Don’t Dismiss Online Relationships as Fantasy
This morning, Slashdot was linking a wired magazine columnist with an interesting point: these relationships affect people, whether or not we think that they’re “real.”
This actually has a number of implications for what we’re calling “addiction.”
The article highlights our need, rooted in (among other things) a fear of the technology, to justify dismissing games. You can call them fake, or an addiction, or anything else, but in the end these games affect us.
And while the effects could be profoundly good or bad, dismissing games altogether keeps us from being able to take action. It keeps us from being able to see what exactly is bad. The best example of this is research into whether games make us obese. Essentially, some of it looks at two things. 1) are you obese? (yes/no). 2) do you play games? (yes/no). This is going to be a lot less helpful than looking at the underlying factors which actually have an influence on gamer nutrition. And the things influencing this stuff can cause a gamer to fatten up, but also to become dangerously underweight. In our rush to dismiss, in this case, we’re moving backwards on two fronts: ignoring the factors which could help us to understand and improve how people play, but also popularizing lazy, oversimplified, negligent research.
And yeah, this problem is happening in addiction research - with potentially devestating impacts.
These games, coming soon, will affect everyone. We’ll want them to, because they’re going to give us something we’ve never had before.
But I’m on vacation, so I’ll finish this thought later. After I write up last night’s adventures in gaming cafes.
