Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

InnovatioNation
Hello! I'm doing a project on "Is There Such a Thing as Too Much Gaming?" and was wondering how and why the human mind can get so addicted to an artificial world. We consciously know that the world doesn't exist, but for some reason our subconscious will just get sucked further and further into the game. Any input will be great and thank you in advanced! Also, if you are an expert in this field, what made you want to get involved in psychology?

Hi there,

It looks like you are working on this excellent Science Buddies project: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... p017.shtml

I am not an expert in psychology, and we may have an expert on this forum who can answer your questions from a psychologist's point of view. However, you can also do some research yourself. Try researching addiction in general and gaming addiction in particular.

To get you started, here is the Wikpedia article on video game addiction: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_addiction Please note that some of the links from this page may be untrusted, so you might want to search the terms independently.

I hope this helps you get started. Please post back (in this same thread) if you need more help along the way.

Heather

Thank you for the tip! i was honestly pretty confused as to why anyone would get so into video games and i wasn't sure what to expect as a reply. I found the citations for the Wikipedia article and was pretty surprised! Gamers "often continue to play because of rewards, freedom, and a connection to other players." I was viewing gaming as an attachment to a fantasy, but didn't think of it that way. It is more of an escape from their current lives, which may/may not be worse than their virtual lives. In my results, I saw that gamers didn't think their own social lives were being ruined. I guess this is because the games' interaction with other players becomes their social lives. I didn't think i could trust wikipedia, so thank you for the help in finding the links to the cited articles!

Hi there,

I'm glad that helped! I find that Wikipedia can be an excellent jumping-off point to great citations.

Please post again if you need more help along the way.

Heather