Online Game Addiction's Impact on University Students: A Case Study at University of Gävle, High school final essays of Mathematics

Download Online Game Addiction's Impact on University Students: A Case Study at University of Gävle and more High school final essays Mathematics in PDF only on Docsity! / 1 HOGSKOLAN TGAVLE AKADEMIN FOR HALSA OCH ARBETSLIV Avdelningen for socialt arbete och psykologi Online Game Addiction Among University Students Lujiaozi Wang Siyu Zhu 2011 International - Degree project, 1SHECs International Social Work Supervisor: Anders Hydén Examinator: Ted Goldberg Abstract This thesis is about the effects of online game addiction on both Swedish and Chinese undergraduate students at University of Gavle, Sweden. It aims at investigating the impact that online games have on undergraduate students at University of Gavle, Sweden. As most of the previous researchers in this area conducted a quantitative tesearch, we decided to do a qualitative research which can help us to get a deeper and better understanding of online game addiction. We chose systems and ecological perspectives as our theory and analyzed our data using the hermeneutic approach. The methodology we used is interview; which entailed four interviews with both Swedish and Chinese undergraduate students. On the basis of the research the results we got are that; most of the students we interviewed are having problems with health and studies because of online gaming; and some of them are having bad relationships with friends and families, however, some of them have a good relationship with their parents. Keywords: addiction, online games, undergraduate students, University of Gavle, qualitative research. S.LReasons of Addiction. 2.0.0. ccc ces seceeee eee ceeeetecsesssesseeetesesnseetsiesntestastiiseeteceenaserese -24- 5.2 Impact on Daily Lives of Computer Game Addicts... ccceecececeerereeeeteeerenee - 26- Chapter 6 Holistic Analysis. 6.1 Undergraduate Students’ Own Reasons and Impacts?........0.c.ccecceeceesereeeereteeereeeeees -32- 6.2 External Factors and Impacts: .......0...cccceccceecesseses sees eeeetesesneseeneeeeusneseeneneeneeeensnteeeneetees -34- Caper 7: DiSCUSSION ..-.esesvscveccsvervecvssnsinerienisansaesesassansnesiasnssnesissnsanetianiesnsnnanesnssnesasiinniines -37- 7.1 Summary of the Results in Connection to the Research Questions. 7.2 Connection to Earlier Research... ccc esesseesesecesesiesseeeceesnseesssenseesaseensentese - 38 - 7.3 Methodological Discussion. .........c.ccccccsseseesesseteee cesses tessneeeenseesnsneseeneeeensesensneeeeneeeees - 39 - 7.4 Connection to Social Work... ccc cece cesses cscset sees teesnse esas sensetasseiseetessenaserese - 40- Chapter 1: Introduction 1.1 Background Nowadays, more and more people are starting to use the Internet. At the same time, online games have become extremely popular among the young generation thus leading to the proliferation of online game addiction on a global platform (Iowa State University, 2011). According to recent researches, online gaming has become one of the most addictive Internet activities to date (Wan & Chiou, 2006). Based on established researches, the thesis is interested in discovering the reasons behind why young people start to play online games as well as how playing such games affects the daily lives and activities of them. Based on information gathered from the Sweden’s Official Gaming Website (2009) the market for computer and video games has grown and continues to grow at an accelerating pace within the Scandinavian regions, including Sweden. Gaming has become a massive industry. Over the past three years, this growth has been seen to teach and surpass 3 billion SEK (which roughly approximate 375 million USD). Even in light of the recent recession the gaming industry has held on strong with an increasing volume of game sales in 2009. Computer games have become a very popular leisure activity among children and adolescents in recent years. In fact, based on popularity alone online gaming garners a larger share of ‘favorite’ votes among young people than physical team sports such as ice hockey and football combined. There are many benefits of the Internet as it not only acts as an entertainment tool, but also an important professional resource for work, communication as well as education. However, despite all of its inherent advantages, the Internet also has its drawbacks. Although the Internet could be very productive, it can have a drastically opposing effect. For some people who play online games, the Internet acts as an enabler. It is used to feed an addiction, which by its very definition interferes with daily life, work and personal relationships. According to a report of Syracuse University on the Science Daily website (2007), online games may have significantly negative consequences, especially in the lives of students, through causing distraction and interfering with important reaction of out-game life actions, such as academic performance, health and social life. For purposes of clarity, in the rest of this thesis online games will also be referred to as "Massive Multiplayer Online Games" or "MMOG". 1.2 Aim of the Study The purpose of this study is to formulate a theory as to what causes video game addiction among students in university. The overall goal is to determine what causes students to become addicted to computer games, while trying to understand more about the social norms and daily habits of computer game addicts. 1.3 The Research Questions A. How did these undergraduate students become addicted to online games? B. How did online games affect undergraduate students in University of Gavle? 1.4 Disposition In chapter 2 we will present the earlier researches in this field as we have used in our study. In chapter 3 we are going to present theoretical perspective, system and ecological perspectives. In chapter 4 we will explain the process of investigating as a qualitative research, and evaluate ethical considerations, reliability and validity of the tesearch. The result of our qualitative research will be present in chapter 5 and divided in several sorts of themes according to research questions. In chapter 6 we will discuss the results we obtained, relating to the aims, earlier researches, theories and future study. Appendix will enclose the qualitative interview guide. 