Most gamers fat and miserable, finds study Overweight? Depressed? Aged 35? Answer 'yes' to all three and you are almost certainly a gamer. So suggests a joint study conducted by scientists from the US Centres for Disease Control (CDC), Emory University in Atlanta and Andrews University in Michigan. Researchers concluded that frequent gamers tend to be fatter and of …
There's a bit of a problem with this study, which you can spot here:
"500 adults aged between 19 and 90 from Washington state"
I don't know about you, but I don't know that there's many adults over 50 in Washington state playing video games, so lets narrow down the group to, hrmm, 350 adults?
That's hardly a large enough demographic, especially considering they are all from a single area!
Besides, I'm a gamer and I'm not miserable...
I don't live in Washington State either.
Perhaps the headline should read:
"350 potential gamers age 19-90 in Washington State are fat and miserable and stupid, finds study"
There, that's better.
Right. And this study was probably performed by a non-gamer lot who simply want to poo on the party for those of us who enjoy video games. I'm a gamer and I'm not fat or depressed. I'm having fun. That's the whole point of gaming. Enjoying something fun. First games are supposed to be turning blokes into anti-social killing machines, now it's alleged that gamers are a 35 year old fat depressed lot. Yea. right. I work for a University. Anyone can do a University study to prove whatever they want to prove while pocketing grant money. It's all part of the game. Create a question. Formulate surveys, pass them out, and get people to answer them, either pay them in one way or another, and you've got a built in answer to a question in order to "prove" that your point is valid. It's all just a game. LOL!!! How do you check to determine if the answers given to you in surveys are truthful? No way to prove it. So you have a survey who's answers can't be proven to be factual and you announce that "The Survey Said" this or that and we are expected to believe the results, why?
The last time I bought a computer game it was to block out the s**t that is my life. I was looking for something that would take ages to complete thus filling the hours of boredom that would normally be filled with a social life. I recommend the RPG as an ample source of oblivion.
I'm not fat though or 35.
the opposite a few months ago! I seem to recall this.
This sounds like one of those "We are making a point that something is bad" survey asked to be done by a group of people who think their lifestyle is perfect and think everyone else should be the same as them.
The El reg article is too short to get a true idea of the survey and usually the media likes to jump on the negative aspect of the report.
Like the Twitter article on the BBC recently that said 40 percent of Tweets are pointless, but hey that means 60 percent are useful then, imagine that...
I'm a gamer, but I don't relate to the stereotype this survey is obviously trying to create, so we can all ignore it ok.
I read a more detailed report publised by the BBC yesterday (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8206163.stm) which came out with the shock result that "gamers" are older than most think - when only interviewing folk aged 19-90 are you surprised?
"The team chose the Seattle-Tacoma area because its internet usage level is the highest within the US and it is one of the larger markets for media."
So is it surprising that %45 play games?
Also there's plenty of inference that gamers are fat and miserable, obviously pushing that as a coleration, but maybe people are miserable because of the way society treats fat people and games are a way of escaping this?
With no figures to base these on (more were depressed, how many more, 1, 50?) you can't say whether it's a statistical anomaly or a real trend - but with a base size of 500 I could take a guess at why figures aren't published.
Go away CDC and do some real research based on a nationally representative sample size and distribution with a sufficient volume of respondents to eliminate bias as much as possible and conduct the research over several forms (at a guess they did this online?) to ensure you get a good cross-section of society.
THEN we'll see if your results stack up.
Can you tell I work in market research?
I have been gaming for around 25 years as have many of my friends and I don't know a single fat depressed gamer. None of my friends are over weight nor depressed.
Ah the survey was taken in the US, that explains it, I guess most of the US population are over weight and depressed gamer or not.
Fat, older, unloved folks mostly watched TV, were bored, etc. Now they hve a simulacrum of life. Still depressing, but better than before. My own opinion: adults playing games? Having you got real things to do?
But then, I always hated games, from monopoly and card games as a child to online games and card gmes as an adult. What a way to waste time you can never get back, or which you could have used actually talking to someone and getting to know them better, or reading and learning, or helping someone.
I did a survey of American reality TV programs and found that... Most Americans are fat, miserable, obsessed with plastic surgery and stupid!
Back in the real world... I've been playing games since Pong and I'm online for about 6 hours most nights. I'm 36, weigh 10 stone with a 30" waist and I'm neither single nor depressed. Must be because I'm not American.
They forgot to mention beer and pizza in their paper titled 'stating the bleeding obvious'. I'd list some more but my fat, gaming fingers think that's too much like exercise and besides I'm too miserable.
In my day there were pharmaceutical solutions to this problem and who needs the two front teeth at the top of their mouths anyway?
You're right... if it were about Britons, they'd have also found that gamers have bad teeth and eat bland food!
Also, at the other commenters, I agree that it's a rather silly study, but your anecdotes about being a thin 20-year-old happy gamer do not magically make the study invalid--it's statistics, droogs. The study is invalid if they decide that, obviously, playing games makes you fat, depressed, and old; drop in the old C-is-not-C phrase here.
Sometimes I think about times I spent playing games and it seems like such non-achievement, so far from being anything real, that it's like big chunks of my life just gone for no return. All those times I killed ten Fozzbears and three Greater Fozzbears in Wow so some dude with a questionmark over his head could tell me to kill ten greater Fozzbears and three Dire Fozzbears, well, in retrospect that time could perhaps have been better spent. But then the time I played right the way through Quake on co-op with three friends, that was pretty much awesome.
