http://neilsclark.com/archives/43 games, addiction and other serious business Thu, 04 Dec 2008 19:20:22 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7-beta2 hourly 1 http://neilsclark.com/archives/43/comment-page-1#comment-10 Vested interests in addiction research. at neils clark Mon, 22 Jan 2007 19:13:33 +0000 http://neilsclark.com/?p=43#comment-10 [...] For years I’ve held up the hope that Young would aggressively revise her criteria for gaming addiction. Since introducing the idea of internet addiction in 1996, she’s really just emphasized three anecdotes: Internet affairs, unauthorized employee Internet use, and Internet-induced lapses in student productivity. Young has a vested interest in selling books, online therapy (@ 95$/hour it’s not the most expensive therapy ever, but there are certain therapy procedures that can’t happen over the internet). Most importantly, she sells herself as a credible expert. At best, she backs the claims up by citing market research. At worst, there are dozens of critical claims that she backs up by citing her own past research. While a number of experts have written this research off as schlocky and misleading, it’s still used to build studies at highly respected schools. Stanford most recently used it as a backbone for an expensive study that polled thousands over telephone. The more that her criteria is used as a panacea, the harder it is to stop and really analyze whether or not it’s accurate. You can read more about Young’s study and the Stanford surveys here. [...] [...] For years I’ve held up the hope that Young would aggressively revise her criteria for gaming addiction. Since introducing the idea of internet addiction in 1996, she’s really just emphasized three anecdotes: Internet affairs, unauthorized employee Internet use, and Internet-induced lapses in student productivity. Young has a vested interest in selling books, online therapy (@ 95$/hour it’s not the most expensive therapy ever, but there are certain therapy procedures that can’t happen over the internet). Most importantly, she sells herself as a credible expert. At best, she backs the claims up by citing market research. At worst, there are dozens of critical claims that she backs up by citing her own past research. While a number of experts have written this research off as schlocky and misleading, it’s still used to build studies at highly respected schools. Stanford most recently used it as a backbone for an expensive study that polled thousands over telephone. The more that her criteria is used as a panacea, the harder it is to stop and really analyze whether or not it’s accurate. You can read more about Young’s study and the Stanford surveys here. [...]

]]>