10 Further literature reviews in this area revealed an emotional point of view that aimed at explaining the reason. According to Diao (2003), everyone needs to express their feelings and thoughts. As such, when a person cannot express himself or herself adequately he (or she) may get depressed. Therefore, one way to release this depression or pressure would be through playing online games, which enables gamers to chat and play with other friends and players on the internet. Another explanation of why young people become addicted to the internet was proposed in that they were trying to avoid societal pressure. According to Diao, some young people are naturally too shy to talk to strangers face to face in reality, but when surfing the Internet or playing online games, they can be whoever they want to be. As such, they can chat with the people they met online without feeling any of the regular social pressures that come with physical meetings. (Ibid) Internet Addiction: Symptoms and Evaluation Internet addiction is a relatively new phenomenon in which social workers and psychologists are unaware of and are thus unprepared to treat at present. Mu (2006) points out that some of the main symptoms of Internet and online game addictions, including the decrease in social friend network and face-to-face interactions with others, become infrequent while the member of friends in the virtual world exponentially increases. Ultimately, the psychokinesis becomes weaker and weaker over time. This means that after a long time of playing online games, the players begin to realize the dangers of online gaming. At this point players generally try to play less as they try to orient themselves back to the demands of society. However this is mostly unsuccessful as it almost always ends up failing. Zhang (2007) and Zhuo (2007), who also researched on the same topic, reported different results on the online game addiction and the finding supported the same symptoms. With regards to undergraduate students who were addicted to the Internet or online games, Zhang indicated that most of these students had bad grades in their universities. Moreover, Zhuo stated that the physical symptoms of Internet and online 11 game addiction were cervical spondylosis, neurasthenia and insomnia. Cervical spondylosis, a fairly common symptom of many MMOG players, is essentially a spinal injury which results from keeping the same sitting position for hours while playing games. This situation is more often than not leads to injuries to the cervical vertebra on the spinal cord. Neurasthenia on the other hand is a neurological disorder that results from when players engage in hours and hours of game playing with no virtually sleep intervals in between. Even though players may end up playing games for a long time before going to sleep, their brains still keep running and experiencing phantom excitement from playing games even when they are asleep. This causes sleep sensitivity and disorders which induce addicted players to wake up several times during the night and as such this leads them suffering from insomnia which can cause mental anxiety and eventually result in nervous breakdowns and general tiredness. Once the nature of physical and mental symptoms that manifest in MMOG addicts had been determined, we perused in various literatures on this topic to discover the ways through these addiction could be evaluated. One of the useful information sources was obtained from Young (1999), who conducted a study aimed at enabling social workers to better understand, detect and treat Internet addiction. The research by Young focused on the complications that precede an Internet addiction diagnosis. With regards to this research it is relevant in determining the criterion through which to evaluate our interviewees. It would help us to determine whether the individuals were addicted to online games or not. To create a more holistic point of view this thesis also aims to identify the negative consequences associated with using the Internet and the ways to assess and identify the reasons causing the onset of pathological Internet use. To facilitate this, we reviewed existing research findings from Hall and Parsons (2001), whose work offers a framework for working with individuals who have presented some common symptoms associated with Internet Behavior Dependence (IBD). In their article, these two authors introduced a working definition for IBD, an overview of IBD prevalence 12 tates as well as demographic profiles. They also presented reviews of IBD assessment criteria and treatment considerations. Furthermore, we drew some additional inspiration from a different diagnostic method based on DSM-IV criteria associated with pathological gaming. Unlike the latter this definition narrows down the criteria for identification of online game addicts by requiring that individuals should meet five of eight criteria for Internet addiction in order to be confirmed as an addict. Distinguishing Addiction and High Engagement in the Context of Online Game Playing Charlton and Danforth (2007) considered the distinctions between core and external standards for behavioral addictions as they applied in the specific area of Massive Multiplayer Online Game playing. According to Brian and Wiemer-Hastings (2005) through DSM-IV, online gaming addiction has been identified by an actual diagnosis, in which most researchers rely on their definition for addiction as the guidance of this document. On the other hand, Kimberly and Young (2007) identified and referred to Internet addiction as a new and often unrecognized clinical disorder that impacts the ability of a user to control Internet use to the extent in that it can cause relational, occupational, health and social problems. Syracuse University (2007) reported that being addicted to games may lead to a decreased sleep, interference with the demands of society life including socializing and academic work. In addition, Bowman (2004) claimed that Internet addiction should not be mixed with other definitions of addiction that involve neurological or biological explanations for what addiction is. He also said that Internet addiction should be viewed as “a process addiction, which is conceptually different than a substance addiction and should focus more on mediating and moderating processes between media use and corresponding effects like addiction” (Bowman, 2004, p. 114). Despite the fact that it has yet to be officially recognized as a disorder according to Young (2007), many universities and hospital clinics have set up outpatient clinics, programs and campus support groups to help those who are addicted to the Internet. 