I guess it comes down to what you want your life to have been about when you look back on it from your deathbed- do you want to count your achievements in the wider world, whatever their magnitude, or how many Dire Fozzbears you did away with and how epic your mount was. It doesn't really matter which, as long as you can have your expectiations set.
Everything is a waste of time. Your wastes of time are no more and no less valid than anyone else's wastes of time. If you don't enjoy games, don't play them. If you do enjoy them, play them. I'm quite sure you have activities that I would consider boring and pointless, but I'm not going to tell you to do something "real", because it's your life and you can waste it any way you choose. The simple fact is, different people have different interests. I can't believe I had to waste my time explaining this....
I'm not sure how the author can draw the conclusion that gamers are fat and miserable, surely it should be that gamer are fat *or* miserable. The article states that male gamers are more likely to have a higher BMI than non-gamers, but does not anything about the BMI for females. Similarly, the article states that female gamers are more likely to be depressed than non-gamers, but does mention anything about the mental state of male gamers.
So unless the sex of gamers is not mutually exclusive (admittedly that would explain a lot about gamers) then the author really needs to learn a little more about Boolean logic.
Who did the survey means nothing. Who validated it is a key point.
If they polled the same number of people in one of our over-crowded penitentiaries they'd have reached the conclusion that some large proportion of them have prior arrest records.
Conclusions are meaningless unless you have the details of the study.
...really don't have the patience for gaming other than a bit of dabbling. Don't enjoy shopping, power over other people, jewellery, etc. either, so likely I am rather atrophied in the reward-centres of my brain. Serotonin deficiency according to my doc. (Yes, I am medicated, which takes the worst off the edges of it).
Online social networks tend to be things I get dragged into by friends who prefer to communicate with me through them (I prefer plain-text email), but I really don't see the point in constantly updating the world on what colour my poop was this morning.
I'm atypical, but I knew that already.
Regardless of the merits of the study mentioned in the article, it has to be said (again):
Most ignorant numskulls who visit IT news sites haven't got a clue about the meaning of statistics. Should someone do research on that, too?
In time: I am 35, but neither fat nor miserable. And I don't even game, mind. Or does footie count?
"Male gamers generally had a higher Body Mass Index (BMI) values than non-gaming boys."
When are they going to stop using this completely useless, Victorian, vague observation, for real scientific purposes.
I have about the same, if not lower, BMI as Mike Tyson and i'm 6 stone overweight with pure flab. the "ideal" ratio of weight to height, as recorded over 100 years ago, bears no relevance to today, as nutrition is completely different, and fails to take into account any difference between fat and muscle.
I'm 36, underweight and don't have time to play games. For all these reasons and more, I am depressed. Proper depressed, with two kinds of pills and everything. You'd be amazed how close a three-way decision between Rock Band 2, an early night, and a warm bath with a bottle of vodka, the entire contents of the medicine cabinet and a sharp blade can be sometimes.
I used to play games -- back around 2003 or so. I can assure you that I was fat. Later I got a job, and this forced me to socialized in "real world" and this along with few things in my life made me gave up computer's entertainment all together. I still have a belly, but it's not as bad as it used to be...
I can say from my personal experience people who "spend time on the computer" over six hours -- downloading torrent, movies, porn, games, you name it...
ARE OBESE...
PS: If you have two face book account one for "real friend", and second for "online friend" than you DO HAVE A PROBLEM!
To be really thorough, they should do a study of say 1000 males looking for conditions such as being overweight, depression, etc. and then see how those correlate to leisure activities, such as how many overweigh, depressed males watch a lot of TV, or lots of books or spend lots of time in chat rooms, or play video games, or spend an inordinate amount of time bowling or drinking at the corner bar, or never make it out of the house because they are always taking care of their kids or something.
I play video games about 3 hours a day, but honestly I don't have much time for the other activities I mentioned, because, well, I am playing games :)
Just singling out gamers for certain characteristics without looking at the prevalence of those same characteristics among the population who do other "sedentary" activities is rather biased. I think everyone knows that the world would be a better place if we all excercised regularly, said our prayers and ate our veggies, but sometimes you just want to go home and relax.
Paris, because anyone with a WoW account knows her alter ego Haris Pilton.....plus I can't figure out another icon to use in conjunction with this post.
I very greatly doubt that gaming makes you fat. Gaming itself does not force you to have bad eating habits, nor does it tie you to the chair and remove your ability to exercise (or think, for that matter).
Gaming is just another activity, a hobby that one can adopt or not.
Now, I would be much more inclined to believe a study that declares that insecure, insufficiently-socialized people with poor communication skills and little respect for their own body (or a poor grasp of personal health) might have a greater than normal tendency of turning to computer gaming (and why not so-called social networks as well) and adopt it as a replacement for more conventionally social activities where their shortcomings would be much more apparent.
if they base obesity entirely on bmi, i can just as easily say that most gamers are depressed, 35 year old weightlifters. I've got a lot of muscle on my frame, big shoulders, and i'm only 5'8. Hardly any fat on me (i'd like to get some better abs), but my bmi puts me in the obese range because muscle weighs 9x more than fat.
Fed up with life? Check. Enjoy the odd computer game? Check. A bit of a tubster? Yup.
And they even guessed my age right.
People who are not physically active are inactive. That's why chairs were invented.
If you can do something fun, communicate or get a job done without getting up off your butt and expending effort then why not?
It would be silly not to. Wouldn't it?
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