Drugs, Alcohol, and Video Games

A few days ago professor Laura Walker from Brigham Young University published a study that video gamers are more likely to "use drugs, drink alcohol, have poor relationships, and poor self esteem". The article raised some red flags in my head not because it came from BYU, a school that has a strict honor code mandating no drugs, alcohol, tobacco, and coffee to name a few, but because of the way the survey was conducted. Sureveyees were invited to the survey after having read a specific newspaper ad raising questions on the studies impartiality and bias.

As expected a few newspapers took the study and published it, decrying the evil of video games. The Telegraph for instance published an article where they presented the findings as fact, listing out the many negative conclusions drawn and adding a small alternative view from Walker herself which in the end turned out to be a validation of her own work again.

"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," she said. "My guess is that it's some of both and becomes circular."

Well today Valke from NuclearGeek was able to obtain an interview with Walker to discuss her findings. Walker defended her findings with a well written email that almost convinced me she was a fair and impartial person until the end where she wrote:

"Also, please remember the nature of the statistics shows that as one variable goes up the other went down. For example, the more one played video games the lower their quality of relationships."

"Also please remember, these are averages. Just because you happen to be an "exception" doesn't mean that the results cannot be "true" for a good number of young people. Right?"

She is defending her claims although by her own admission her study only focused on the extremes of gaming and she did not know if video games caused these behaviors or if these behaviors drove people to video games.

Take what you want from this study but remember, these are extreme cases and not representative of every gamer as the mainstream media would like you to believe.