15 3.2 Bronfenbrenner Ecological Systems Theory and related concepts Bronfenbrenner described an individual environment as a hierarchy of systems with four levels of circles surrounding the individual (see figure 1), including Microsystem, Meso-system, Exosystem and Macrosystem. The Microsystem shows a pattern of activities and personal face-to-face relations within the immediate settings (such as family); the Meso-system is referred as the interactions between micro-systems, for instance, it could involves experiences at school related to experiences at church; the Exosystem includes the connections and activities that occur between these settings, and at least one of them normally includes the (developing) person (such as social services); and lastly the Macrosystem comes in place, which consists of the patterns of the (developing) person’s culture, things such as media come into play here (Bronfenbrenner as presented in Greene, 2008, p.217-218). Figure 1: An Ecological Model of Human Development 16 Macrosystem Altitudes and ideologies of the culture Exosystem Social sarvices Neighbours Mesosystem Individual [sex, oge, health, etc) Local politics Source — McLaren and Hawe (2005) pp. 6-14 There are three important and significant concepts that are typical for Bronfenbrenner’s ecological system theory. We believe that these are the most important concepts for our study as most of our interviewees are focusing their time on computer games due to their environment changing drastically. All of these three significant concepts focus on the individual’s linkage to his/her cwrent environment. 3.2.1 Relatedness Relatedness functions as a bridge that connects an individual with other people and/or creates a human relationship. It occurs not only in an individual’s closest network such as the family, but also in less personal acquaintances such as people in a civic group. Having people whom you have good relationships with is very important to an individual’s human development (Greene, 2008 p.210). 17 3.2.2 Niche and Habitat Bronfenbrenner (1989) describes ecological niches as “regions in the environment that are especially favorable or unfavorable to the development of individuals with particular personal characteristics” (quoted in Greene, 2008). Different regions and/or areas can affect an individual in many different ways. Habitat is an individual’s natural surroundings within a cultural context (Ibid, p.212), for instance, an individual’s home. An individual’s habitat may affect an individual favorably or unfavorably depending on the individual’s personal niche with the area. 3.2.3 Adaptiveness As we mentioned previously, different places may affect an individual in different ways. Adaptiveness is a term used concerning an individual’s active change of environment to alter the individual’s development to the better. Goodness-of-fit occurs when an individual and his/her environment matches perfectly, thus helping an individuals’ development (Ibid, p.213). Chapter 4: Method 4.1 Philosophy of Science Our position of philosophy of science is hermeneutic. We are aware of that Kvale and Brinkmann (2009) mentioned that there are many different kinds of philosophies of science, but hermeneutic became first priority. Interpretation of meaning is the central theme from a hermeneutic viewpoint and emphasis is put on the interpreter’s foreknowledge of a text’s subject matter. Since it aims to gain a valid and common understanding of the meaning of a text (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009, P50-51), we believe it will help this research to interpret the interview conversations, make themes, analyze data and at last find an appropriate results due to its focus on understanding the meaning or the themes, and also the connections between each theme. 20 other word, objective hermeneutic approach will help us find out the underlying meaning and connect different parts of data into a whole explanation. During this process, an alethic hermeneutic approach will be also used in comparing our pre-understanding of online-game addiction and new understanding which will be got from this research. Pattern of aN Sub interpretation interpretation’ Whole AT™ Pre-understunding Understanding NL’ wee Figure 2: The Hermeneutic Circles: Basic Version Source - Alvesson, M. & Skoldberg, K. 2009:104 Figure 2, this entire process of emerging patterns of interpretation, textual analysis, dialogue and sub-interpretations should be permeated by the two basic hermeneutic circles those between whole and part, and the one between pre-understanding and understanding. There are characteristics of the two main hermeneutic currents, but they are different rather than contradictory, so that they may be joined in the same tesearch process. The interpretation of the whole text is successively developed by the interpretations of its parts, and conversely the views of the parts are illuminated by the view of the whole. A similar alternation between pre-understanding and understanding is also taking place during the interpretation process (Ibid, p.104). After coming to University of Gavle as undergraduates, we found that many students around us were excited about online games and previously set up online game 21 competitions at the campus. We were attracted by this phenomenon, so