Study finds that video games are not as addicting as gambling

A new study that was released out of Oxford University has found that video games are not as addictive as gambling, which teaches a lot about what exactly makes gambling addictive.

This is the very first study that has been conducted into “Internet Gaming Disorder”. Online gaming has become a huge phenomenon and there are crazy stories around the globe about extreme cases of addiction. These days, young people are spending more time gaming than ever before, and much of this is articulated to the development of the open Internet and the growth of the multiplayer gaming market that has resulted from it.

Internet Gaming Disorder was defined through the American Psychiatric Association back in the later part of 2013 as a problematic form of addiction that causes an inability for a person to be able to perform basic life functions. They skip meals, they stop going to work, they don’t follow proper hygiene practices, and ignore their responsibilities in order to continue playing.

Video games often get put into the same basket as gambling when it comes to addiction. Some have even brought into question as to why video games aren’t as heavily regulated as gambling, as they have been shown to cause massive detrimental effects in the lives of people who become obsessed.

Oxford University’s study had taken a survey that included a group of 19,000 men and women that came from the United States, United Kingdom, and areas of both Germany and Canada. Of the people that were surveyed, over half of them had cited that they had engaged in some form of online gaming within the last few weeks. Of the symptoms that were listed out to participants in regards to IGD, about two to three percent of them affirmed that they had experienced at least five of these symptoms.

The symptoms of IGD include feelings of anxiety, feelings of withdrawal during times that they are unable to play, a massive amount of personal time spent gaming, a lack of interest in outside activities outside of gaming, and missing out on opportunities from gaming.

The number of participants that reported five or more symptoms of IGD is lower than what previous studies have found from gambling players. For gamblers that number sits around 16%, which is actually quite a bit higher than the two to three percent reported from this study for gaming addicts. This study predicted that video game players were going to be just as bad as gamblers and was the main reason it was conducted.

People that are effected by gambling addiction do face severe repercussions, but the number of people that get effected is much lower. It would appear that real money has a significant effect on how far people are willing to get invested and the difficulty to quit that gets developed as a result. For this reason, it’s unlikely that video games are going to ever face similar regulations that gambling is currently dealing with in the United Kingdom.