BYU Video Game Study

A study recently released by BYU links video game to marijuana use and low self-esteem. (Check out the Deseret News article here). The study polled 813 single college students from around the nation. Students that played video games daily were two times more likely to smoke weed than those that only played video games occasionally and three times more likely to smoke weed than those that played no video games. Girls that regularly played video games also had lower self-esteem.


Although this link is evident from the study, it does not demonstrate whether video games cause these behaviors or whether playing video games is merely an outward expression of people that already have these characteristics. Since this article has been published there has been a large outcry from the gaming community. So much that the writers of the study have released a statement reiterating this. “The study absolutely does not find that videogames cause this behavior. We’ve repeatedly tried to emphasize that in the study itself. It was all correlation.”


Even if they claim not to have found any causation, the pictures they posted along with the article seem to suggest that video games are bad. Look how depressing and life ruining video games are. (Though they match our blog's theme very nicely.)