we came up with the idea of investigating their online game habits. We found some early research telated to our thoughts on the subject, such as online games may lead to decreased sleep (Syracuse University, 2007). Based on the hermeneutic circle, we followed the circle as we analyzed our interviewed data. We then created the first theme which is health from the data we analyzed, which is a part of the whole. Snowball-sampling was used to find four students to interview. Two of them are Chinese, two are Swedish, and all four of them meet our criteria for game addicted to the online games. According to the hermeneutic principle we created themes and analyzed them by quoting important information from our interviewees. We tried to relate our data with the data from earlier research and found that several parts matched and related them to the whole. Our results were then divided into our four themes. They are: health, family telations, friend relations, and school performance. We came up with these themes by looking at our transcription, and found that our interviewees all had problems with sleep (health theme), and with their diet, as well as having problems with most of their social relationships such as friends and family thus we made it into two themes Celationship with family & friends themes) and lastly we understand that any addiction can have impacts on current studies or work assignments, therefore school became our last and fourth theme. We will analyze each theme in Chapter 5. 4.4 Reliability and Validity In order to be more reliable, we decided to ask certain questions at two different points of the interview (at the beginning and in the end), and to see whether the interviewees would change their answers or give a different reply to the interviewers on a similar question during the interview (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009, p.245). This method can help us to identify whether the interviewees are telling the truth. 22 We used analyst triangulation in the validation that is, having two or more people independently analyze the same qualitative data and compare their findings (Patton, 2004, p 562). For instance, when we were doing the transcription, both of us did a transcription of the same interview. After doing the transcriptions, both of us analyzed it individually. 4.5 Ethical Consideration Before we started our investigations, we had to be well-prepared on our subject. We were very careful when we contacted the undergraduate students as we did not want to emotionally hurt them or label them beforehand. We informed all the participants in the research about the purpose and consent of our project before interviewing. In addition, before recording the participants’ replies we have to ensure that they would be of a confidential nature and anonymity used to protect the participants (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009, p.70-72). Moreover, we tried to avoid words which are negatively changed during the interviews. We thought about the consequences of our study, therefore we tried to reduce the tisk of harm to the participants when we were contacting and interviewing them (Ibid, p.73-74). 4.6 Limitations of the study During the investigation, we only interviewed undergraduate students at the University of Gavle due to the limitations of study area and time. We did not have chance to meet and interview undergraduate students from other universities or from other counties in Gavle. Furthermore, it is difficult for us to identify how many undergraduate students in Gavle are addicted. In addition, there are present language problems. For example, we are Chinese who study in the international program in English in the University of Gavle and cannot understand Swedish well. When we interviewed the two Swedish students, the communicating language was English. 25 doubt that the games are designed to be attractive and addictive. The purpose of designing the games is to make the game players never want to stop playing. Thus, they are looking for ways to make their games more attractive and interesting, so the players will spend lot of time and money in the games. From what he said, we can see that not only her own willingness to win, but also the game itself is designed addictive, which means they attract people keep playing without stop by providing gorgeous scenes, challenging stages, upgrading systems, role playing, rewarding strategy and so on. Thirdly, the reason of being addictive to the players with computer games could be their friend networks. All the four interviewees said that many of their closest friends are actively playing games and quite active. In this case, we believe that influence by their friends is also an important reason for online games addiction. “Ze Jist time I played computer online game is because one of my best friends strongly suggest me playing it”, i.p.C Said. Curiosity is the human instincts for everyone. If the friends around them play the games and extensively talk about it, it is easily to make people become curious about in the game and hope to try it. Interesting, one of the interviewees said that he would love to play the games only because his friends like to play it. Asi.p. D said that he loves to play it with his friend because “/ may be the feeling of playing it in a team makes me happy or we have common language. If they are not online, I will feel boring to play by myself.” Even though he wants to go out for some other activities, when his friends ask him to play, he give up other activities and play with them since he does not want to say no to his friends. Following with the thinking way, we believe if the online games are more vapidity to make more friends of the players, who does not like to play online games, the situation may be changed. Fourthly, the interviewers who immerse the online games had poor or inadequate social communications and limited number of friends. “7 don’t go out much anymore. used to go out to play with my friends when I was younger. [want to start going out 26 with friends again, but it’s hard because most of them