Just How Susceptible Are Teens to Gaming Addiction?
By Movieguide® Contributor
You might want to watch how much time your teen is playing video games, as it can lead to unhealthy addictions.
“A number one concern for parents of children and teenagers is how much screen time and how much gaming is enough gaming and how to figure out where to draw the line,” said John Foxe, Ph.D., director of the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience at the University of Rochester. “These data begin to give us some answers.”
“Researchers looked at data collected from 6,143 identified video game users ages 10–15 over four years,” reported Medical Xpress. “In the first year, researchers took brain scans using an fMRI as participants completed the task of pushing a button fast enough to receive a $5 reward. Researchers subsequently had the same participants answer Video Game Addiction Questionnaires over the next three years.”
The researchers discovered that participants with higher levels of gaming addiction symptoms displayed lower brain activity in the areas of the brain that involve decision-making and reward processing in the initial brain scan from four years earlier.
“Previous research in adults has provided similar insight, showing that this blunted response to reward anticipation is associated with higher symptoms of gaming addiction and suggests that reduced sensitivity to rewards, in particular non-gaming rewards, may play a role in problematic gaming,” Medical Xpress reported.
Daniel Lopez, Ph.D, a postdoctoral fellow at the Developmental Brain Imaging Lab at Oregon Health & Science University, said, “Gaming itself is not unhealthy, but there is a line, and our study clearly shows that some people are more susceptible to symptoms of gaming addiction than others.”
He says the research helps them identify “neural markers,” which lets them know who is at higher risk of developing unhealthy gaming habits.
The study launched in 2015 and has followed 11,878 kids from pre-adolescence to adulthood.
READ MORE: HOW GAMING ADDICTION CAN RUIN LIVES
“The open-source data model has allowed researchers nationwide to shed light on various facets of social, emotional, cognitive, and physical development during adolescence,” Medical Xpress said. “The University of Rochester joined the study in 2017 and is one of 21 sites collecting this data from nearly 340 participants. Ed Freedman, Ph.D., professor of Neuroscience at the University and co-principal investigator of the university study site, led this recent research on gaming.”
“The large data set that contains this understudied developmental window is transforming recommendations for everything from sleep to screen time. And now we have specific brain regions that are associated with gaming addiction in teens,” Freedman said. “This allows us to ask other questions that may help us understand if there are ways to identify at-risk kids and if there are other behaviors or recommendations that could mitigate risk.”
Another study published in the journal “Brain and Cognition” showed that there is a significant change in gray and white brain matter in participants who played violent games.
“Correlations were found between gray matter changes and measures of aggression, hostility, self esteem and degree of internet addiction pointing to an adverse effect of violent video games,” the study said.
Another study using MRI brain scans found that the brains of kids who frequently gamed showed signs similar to those of drug and alcohol addicts.
READ MORE: CAN YOU BEAT A GAMING ADDICTION?
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