A recently concluded research at Oxford University suggests that the mere act of playing internet games is not as addictive as compared to gambling. As defined by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), the said research was considered to be the first of its kind that has tried to measure the scale of gaming addiction to the general population with the use of the symptoms of internet gaming disorder as the basis of the study.
Researchers from the University's Oxford Internet Institute was found to have nationally asked for a number of representative samples of men and women in four countries. The respondents were then asked how they felt after gaming using the APA checklist of health symptoms.
As per Medical News Today, it was found that two years ago, the American Psychiatric Association has summarized the potential problem as 'internet gaming disorder' and was allegedly said to have proposed the nine standard symptoms that might actually indicate these possible diagnoses.
The APA reportedly gave each symptom equal weight, and has particularly pointed out there was an overlapping 'feeling of significant distress'. The Oxford study discusses this as a 'key feature', noting that while many gamers are found to have been preoccupied and distracted from other responsibilities in a similar way to a sports fan watching his favorite team reaching the finals, they are not likely to have a pathological condition unless there are feelings of significant distress.
In one of their statements released by Medical Express, study lead author Dr Andrew Przybylski, from the Oxford Internet Institute, claims that internet games found to be one of the most popular leisure activities, but at the same time, he and his team notes that we just can't immediate skip into conclusions and assume that if 160 million Americans play them, one million of them might be addicted.
As opposed to the previous conclusions, the study emphasizes the fact that the study was not able to find a clear connection between a potential addiction and adverse health impacts. Additionally, the authors of the study claims that further research that is founded on clear and scientific practices is still needed to learn if games are truly considered as addictive as what a lot of people fears it to be.