have new friends. It’s hard to Jind new friends as I'm not a very social person.” said by i.p.B. In the investigation, these interviewers mentioned that they sometime preferred to meet friends who would not like to play online games. However, their friends were hardly to play with them because they often have their own close friends. Poor or inadequate social communications could be the main reasons without more closed friends for the interviewees. Further, the online games are easily to become the friends of the interviewees since they have the similar interesting and purpose. Otherwise the game players may fell alone and boring. Last but not least, we infer from the interviews that another possible reason could be their living environment. Among the Chinese students studying at Gavle, online game addiction is a natural effect of them since living in a foreign country, far away from environment and people that they are familiar with. Especially, at the beginning of their study in a new university of Sweden, most of Chinese students have the language barrier (major problem is communication) to meet new Swedish friends. Instead they turn to play online games to find people like them to be friends or to spend their spare time. As a result, most of their friends are rooted on the online community, which contributes to other game addicts. This situation induces them to create a sort of hostile to the environment surrounding them and they prefer to be addicted in the online games since they would have no one in reality to confide. With regard to the Swedish students, one of the main motivations towards them getting involved in the Massive Multiplayer Online Game playing was the new found sense of freedom that they attained after leaving home, where they had to follow their parents’ rules. Once they moved out most of them took advantage of their freedom to do whatever they are pleased, whenever they are pleased and this led to the development of the unfortunate habit of playing Massive Multiplayer Online Game playing. 27 5.2 Impact on Daily Lives of Computer Game Addicts 5.2.1 Health The results showed the congruence on the basis of impact on the health of the game players, and the first aspect is eating habits for both Swedish and Chinese students. They noted a downturn in their health habits with both sides and admitted an increase in the intake of unhealthy junk food as well as eliminated meal times from their schedule in order to spend more time gaming as a direct result of their gaming addition. It should be noted from the nature of the answers the participants gave that both student categories formerly enjoyed healthy eating habits that were however deteriorated by the start of their gaming addiction. “/ send ro eat a lot more junk food when I play games, and I can’t spend an hour cooking food, therefore I’ve gained over-weight,” ip. A said. From the response we can deduce that prior to becoming a gaming addict, these students used to engage in active cooking which is always a healthier alternative than eating junk food. As the student started devoting more of their time to play online games, this habit dwindled in exchange for an easier alternation that would permit i.p. A to commit more time to gaming. As a result, i.p. A gained over-weight and eating habit was changed so thus the health is becoming worse. “J only eat once a day, as compared to eating 3 times a day as I did before when I started playing. I’ve lost about 10 kg because of my new habits, and [ usually Just cook fast food ”, i.p. C said. Rather than substitute good food for junk food, i.p. C completely eliminated meal times from his schedule in order to spend more time gaming. Whenever he eats, it is fast food, thus leading to the same health situation as ip. A, ip. C only eats once a day, which lead ip. C to lose about 10 kg. These two different types of people (the one who are eating too much junk food and those who don’t eat enough) are very common in the online-game community. By these two answers that were gathered from a Chinese student and a Swedish student, not giving yourself time to cook a proper dinner is hazardous to a person’s diet. It is clear to see 30 common themes that were evident in these results was secrecy. The interviewees’ parents either did not know that their children were addicts or that they even played these online games at all. In the case of the Swedish respondents, since they don’t live with their parents any more now, it’s hard for parents to know the true extent of their children’s addiction. It was revealed that though the parents are aware of their children’s gaming habit, they trust their children to make the right decision and can be in charge of themselves. And now they don’t live with their parents, but their relationship with their parents are the same. As i.p. C said, “ Mow, [don’t live with them anymore I can play much, but our relationship remains same”. The fact is that the relationships of the Swedish interviewees with their parents don’t change anymore due to playing online game. The common results for Chinese students revealed that they play online game at least 14 hours every day and hided their game addiction from their parents. As a result of game addiction, they angry frequently with their parents as compared with they did before and had communication problems with their parents. Thus their relationships with family have suffered from negative consequences.