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Video Games Linked Poor Relationships, Drug Use




In news likely to upset every Nana who bought her grandchildren a brand new Nintendo Wii for the holidays, a recent study has linked video games to poor relationships and drug use.

The study was conducted by researchers at Brigham Young University in Utah, who talked to 813 university students across the United States. They found that as the amount of gaming time went up for those individuals, the quality of relationships with friends and family went down.

"Relationship quality is one of a cluster of things that we found to be associated with video games," said researcher Laura Walker. "The most striking part is that everything we found clustered around video game use is negative." Avid gamers also use drugs more frequently than the average person, according to the study; the average individual who plays games every day smokes marijuana three times as often as the average non-gamer and twice as often as the casual gamer. [From: Tech Radar]

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Also revealed was that the more people play games, the more likely they are to engage in "risky" behaviors (read: drinking, drug abuse). Those who game on a daily basis reported smoking pot almost twice as often as occasional players, and three times as often as those who never play. For young women, self-worth was low if their time spent playing video games was high.

It's worth noting that BYU is owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormon Church), which mandates behavior in line with Mormon teachings, including prohibitions on extra-marital sex and the consumption of drugs and alcohol.

Just saying, is all. [From: Tech Radar]

Tags: byu, games, relationships, research, study, video games, videogames

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