Online games not as addictive as gambling: Study

You may easily be able to quit your favourite online game as playing internet games is not as addictive as gambling, a new Oxford study suggests.Researchers asked nationally representative samples of men and women in four countries how they felt after gaming using the American Psychiatric Association (APA) checklist of health symptoms.They surveyed 19,000 men and women from the UK, the US, Canada and Germany. Over half of the people said they had played internet games recently.Of these, between 2 per cent and 3 per cent reported they had experienced five or more of the symptoms on the list, with between 1 per cent and 0.5 per cent saying they also had feelings of 'significant distress' in being unable to curb their play.These rates are less than half those reported recently for gambling by the British Gambling Prevalence Survey, researchers said.In that survey, 2.6 per cent of those aged 18-24 and 1 per cent of adults in the general population said they had experienced symptoms linked by the researchers with a gambling disorder.Two years ago, the APA outlined the potential problem as 'internet gaming disorder' and proposed nine standard symptoms that might characterise possible diagnoses.They gave each symptom equal weight, and specified there had be an over-riding 'feeling of significant distress'.The study by University of Oxford in the UK noted that while many gamers may feel preoccupied and distracted from other responsibilities in a similar way to a sports fan whose team has reached the finals, they are not likely to have a pathological condition unless there are feelings of significant distress.All the study participants, recruited through YouGov and Google Surveys, completed symptom and health checklists.To be identified as a possible gaming addict, they had to report five of the nine symptoms from the APA list and also feel significant distress.Symptoms included preoccupation with internet gaming, anxiety and other withdrawal symptoms (if the game was taken away), increasing amounts of time spent gaming, loss of control, reduced interests, social withdrawal and losing opportunities as a result of gaming."To our knowledge, these are the first findings from a large-scale project to produce robust evidence on the potential new problem of "internet gaming disorder," said study lead author Dr Andrew Przybylski, from the Oxford Internet Institute."Contrary to what was predicted, the study did not find a clear link between potential addiction and negative effects on health, however, more research grounded in open and robust scientific practices is needed to learn if games are truly as addictive as many fear," Przybylski said.The study was published in the American Journal of Psychiatry.