“/ spent 16 hours a day Playing online games, but my parents don’t know I play game so much”, ip. A said. Her parents don’t know she was addicted and played so much. This is one of common conditions in that the respondents of Chinese students admitted that they tried to actively keep their addictions from their parents. “Wen / cant go to next game scene, I couldn't control myself and always get angry. I can’t communicate with my parents, L would angry with them for no reason,” as ip. B said. From what i.p.B said we can. infer that he already has a communication problem with his parents because of his game addiction. Most of Chinese who are studying in the University of Gavle are being sponsored by their parents who support for all their expenses while they are here. Thus they don’t want their children to spend up to 14 hours per day to play games instead of studying. So it’s fully understandable that our Chinese interviewees don’t want their parents know they spend most their time on games. On the other hand, 31 Chinese parents want their children to listen to them because they feel they know the best for their children. Even though their children leave home, they hope to contact frequently with them. Actually, the parents do not know that their children have kept addiction habit as a result of playing games with more time of spending. Our interviewee ip.A and ip.B in fact have increased anxiety and communication problems with their parents. Young (1999) referred that fifty-three percent of serious telationship problems happened between addicted students and their parents were caused by Internet addicts. We found that people who are addicted to games will likely have increased anxiety, which may lead to that their relationships with different people will becomes worse and worse. So we can understand why the interviewees 1.p. A and ip. B who are both Chinese mentioned that their relationship with their families is affected by their gaming addiction. The manners of parents between Chinese and Swedish to consider the playing game addiction of their children are quite different. Especially, most of Chinese family has only one child due to the family control policy. Therefore they pay more attention to their children who live and study in aboard, which brings more problems for their relationship due to the addiction of game. In the point of view of Swedish family, the students with the playing game habit have a little problem with their parents because the parents think that their children should be responsible for their own actions. It’s their matter to decide whether the children want to pay more time to play online games. So even though the parents in Swedish family are aware of their children with gaming habit, they trust their children to make the right decision. 5.2.4 Study Habits The fowth theme we have created is study habits. The results revealed that all of the respondents have faced negative consequences in their study habits as a direct result of their online game playing. “4/fer / was addicted to online game, the time I have spent on study became more less,” as (i.p. A) said. One of the common results showed that our interviewees spent less and less time for studying as their gaming 32 hours increased and it also showed that the degree of deterioration extended further with more time playing than less time. Another common result we got as i.p.C said, “My school performance has gone down quite a bit because of games.” They got worse school grade than before. “7 am sired cause I play lot, and sleep less. I can’t Jollow teacher, always distracted in the classroom,” a8 ip. B said. The gaming addiction has a difficult for himself to stay in class. Unfortunately, some of the tespondent’s reactions to this negative trends show that they do not care so much about the influence as long as they could keep playing their games. Wan and Chiou (2006) mentioned that gamers are likely to have bad grades in school, as they tend to give games greater priority, thus reducing the time spent on his/her studies. Young (1996) also stressed that fifty-eight percent of his subjects reported that owing to being addicted to Internet, they have had noted a decline in their study habits and a significant drop in grades and an increasing amount of missed classes. Chapter 6. Holistic Analysis 6.1 Undergraduate Students’ Own Reasons and Impacts: The Chinese interviewees like many other young Chinese children had started playing these games while back home in China. China ranks top of the world’s biggest video game developers who not only make it easy play, but also exciting with its content. As version of the game became older they would upgrade and make it the online games. While the practice was understandable and even tolerated by their parents, things could escalate once they came to Sweden to attend the University of Gavle. Their environment did not just remarkably alter, but also they no longer had familiar support systems nor a familiar language and thus they did not feel comfortable as they were out of their comfort zone (Greene, 2008 p. 212). Because of this change of environment neither of them had their close friends or family here, so they did not have much to do other than games to resort to during their spare time in-between studying. For many native Chinese students, who may have a language 35 be sacrificed just for online games. All those unhealthy doing and bad habit would definitely be detrimental to their physically well-being condition. 6.2 External Factors and Impacts The Social network is a significant part of people’s life (Greene, 2008, p. 218), and man just can’t live a normal life without friends. As the theory suggested that network of friends belongs to the micro-system surrounding our interviewees, they have very closely face-to-face relations with friends. And they are mutually affecting each other. Before addicting to online game, our interviewees spent much less time on internet and online game had not been main portion of their daily life. The same was true that they communicated with and met friends through internet infrequently, however, when becoming addicted gamer they were changed by it, and the change in teturn exerted effects on the network of friends. They had spent huge amount of time playing game with friends, and online games became their common interests and topic. Therefore relatedness between the friends had hardly ever been the same, and internet roaming and online gaming had taken the place as the primary way of activity among the friends. The online game addicted would gradually changed their daily routines for creating more time for online games, the non-online game playing friends tends to be left on the sidelines, and their position were replaced by these