News for the Week of September 24, 2006
Videogame "addiction" and safety are coming up in tech news more and more, and the term "addiction" seems to have increasing validity among psychiatrists. This week, a look at the subject, as well as a step forward for videogame safety (something that needs more public awareness)...
Latest on game addiction
Some kids are more prone to addiction than others, and based on this report in TechNewsWorld, it's the players most in need of positive reinforcement who are more prone. The reward systems built into videogames are what make them so addictive, the article cites psychologists as saying - for example when the game tells a player he's done a good job. AOL Games recently conducted a study that found 10% of 14-to-55-year-old gamers surveyed admitted they'd become addicted; about 4% "actually hide their gaming use from family and friends"; 33% admit to having missed a favorite TV show due to their gaming habit, 19% have skipped a meal, and 25% have played games "all night until the sun came up." If people think online games are a grownup thing, there is evidence to the contrary: "45% of 'heavy gamers' are under 18 (and "heavy gamers" only account for 3% of the overall gaming community)," found a recent NPD Group survey cited by ArsTechnica.com. "The much broader 'avid console gamers' are one-third kids." Another kind of tech addiction, "Internet Addiction Disorder," is explained by anthropologist Stephen Juan at the University of Sydney in TheRegister.com.
A first for videogame safety
This is an online-safety risk that hasn't really hit parents' and policymakers' radar screens yet, but it's no less risky than social networking. In fact, it is social networking. Game players with Internet connections (such as Xbox Live) can voice-chat and text-message with strangers just as much as social networkers can, if not more, and have been doing so for some time. The online-safety first is that NCsoft Corp. - maker of the massively multiplayer online game City of Heroes - recently announced its "PlaySmart" program "to warn its customers about real-world risks in the virtual universe of its games," the Associated Press reports. Part of the progam is to put PlaySmart guidelines for parents in its games' packaging by the end of the year. Among the tips is "Parents should not only monitor and play the games with their children, but also should be aware of the potential for social interaction that can include voice chat and text-message exchanges." Another key one: don't share your username and password with friends. NCsoft says that kind of sharing is one of its biggest sources of customer complaints. Though physical safety isn't an issue, "accounts can be stolen outright or pilfered of virtual goods such as rare weapons or armor that the true owner spent months or years accumulating."
In other news...
- Principal sues MySpacers. The next big challenge of the social-networking phenomenon is beginning to show up in news reports. This week the Associated Press picked up a story in the San Antonio Express-News about a school administrator suing two students for impersonating her in a MySpace profile (and last week I included an item about a school assignment gone awry with a student threatening to kill a dog in his MySpace page ). Anna Draker, assistant principal at Clark High School in San Antonio is suing the students, both 16, and their parents for "defamation, libel, negligence, and negligent supervision," alleging that the students "set up a Web page on MySpace in her name" and posted obscene comments and pictures.
- Multitasking families. Does your family life feel like this too? A new study by Yahoo and OMD Research (of households in 16 countries!) found that families are packing 43 hours of activity into one day, and technology appears to be part of both the reason and the solution. "Multitasking aided by technology extends most people's day by several hours," ClickZstats reports. It adds, though, that "despite the overlapping activities, 72% of families with children eat dinner together each day." Not that all family communications is offline. "Seventy percent of survey respondents say technology helps families stay in better touch. Mobile phones are a means of communication for 29% of families, and instant messaging for 25%. These emerging technologies bring children to the forefront as decision makers within the family unit."
- Web videos are hot. "More than 106.5 million people," or about 60% of US Internet users, viewed or downloaded a video from the Web in July, according to the latest figures available from traffic measurer comScore . Yahoo, MySpace, and YouTube are Nos. 1 through 3, respectively, in video-viewing traffic.
- MySpace's new safety-ed campaign. The world's largest social site is teaming up with Seventeen magazine, the National School Boards Association, and the National Association of Independent Schools to get social Web safety tips in the hands of more parents and educators. They'll distribute safety brochures (also downloadable in pdf format on MySpace's Tips for Parents page ) to "about 55,000 schools representing grades 7 through 12 in the United States in October," Reuters reports.
- New browser for social networking. Move over, Explorer, Firefox, Safari, etc., etc., now social networking has its own Web browser. I say "move over" because it's quite possible that very social people will use the Flock browser in addition to one of the above, at least while Flock's still in beta and may not have all the features of "traditional" browsers. Flock eases social networking by letting bloggers and profile updaters drag photos into their pages - probably its most attractive feature for social networkers, ZDNET reports (I bet video drag 'n' drop is coming). "There is also support for updated picture notification; you can maintain a Friends list of others who use Flickr or PhotoBucket and be notified when their pictures have been updated." ZDNET adds that "Flock also takes on a new approach to searching." Check out the article to learn about it.
