{"id":29276,"date":"2014-12-22T00:04:16","date_gmt":"2014-12-22T05:04:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=29276"},"modified":"2014-12-19T07:19:06","modified_gmt":"2014-12-19T12:19:06","slug":"a-new-paper-on-the-exaggerated-claims-that-mmos-are-harmful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/12\/22\/a-new-paper-on-the-exaggerated-claims-that-mmos-are-harmful\/","title":{"rendered":"A new paper on the exaggerated claims that MMOs are harmful"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By way of <a href=\"http:\/\/massively.joystiq.com\/2014\/12\/18\/for-science-claims-that-mmos-are-threat-to-public-health-are\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Massively<\/em><\/a>, the abstract of a new paper by Dr. Rachel Kowert and her co-authors, investigating claims that massive multi-player online games are a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S074756321400692X\" target=\"_blank\">public health threat<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Highlights<\/strong><br \/>\n\u2022   The psychosocial causes and consequences of online video game play were evaluated.<br \/>\n\u2022   Over a 1- and 2-year period, evidence for social compensation processes were found.<br \/>\n\u2022   Among young adults, online games appear to be socially compensating spaces.<br \/>\n\u2022   No significant displacement or compensation patterns were found for adolescents.<br \/>\n\u2022   No significant displacement or compensation patterns were found for older adults.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Abstract<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Due to its worldwide popularity, researchers have grown concerned as to whether or not engagement within online video gaming environments poses a threat to public health. Previous research has uncovered inverse relationships between frequency of play and a range of psychosocial outcomes, however, a reliance on cross-sectional research designs and opportunity sampling of only the most involved players has limited the broader understanding of these relationships. Enlisting a large representative sample and a longitudinal design, the current study examined these relationships and the mechanisms that underlie them to determine if poorer psychosocial outcomes are a cause (i.e., pre-existing psychosocial difficulties motivate play) or a consequence (i.e., poorer outcomes are driven by use) of online video game engagement. The results dispute previous claims that online game play has negative effects on the psychosocial well-being of its users and instead indicate that individuals play online games to compensate for pre-existing social difficulties.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By way of Massively, the abstract of a new paper by Dr. Rachel Kowert and her co-authors, investigating claims that massive multi-player online games are a public health threat: Highlights \u2022 The psychosocial causes and consequences of online video game play were evaluated. \u2022 Over a 1- and 2-year period, evidence for social compensation processes [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,66],"tags":[192,139,244,504],"class_list":["post-29276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gaming","category-health-science","tag-mmorpg","tag-psychology","tag-publichealth","tag-teenagers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7Cc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29276"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29277,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29276\/revisions\/29277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}