s weight in relation to their height — and “a greater number of poor mental health days” versus nonplayers, said Dr. James B. Weaver III of the CDC’s National Center for Health Marketing. The hypothesis was correct, he said.

Unless that guy was misquoted, this study attempted to record “poor mental health days,” which are not quantifiable or measurable as far as I’m aware.

The Seattle-Tacoma area was chosen for the study, researchers said, both because of its size as the 13th largest media market in the United States and because its Internet usage level is “the highest in the nation.”

Again, an objective fact, and a quote from one of the researchers that says that they chose to conduct the study in Seattle because they had noticed that it was an outlier in another area. This by itself would disqualify the entire study from any serious consideration, even if the rest of it was top shelf stuff.

One interpretation of the findings, researchers said, is that among women, video-game playing “may be a form of ‘digital self-medication.’ Evidence shows that women are effective at mood management through their media content choices, so some women may immerse themselves in cognitively engaging digital environments as a means of self-distraction; in short, they can literally ‘take their minds off’ their worries while playing a video game.”

An implication of that, researchers said, is that “habitual use of video games as a coping response may provided a genesis for obsessive-compulsive video-game playing, if not video-game addiction.”

This is pure speculation on the part of the researchers, and it isn’t even based on their own study. They’re just taking somebody else’s study, which may or may not be legit, and guessing at a way in which it might tie in with what they’ve done.

“These findings illustrate that, among men, the association among sedentary behaviors, physical inactivity, and overweight status observed in children and young adults may extend into adulthood.”

Again, this is an explanation extrapolated from someone else’s research, and it does not show that association at all, unless he means “may” in the “extraterrestrial life may exist in some other galaxy” sense. To show what he’s talking about, they would have had to study people over a period of time, observing these traits in children and then seeing if they extend into adulthood or not.

Both male and female video game players spend more time than nonplayers seeking friendship and support on the Internet, the study found, “a finding consistent with prior research pointing to the willingness of adult video-game enthusiasts to sacrifice real-world social activities to play video games.”

More of the same. Unless these guys were grossly misquoted in every case, this study is completely untrustworthy.

But… but… you’ve just dismissed 90% of humanities!

No, the problem here is that empirical knowledge supports the study’s conclusions. It’s practically a stereotype already!

Depression is provalent in our society. Video games, like all forms of entertainment, can be used as an escapism.

Its probably best not to remind a group of people raised on mass murder simulators that they are fat and miserable.

Oh thank god, I’m not the only fat, crazy loser in Seattle.

“…Dr. James B. Weaver III of the CDC’s National Center for Health Marketing. The hypothesis was correct, he said.”

So good ol Doc Weaver just got paid and a promotion from Captain Obvious to Major Obvious in Health Marketing.