Which came first, our love of video games -- or ADD?
Here's a meaty issue -- a meaty, contemporary issue. Go back fifty years, before video games, before ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) was 'discovered', and such a story couldn't even exist. But here we are: modern day. Love it or hate it, we inhabit a world where vast and incredible leaps in the realms of technology and science occur on a daily basis. We're now, as a result, one very big international community full of gamers, where the person sitting next to you on the train is more likely to be a fellow gamer than not. And apparently -- and this might not be a shock to some of you -- according to a new report, we're picking up new and freshly-labeled psychoses from our rampant, reckless, just-one-more-hour gaming habits. Apparently.
CNET breaks down the conclusion of the report:
"A new study out of Iowa State University finds that people who play video games for 40-plus hours a week have a harder time focusing on certain tasks than those who play just a few hours a week."
You should probably read the findings of the study yourself and draw your own conclusions, but I do have one thing to add:
Considering the complexity and involvement of video games, maybe gamers just don't find real life quite as interesting by comparison?
If I could choose between going to the office and focusing on a word processor for 8 hours a day, or playing a 32-player video game that involves pixel-perfect hand-eye coordination and one-hundred percent, focused concentration all the time -- well, I think I'd choose the game. Is it any surprise that we gamers find our mind wandering when turned to the menial, humdrum tasks of the real world?
[via CNET]
