iGame Radio

Via GamePolitics, I read about an Australian study regarding a link between pathological gambling and video game playing. The study has not been published yet, so I can’t review the actual data and comment, but I have a few choice words to throw at the researcher and journalist just based on this interview which, if it does not represent the actual data, was badly done.

This new research apparently reveals that teenagers who regularly play video and arcade games are more likely to develop anti-social behavior that can lead to problem gambling. Or so the research claims. Reading through the interview, that is not quite what comes across. The researcher, Paul Delfabbro, interviewed over two and a half thousand Australian teens, and found more than half had gambled in the past year, but only 2% had become pathological gamblers by the time that they reached 18. He brings this up several times. He also mentions that “teenage problem gamblers played arcade games three times more often than non-gamblers and played hand-held and internet games twice as often.”

At no point in this entire interview is there any causal link made between teenagers who are pathologically addicted to gambling and their video game playing habits. In fact, it almost seems like he is assuming that because one has gambled in the past year (apparently this is defined as “problem gambling”) and one plays video games (as most teenagers do), that the link is obvious.

Um, I bet that you will find that people with higher blood pressure play video games three times more often than those with blood pressure within the norm. That doesn’t mean that having high blood pressure will cause you to play video games. Though you could probably make a case for high levels of video game playing causing high blood pressure.

Who knows? Maybe “problem gambling” causes you to play video games.