Study finds gaming too long before bed is a bad idea

- only 17 subjects
- only males
- only 'violent' video games
- no comparisons to other stimuli such as violent tv shows, or non violent games

seriously, do people even bother to try to badmouth video games anymore?

over half a year ago, i was playing 'violent' games nonstop throughout the day, including when i went to bed. at this point my computer died, and i couldnt afford to replace it. since then, i havent played a single game, focusing instead on more activity on neoseeker, and picking up some old web coding projects of mine. ill tell you now, i havent noticed a damn difference.

i remember ages ago i had played super smash bros. 64 all night and when i finally pried myself away for some sleep in the early morning i could not stop my mind from racing for the life of me. couldn't fall asleep for hours, it was actually kinda awful.

however anymore i do game often before bed and feel that i rest pretty well. i think the former was a case of really bad overstimulation.

Judging from the article it sounds like a really poorly done study, so I don't think you can really draw too many conclusions from it in all honesty.

However I must say in my own personal experience when I play any game (violent or otherwise) directly prior to attempting to go to sleep, I do sometimes find my mind racing and find it difficult to drift off. This applies to film/tv as well. Although not books, reading appears not to have this effect. Could mean it's the visual stimulus, as oppose to just any stimulus?

I usually game before going to sleep and once I make it to bed I crash within 10-15 minutes and thats because I am watching tv and I get caught into the shows instead of actually attempting to go to sleep. For this study to be more accurate they would have to get hundreds of individuals so they can compare the results.

I played Borderlands 2 last night and I slept pretty well.

The study is a bit biased though. It's basically sensory overload and can also occur if you watch TV. Essentially, your brain is still processing the information so it doesn't really matter if it's video games, a movie, or watching TV. You can also correlate reading making you sleepy as a part of this whole dilly-o as well.

Seems sort of obvious, honestly. Though I don't think it's necessarily exclusively pertaining to "violent" video games, but action-oriented games in general.

You can't get your mind racing and then just shut it off the same way you could if you were already relaxed.

I wouldn't pay much attention to this study >.> , they only had 17 boys I'd hardly call that a majority, and for only two nights. They need to repeat this study a lot more before any conclusion is to be made.

I play video games 6-8 hours a day as a 9th grader in High school,and I see no negative effects. I still have a 3.2222 GPA out of 4.

As a result of exposure to violent stimuli or not, I've learned that when I overstimulate myself before trying to fall asleep it flatass doesn't work. The activity doesn't have to be anything as engaging as a video game either.

If they really gave two shits about this, I'd imagine they would attempt to isolate the chemical(s) in the brain, or region, that react to such stimuli. Figure out just how subjective one's reaction to violent games are when they're in REM by monitoring the brain composition. Not simply how they said they felt after waking up, or depending solely on EEG readings.

Specifically violent games for 50-150 minutes or all games in general?

Doesn't seem to be alot of info on the control variables not to mention the very small target audience of 17 people. What else were they doing? Were they over tired, do they do anything to help them relax when falling asleep such as listening to music, etc? Did they have any stimulants before hand such as coffee?

Scientists actually reckon that it's not how much sleep that you have but the quality of it that is more important. Did they actually feel better rested after sleep if they played a game or not?

I wouldn't expect games to be just the only factor in that, anything could lead to it, stress, tv, etc. Likelyhood is that if someone does this pretty much every night to the point it's a habit, then the body will adapt anyway.

I know this has been taken from another article, but it just seems like a very poorly attempted study for the sake of trying to complain about violent games again.