games. And then they are quietly replaced in the gamer’s friend circle by other individuals who also play online games. They’ll eventually only hang out with other friends who play games together with them, whom they ‘see’ on a daily basis online. According to Greene this can be understood through looking at the terms for relatedness. Its indirectly states that such a phenomenon as this is bad for a person’s social-life, as one needs to see many kinds of people in order to stimulate the brain in as many ways as possible (Greene, 2008, p. 210). On the other hand, through the results we’ve noticed there are some differences in family relations between the Chinese and the Swedish. Both of the two Chinese 36 undergraduate students concealed the information of their gaming habits and its effects from their parents. Chinese parents are stricter with their children (Mu, 2006), so kids usually try to keep the truth of their online games from their parents. And once the children are away from parents, they would start to indulge themselves. This can be attributed to studying abroad, the environment changed and given that the environment is very important to a person’s development (Greene, 2008, p. 219). Once addicted to online game, the interviewees became a person with different attitude and personality, in spite of caring and expecting from the parents would be the same. They would be angry when failed on the game and even have parents to be blamed for the game failure. Communication to their patents would also turn up to be a problem. As compared to the Chinese students’ parents, the Swedish parents seem more supportive. We assume this is because they believe that their children are old enough to make their own decisions and thus let them live their lives the way they see fit. In the micro-system, the individual is affected by their participation in MMOGs which eventually leads to an addiction that alters the way they live their lives. Not only resulted in social habits change but also caused good essential practices impossible such as staying healthy and maintaining a good academic record. Furthermore we discovered that the Micro-system is affected by individual (Payne, 2005, p. 157), which is evidenced by students spending less time communicating with their parents and friends. Thereby proving that, the Micro-system and the individuals are interrelated and interact with each other. “Social work's concern is with people's social connections and relationships, and social objectives such as social justice and social change as interpersonal work’ (Payne, 2005 p. 142). In spite of geographic barriers, the world is getting more and more connected via the internet. People can now use social sites to connect with others across the globe 37 whether or not they are friends or family or even new acquaintances. One of the teasons why so many people are getting sucked into games is that the games are widely available across the internet, not to mention the fact that there’s games for all kinds of people and as games become more socially accepted, which will increase the possibility of even more people getting addicted in the future. Chapter 7. Discussion 7.1 Summary of the results in connection to the research questions The main method chosen to investigate the problem was through interviewing students of Chinese and Swedish origin at the University of Gavle. Before delving into the study, qualitative research on similar research was conducted and from this basis two research questions were developed. Both of our questions have essentially been proved pertinent by the results. For instance in the case of the causes of online game addiction among university students it is clearly evident from the research that the main proponent that leading many students into this addiction is losing self-control and social isolation. On the basis of our results there are two levels at which students can be categorized who get addicted to MMOGs. For resident of Sweden the main attraction is that most of their friends are playing the same games as such based on Greene’s theory of relatedness they want to join a common human network. On the side of foreign students, the main motivator is to find a place to be belonging with. In addition, attributed it to the inventive and wisely designing the games itself are surely attractive. Though these three reasons are the most obvious culprits, we cannot be assumed that all Swedes and all Chinese students will automatically become online gamers once they join the university. One of the key factors which apply to both groups is personality. Only people with a problem of socializing or participating in though we planned such an interview but unsuccessful due to no response on their end, which resulted in lack of relevant information for this report. At first we were tentatively thinking about having both interviews and observations as our method of choice, but as we are focusing on online game addiction we’d have to go to their homes to do the observations. Because we really don’t want to interrupt their daily lives while perform our observation on them, so finally we decided to do interviews only and would use snowball sampling to find our interviewees. It would of course be better if we could make the observations, but it seemed relatively impossible to keep the observations going without interrupting them too much. 7.4 Connection to Social Work The main tasks of the international social worker are to promote change in society through empowerment and liberation of individuals through helping solve problems in human relationships. The international social worker intervenes at the point of interaction between people and the environment (IFSW, 2011). The online gaming addiction is a recent discovery as far as addictions go. Given that nearly everyone has computers and we use them to conduct almost every part of our lives this phenomenon should be given more attention. Given the growing numbers of young people; especially those in academic institutions, that are falling prey to this addiction it is imperative that action be