Do gamers risk poor health?

G4 reports that the Center for Disease Control (CDC) has taken a look at the health hazards associated with playing video games and found that addicts are fat and sad. Emerging Health Threats suggest that the hazards of playing video games are not limited to children. The CDC has found a correlation between gaming and health risks in a sample of 500 adults living in the Seattle-Tacoma area. However, correlation does not mean causation as Dr. Primack points out in the study, “people’s lifestyles are getting more sedentary, but maybe games are an effect rather than a cause.”  But why then have people become so much more inactive?  If TV and video game entertainment is not to blame, what role do video games play as coping mechanism? How do we explain the positive and negative affects of video games and their exploding popularity?

“How do we simultaneously help the public steer away from imitation play-like activities, harness the potentially positive aspects of video games, and keep in perspective the overall place of video games in our society?”
-Dr Brian Primack, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine

Study findings

• Female gamers reported greater depression and poorer health than non-gamers
• Male gamers reported higher BMI (body mass index) than non-gamers
• Gamers of both genders reported a higher than normal reliance on the Internet for social support.

Commentary

When it comes to games and health, it seems the biggest challenge we face is getting gamers to understand balance. Sitting in front of a tv or computer screen with no exercise everyday isn’t healthy as the study from Washington shows. In an era of pixelated entertainment and broken health care, what is to become of outdoor activities? They obviously become more and more important and raise a number of cultural questions. In a couch potato world, reinforced by sedentary living, how do we pull gamers away from boobtubes? Perhaps the beter question is more socio-economic in nature…