Playing online games has accumulated the stigma over the years of creating addiction, fostering social isolation, causing failure in hygiene, and a litany of other functional ailments. A new study by Cuihua Shen, an assistant professor of emerging media and communication at the University of Texas at Dallas, challenges the idea that online games diminish emotional health. In fact, Shen asserts, when played with existing family and friends, online games are emotionally beneficial.
“‘If I am playing with existing family and friends, I am extending my social life in cyberspace, and that is actually good for me psychologically,” Shen said.
The research does not claim to overturn the body of research warning of the emotional risks of too much time playing online games. In fact, some of the findings support previous research that kids and younger adults putting too much time into playing games online contributed to a sharp decline in family communication. Even those gamers who spent a significant amount of time playing online games with their family reported a slight decline in the quality of their communications with them.
Cuihua Shen and study co-author Dmitri Williams, of the University of Southern California, analyzed surveys of more than 5,000 participants from Sony’s EverQuest II MMORPG. They collected and analyzed information about self-reported observations about player’s psychosocial well-being, including their level of loneliness, family communication time and quality, and Internet use. The study also examined information about players’ online behavior from Sony’s game servers. On average, the gamers studied were about 31 years old, male, who were well-educated with incomes higher than the U.S. population on average. The gamers spent about 30 hours online each week, outside of work, with most of the time committed to EQ2.
In answer to parents wagging their fingers at their children to stop them from playing online games, Shen suggests the parents join them in the virtual worlds. ‘”Parents could try to get into games as well,” she said, describing the online avatar world as a “place to socialize outside normal settings.” However, Shen is not recommending parents forgo traditional activities, like picnics, sports, movies and eating out, but instead to supplement them with online games, if they are already a part of their children’s lives.
[Source: US News & World Report]
