But of course...

Right on the tail of my last post I ran across an article examining a recent study by BYU that says playing video games (any kind, not just the violent kind) is bad for you. Here's a quote:

The impact of videogames on relationships is described as statistically "modest," but according to BYU Professor Laura Walker, the lead author on the report, "Everything we found associated with videogames came out negative." Women who play videogames "a lot" have lower self-esteem (presumably than women who don't play) while gamers who play daily smoke marijuana twice as much as "other players" and three times as much as people who don't play games at all.

Now take a second and think about that approach. Does something seem a little funny to you? A little...off?

I believe that those doing the study began with a bias against gaming and therefore (possibly subconsciously) skewed the results.

Isn't it possible that girls who have a low self-esteem tend to play more video games and not the other way around? Isn't it possible that people who smoke a lot of marijuana gravitate towards video games (something regarded as fun to many while high)? This team took two pieces of information and came up with a result; but they had to figure out which piece of information was the catalyst for the other.

For example: I notice that there are periods during the 24-hour cycle where the sun is not visible; and I also notice that there are periods during the cycle that it is significantly cooler than other times. I now have three choices for a conclusion. Either 1) The temperature often cools due to the lack of the sun, or 2) The sun is not visible due to the cold temperature, or 3) These two observations are not actually related and it is coincidence (or some other factor) that they happen at the same time.

Now you and I know that at night, when there is no sun, it is often cooler than when the sun is blazing. We would never think to say that a cold weather front moves in and forces the sun to slip below the horizon. But the BYU team found that there were girls who have low self-esteem, and that often times these girls played video games, and concluded that games lead to low self-esteem (not the other way around (which is totally feasible) or deciding that many, many other factors come into play).

This is simply a perfect example of how society at large views video games and those who play them.

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p.s. What if those girls have a low self-esteem because they very much enjoy themselves when playing video games but people like the BYU team keep telling them they are rejects for doing so?