This study isn't saying if you play video games you'll do worse in school. Its saying if you play highly stimulating games longer than 2.5 hours (or maybe longer than 50min.) before bed you'll have trouble settling down and falling asleep.
Makes sense since all you need is enough stimulation to get your brain going to keep you awake, which can be anything from thinking about work to late night Halo sessions.
The intention of the study is good but I understand why you'd take offense, the media loves to target video games and the industry has become one big scapegoat. Its the new rock n' roll.
Nov 08, 12 at 12:45pm
Jeremy
Personal experience doesn't equal scientific fact either.
Nov 08, 12 at 11:39am
brant lovelady
honestly, i believe this study is a load of bullshit... im a senior in highschool, hav a 3.7GPA out of 4, have my own job and play roughly 10 hrs of xbox every day. i feel fine, my grades r evidently fine, im close to getting a promotion at my job and am 1 of the top 10 of my class. i think this study was done just so parents have a bullshit excuse to control how often their kids can play video games. so to the scientists that performed this study... *bleep* OFF...
Oct 25, 12 at 11:21am
Reason
I've found that browsing the internet just before bed also *bleep*s with my sleep
I think that the results were not really published in a scientific journal (maybe a good mothering tips magazine ). The psychologist would be laughed at for how she handled the experiment. What this tells me is that a local news group heard about the study being done and rushed over to get the conclusion. I wonder how many people actually know how experiments are supposed to be handled? I really dislike having to explain something so simple to people.....
Praetorian_Lord Just because this proved nothing, it actually goes on to prove something else obviously works: Peer review >.> ... This psychiatrists contemporaries are probably laughing in the face of anyone who takes it seriously.
Oct 25, 12 at 6:58am
Darknet
For once, I have to look at a scientific study and go: NO SHIT?!
I knew this already and didn't even know there was a study on it.
Oct 25, 12 at 4:44am
Ben73
I'd say it's probably true. This is why I lay around watching TV shows before bed.
I also never come home from work and go straight to bed. I will shower, watch some TV with a drink, then of to bed. Even if I finish work at 4am, still wont break my habit.
hiigaran, KR_1250 - this is the way science works 99% of the time:
You walk into a research grant office and tell them you want some money to do a study on the effect of playing violent video games on sleep. You tell them you want $100k so that you can recruit (how many? Is there a magical number before you guys will be happy it's enough?) participants. They ask you what other studies have been done in the field. You tell them none. They laugh you out of the office. Why? Because no-one's going to fund a large-scale study without expecting some interesting results out of sheer scientific curiosity. If they recruited 500 gamers over three years and found nothing interesting, it would have been a colossal waste of time and money that they'll never get back.
The solution? Do a small-scale exploratory study (*cough cough like this one*) to see if there's anything worthy of investigation. Lo and behold they found an effect with just 17 people, which if you multiply it out to the population at large might be indicative of a serious problem. So now when they go into the research grant office, they can say hey! We found something interesting but want to test gender effects, violent versus non-violent games, etc. and the funders actually have something concrete for a precident.
That is a very realistic scenario and in principal I fully agree. So do the smal scale experiment. Get your results. DONT F***ING PUBLISH THEM! And do the full scale experiment isolating more variables along the way.
This was not a *cough* exploratory *cough* study as the results were published in my eyes.
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So actually, this has been taken completely out of context and if anything it's fairly positive news for gamers since you can seemingly play for up to 50 minutes will no ill-effects. The only difference is that now there's some evidence in favour of the idea that playing games for more than 50 minutes before you go to bed isn't the best idea if you want to sleep soundly. No shit, I hear you say. Well at least this is proof which can (a) justify future research and (b) serve as a reference point for all those naysayers who want to bury their heads in the sand and pretend there's nothing wrong with their behaviour.
Yeah i have no issue with the results at all. They dont really factor into my life and dont seem wildly unexpeted.
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17 participants for a study like this is about right, don't confuse experiments with non-experiments (there are actually very few of the former in any field). Non-experimental studies aren't about controlling every single variable, they're about taking as many relevant ones into account as you can so that when it comes to analysis or reporting you can say exactly how and why your findings are limited. If the conclusion was something like 'Therefore, violent video games before bed cause you to lose sleep' then yeah, you've got a point - but I guarantee you it was something more like 'Therefore, an effect was found for Australian teenage boys which is unsurprising but potentially worrying, and warrants further investigation'. Which is spot on.
In that respect again i agree. I still think that if this study was suggested as an exploratory one then they should have kept the results private until a more comprehensive study has been done. These results are just too limited to be of any real interest for me. I have also had so many sleep issues in the past that could have affected a study like this so were i particepating i'd want far more variables tested.
You do make some decent counterarguments though. My problems all seem rather personal and inwardly focussed. I guess it does depend on the exact intention of the study and it did no match what I would have been interested in. It seems they have missed out some genuinly interesting aspects to focus on an obvious one.
As you said but at least there is science backing what seemed like an obvious effect. Thats always good i suppose.
Anyone who has gamed too recently or too much before bed can confirm this, leading me to wonder why and how people are giving them money to do research on painfully obvious things.
lol yeah
dunno why ya'll are getting mad and just coming up with mostly arbitrary reasons to "prove this study wrong". I read the article, it wasn't that bad.
Oct 24, 12 at 11:25pm
haalyle
Why didn't they test girls? I'd go by this study a lot more.
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). The psychologist would be laughed at for how she handled the experiment. What this tells me is that a local news group heard about the study being done and rushed over to get the conclusion. I wonder how many people actually know how experiments are supposed to be handled? I really dislike having to explain something so simple to people..... 
I'd go by this study a lot more.