taken to eliminate or at the very least manage this phenomenon. From a social work perspective online games have contributed towards the deterioration of society through a breakdown in the manner in which individuals interact. The phenomenon has caused a disconnect between the addicts and what is considered ‘out-game’ in the society. Online game addicts are not only anti-social but also display impulsive behaviors as a result of the inability to delay gratification. Furthermore from the research it is evident that online game 41 addiction interferes with the ability of the individual to function properly in a societal setting. With regard to using social work to alleviate the problem it would be prudent to come up with initiatives aimed at involving young people in group activities that do not involve the use of a computer or the internet. It would help improve their social skills and also help them grow a network of non-online friends. Universities should also offer support in the form of welcome service or induction seminars for foreign students where they get acquainted with the country they are visiting as well as get to know students on the ground so that they don’t feel so lonely. 7.5 Suggestions for Future research We have come to the conclusion that this is something that is worth researching about, as this has been a very common phenomena and it will be even more common in the future. Here are a few suggestions; In the process of investigation, particularly on the step of group selection, it would be appropriate to distinguish the people who are just fond of computer game from those the online game addicts. Although both groups are sharing a common character like favorite of computer game, not everyone would doom to be addicted to online game. So a practical evaluation measures are necessary for assessment of who would be prone to the addiction. The research data/information would not be of meaningful and valuable unless group of people who are prone to addiction being accurately selected. In addition, once the group selection has been accomplished and then investigation begins. During the process of investigation, one would be aware of that some people would usually decline the fact that they are addicted to online game. With regarding to that, we would suggest such words as “addicts or addicted” should be avoided when asking a question or describing something related to the interviewees. In the meantime, it is absolutely necessary to distillate the contents of the answers, so as to make the data somewhat useful and reliable. Further, an investigation with group of youngsters who are 42 growing up from different culture background would be worthwhile, because it is highly possible that a different answer could be expected from exactly the same question, which would make the research project more informative and fruitful. References : Ahn, J. and Randall, G., 2008. Computer game addiction. [pdf] Available at: < http://andrewd.ces.clemson.edw/courses/cpse414/spring07/chp/team3.pdf > [Accessed September Sth 2012] Alvesson, M. and Skoldberg, K., 2009. Reflexive methodology: new vistas for qualitative research. 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VandeCreek & T. Jackson (Eds.). Innovations in Clinical Practice: A Source Book Vol. 17; pp. 19-31. Sarasota, FL: Professional Resource Press. 46 Zhang, G. 2007. The study of Internet Addiction Disorder on undergraduate students. Jownal of Wuhan University of Technology (Social Sciences Edition), 20 (4), pp.499-502 Zhuo, M.M., 2007. The symptoms and treatment of undergraduate students’ internet addiction. Journal of China’s Adult Education, Vol.17, 2007 p.39-40 Appendix 1 An eight-item questionnaire to identity whether the interviewees are addicted to online game before we started the interview. This questionnaire comes from Dr. Kimberly S. Yong (2006)’s resources. 1. Do you feel preoccupied with the Internet (think about previous on-line activity or anticipate next on-line session)? 2. Do you feel the need to use the Internet with increasing amounts of time in order to achieve satisfaction? 3. Have you repeatedly made unsuccessful efforts to control, cut back, or stop Internet use? 4. Do you feel restless, moody, depressed, or irritable when attempting to cut down or stop Internet use? 5. Do you stay on-line longer than originally intended? 6. Have you jeopardized or risked the loss of significant relationship, job, educational or career opportunity because of the Internet? 7. Have you lied to family members, therapist, or others to conceal the extent of involvement with the Internet? 8. Do you use the Internet as a way of escaping from problems or of relieving a dysphoric mood (e.g., feelings of helplessness, guilt, anxiety, and depression)? Appendix 2 Interview Guide: 47 General questions of clients: 1.Could you please tell us about your online gaming? 2.How many hours do you play everyday? 3.How’s your feeling when you play games? 4.Could you tell us how do you start playing online games? Impact on family: 1.How’s the relationship between you and your parents? 2.Do you think the relationship between you and your parents has changed since you started spending so many hours playing games? 3.What does your parents think when you spend so much time online playing games? Impact on friends: 1.How was your social network with friends before you started playing online games? 2.Do you think the social network with your friends has changed since you spent so many hours playing games? 3.What does your friends think when you spend so much time online playing games? Impact on studies: 1.How do you manage your studies? 2.Do you think the time you spend on studies has changed since you spent so many hours playing games? 3.Do you feel that your grades are suffering due to the online games? 4.How do you prioritize your time when you feel that you need to study, and play games? Impact on health: 1.Do you feel your diet habit has changed after you play games? 2.Do you tend to stay up late due to the online games? 3.Do you have any problems with sleep since you started playing games?