Do video games cause schizophrenia and delusional disorders?

You're right about people living in a fantasy world, Spacecricket.

Panzer plays a WW2-MMO like a total dork. Obviously, his obsession with that game (probably with his avatar) has led him to create another avatar on these forums.

So maybe another side effect of video games is double personalities? Different egos? like him

 

No. Not a chance. Schizophrenia is genetic. It doesn't come from anything but your family.

 

A growing body of university research suggests that gaming improves creativity, decision-making and perception. The specific benefits are wide ranging, from improved hand-eye coordination in surgeons to vision changes that boost night driving ability.
People who played action-based video and computer games made decisions 25% faster than others without sacrificing accuracy, according to a study. Indeed, the most adept gamers can make choices and act on them up to six times a second—four times faster than most people, other researchers found. Moreover, practiced game players can pay attention to more than six things at once without getting confused, compared with the four that someone can normally keep in mind, said University of Rochester researchers. The studies were conducted independently of the companies that sell video and computer games.




http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203458604577263273943183932.html


So much for that "hypothesis". INB4 childishly downvoting anyone who doesn't agree with the OP "science"

 

Children Who Play Video Games, Watch TV More Likely to Be Obese

Every hour children play video games or watch television may double their risk of obesity, a study suggests.

"To our knowledge this study provides the strongest evidence for an independent association between time spent playing electronic games and childhood obesity," says Nicolas Stettler, MD, pediatric nutrition specialist at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, in a news release. "Our findings suggest that the use of electronic games should be limited to prevent childhood obesity."

http://children.webmd.com/news/20040702/video-games-tv-double-childhood-obesity-risk

 

How could anyone even dispute it? This thread was about brain damage though, so unless you can link obesity to mental issues then...

 

I'm aware of that, however it doesn't refute anything in my hypothesis.

 

A better question is whether spending too much time on internet forums can lead to psychological problems.

 

That would be included in my hypothesis, to an extent - though Internet use doesn't contain the element of role-playing being in a fantasy scenario.

 

So I think the graphics are over stimulating.

Everyone in my generation had 20 hour marathons playing Mega man, Contra, Punch Out, ect, and we should see an increase today if it was based in the act of being in fantasy land.


Hard to dream in 8-bit animation.

 

When I was a kid there were no computers. Instead, we created our own games which featured 'pretend' scenarios such as war, space etc. mostly fighting enemies and aliens with pretend weapons. It took much more self-immersion to accomplish this than playing a video game. We all had BB guns and sometimes did 'live fire' games.

The only difference I see when compared to today, is that some of these video games are quite graphic with regard to the realism of blood and guts resulting from one's killing spree which may cause kids to become 'cold' to the result of say blasting a human being with a firearm. We could only imagine the carnage back then but then, sometimes imagination can be quite graphic as well.

I could be that these video games may cause the already mentally ill to act out their fantasies quicker but, much more study is needed IMO.

 

it doesn't?

 

really??

 

So it can increase spatial reasoning, decision making and perception but also cause schizophrenia?

Maybe you should trying backing that "hypothesis" with some research.

 

Religion is far more damaging to the mental health of the sufferer, hence the number of Gods, Jesuses and prophets passing through mental heath facilities. Gamers? Not so much.

 

Actually excessive computer use has already been linked to depression.

 

And you can disambiguate that from the fact that people who are depressed are more likely to be introverts and then as a result watch more late night TV and computers?

Sounds like a correlation causation fallacy to me.

 

just lazy kids who dont know any work ethics and probably will be a failure in life

 

No way and as the chosen hero of destiny I should know.
Now if you will excuse me I have to tame a dragon to get to the floating lair or the reborn demon lord before he can complete the ritual that will fuse are world to his realm good day.

Seriously though i don’t know i don’t think it much worse then any other kind of fantasizing

 

Look. I've been playing World of Warcraft for years, and I can personally tell you it does NOT lead to any form of psychological disorders such as schizophrenia, multiple personalities, or the like.

And I absolutely agree with me. I mean, you.

 

Punch Out was the shizzle! There is no way you couldn't think Joe wasn't the (*)(*)(*)(*) knocking out Tyson... Yeah, pure fantasy, but it was fun as hell beating that dude with the Turban and all the others, its been years, but I remember Glass Joe, that huge ass dude that covered 3/4 of the ring, and a few others, it was just fun... Even 8bit was cool.. Today its simply insane, to see what they have done, but nothing can grab you like the title fight in Punch Out! Megaman was cool, I downloaded that, just couldn't even get into it now, but remember wasting hours on that dumbass game! Contra was way cool with a friend, first and best co-op game ever!

 

If sitting in front of a TV playing games was good for ya, then all me Slappy!

Fact is, I don't want my kid wasting his life playing video games all day b/c it doesn't benefit him in any real way.

 

It benefited me a LOT. I'm a software engineer. Played video games all my life. Just yesterday I got a new game called Faster Than Light which easy killed my entire Sunday. When I was a kid I'd play 6-18 hours a day. Some of my first exposures to programming was in making mods for my favorite video games. Instead of ripping the games away from them use games as a method of creating a skill and love for technology. Especially if you have a gaming PC.

Video games grow problem solving skills, critical thinking, and logic.

You should be just as proud if your kid wins a Star Craft Tournament as you are if he wins a Chess Tournament.

 

Basically the same story for me as tToB, PC gaming got me interested in technology, games then weren't what they are today, I spent hours some times troubleshooting a whole host of issues and back in my day, you couldn't even install without using DOS. I learned to install my own hardware, write code and troubleshoot thanks to that experience.

 

Today the big thing for kids is Minecraft. And Minecraft offers a lot for teaching kids about technology. From it's huge mod community to the people who use Redstone circuits to create advanced logic gates. If you have a kid on Minecraft ask them to build you something amazing using Redstone circuits. 15 years later you'll see them walking down the stage with a computer engineering degree.

 

Very true, I get bored of it quickly, but it's an excellent teaching tool for children and a fantastic creative outlet for kids who are introverts.

Of course you should go out and get some exercise and socialize, no one is arguing you shouldn't, only that gaming can have positive externalities.