The Cyber Effect (10 page)

Clinical studies—and observations we can all make about people in our lives, or even ourselves—show us that impulsive individuals have a harder time with self-control. They can lose themselves more easily in an activity and in the moment. They tend to be comfortable with, or seek out, risk. They have more difficulty stopping an activity that is rewarding to them but that may be self-destructive or dangerous.

We know from one study that
children and teens diagnosed with some behavioral disorders are more likely to become addicted to the Internet. What is interesting is the gender component. It breaks down like this:

What does this say to me? Let's remember that correlation does not imply causation. There are predispositions and tendencies at play, and there could be more reasons for this than impulsivity. For example, a
boy who has been diagnosed with ADHD may also be socially disconnected from his peers. These boys can be physically rough, impulsive, and nonengaging. Misunderstood by their classmates and unappreciated on the playground, they may gravitate to the computer.

And children with ADHD are highly spirited and restless and have a hard time focusing, and therefore could be put in front of a computer screen more often. If given a highly exciting, stimulating, and ever-changing game to watch and interact with, they can become engrossed. Parents may even say things like, “Gosh, he's a different child when he's playing video games. He's finally sitting still!” For a parent, seeing a hyperactive child sitting immobile (for once) in front of a computer screen might be a welcome sight.

Some parents may believe they need to find ways to “tire out” their ADHD kids. But I would argue that the child already may be exhausted—and needs to do less, not more. Creating quiet time may be more important, not giving him more activity or stimulation. A scent diffuser or a lavender- or orange-scented candle burning may help—these scents are known for their therapeutic effects. In fact, any child would benefit from a quieting experience, like sitting in a room with low lighting, just talking with a parent or listening to a soothing audio-book.

The gaming industry will never forget the video game crash of 1983, known in Japan as “the Atari shock.” Revenues were peaking at around $3.2 billion in 1983 and then fell to around $100 million by 1985—a drop of almost 97 percent. A number of explanations were offered at the time, from the end of the teenage fad for gaming to market saturation, and then there was a disappointing launch of
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
adventure video game, developed and published by Atari. Whatever the reason, the crash was brutal—and one the gaming industry was determined not to repeat.

Now far bigger than the U.S. film industry, and bigger than network and cable television, the gaming industry brings in $66 billion annually. A big game like Vivendi Universal's
World of Warcraft
(often
called
WoW
) can spend years in development and cost as much as $60 to $100 million to produce. With that commitment of money, talent, and time, it's no surprise these games are so ingeniously compelling, or that game design teams have a sense of pride about how “addictive” their creations are, and about the level of audience engagement and investment they engender.

Fun failure and other hooks are built into successful games in order to keep players playing. A well-designed game is supposed to cast a spell over players—and make playing irresistible and compulsive. Anticipating the release of a new game fuels the frenzy. Even before a much-anticipated new game is launched, fans begin preordering it online, and if they fail to get their new game, there's frantic participation in the so-called secondary markets that sell prized content online at auctions.

Of course, that's the point, isn't it? Entertainment is supposed to be entertaining. Hollywood hopes to make movies and TV shows that are engrossing. The book publishing industry hopes to release books that “you can't put down.” When an audience finds a form of entertainment that is super-gratifying, you hear about it in the signs of compulsive behavior—sleeping in line on the street to buy Bruce Springsteen concert tickets, binge-watching the entire series of
Making a Murderer
over one weekend, waiting up until midnight for the release of the latest
Star Wars
movie.

When Disney invests millions of dollars to install a new ride at one of its theme parks, the goal is to offer something new and newly exciting—and a ride that people will come back, again and again, to experience. The point of these thrilling rides is that you are supposed to feel like you are in danger when, in fact, you are not. What about an entertainment that seems safe but may be dangerous?

Andrea Phillips, a game designer with Transmedia, told the technology news site
Thenextweb.​com
that she believes that different
compulsive behaviors are “produced” by different games:

It's interesting that she uses the word
evil
—and by that, I assume she means
manipulative
. In forensic psychology, we don't use this word.
Evil
is a primitive construct, a return to the days of fearing the unknown. As a profiler, I think it can tell you more about the person using the word than it does about whatever they are attempting to describe.

Phillips describes “compulsion loops” as tasks that are repeatedly required, done over and over by the gamer in order to reach the next level of play. Game designers intentionally employ these loops, fully aware that they are derived from behavioral experiments of classical conditioning. They are similar to the hooks that encourage excessive gambling, using positive reinforcement to create addictive patterns. When the designer talks about players, it sounds a little like she's talking about lab rats that are being trained.

Phillips explains:

A high engagement level is a sign of a successful game—and “good” game design. An example would be
World of Warcraft
, where gamers are in an immersive environment designed to keep them playing as long as possible—and that means extreme time commitments of uninterrupted hours spent engrossed and immobile—because there is no designed “end” to the game. No resolution, no grand finale.

Do game production companies ever grapple with the fact that they are producing games that are consumed by young audiences and encourage excessive playing? What is their ethical responsibility to the well-being of the public? Food manufacturers have to list caloric content and ingredients on their packaging in the United States. Fast-food companies like McDonald's and others have relented, under intense scrutiny and long campaigns against heart disease, high blood pressure, and obesity, to offer meals that are healthier. But so far, the regulations governing games are similar to the ones governing Hollywood films: They are given a rating for content, which measures its acceptability in terms of sex, violence, and other mature themes.

So what about player well-being?

Should there be a measure of irresistibility, as in
Most Likely to Cause Immobility and Addictive Behavior
?

I believe that there is an element of human exploitation in these game designs. And as much as they claim to be superrealistic, they don't involve players in a way that a real soccer game or real basketball game would. In a real game, as it goes into a second half or final quarter, a player's energy dissipates. The game becomes actually less difficult, due to the tiredness of most of the other players. The pace slows down. In the final quarter of a basketball game, the players are wiping off their sweat with towels and they are sometimes out of breath. This is a natural progression, and something we don't even notice as spectators because it is so universal, a natural law of game playing.

The opposite occurs in most online games. The longer you are playing, the more difficult the game becomes. You enter new worlds, new levels, where a higher skill level is required in order to succeed. As you play, you become more fatigued—and possibly hungry or sleep-deprived. You're barely awake and conscious. And your willpower is low and your judgment impaired. To stop playing at this point actually requires too much energy.

I call this
unnatural game design
. Why not make levels easier instead of harder as you progress? Because millions of dollars have been invested, and teams of brilliant designers have been employed, to keep you playing, and playing, and playing. In multiplayer games, the game
goes on without you—and often your gaming cohorts online will try to convince you not to stop.
You can't quit now! We need you!
If you have been marathoning for hours, as gamers are wont to do, each hour invested in a game makes it harder to walk away. Your success can feel like a matter of life and death.

And, as we know, it can be.

A camera records a young German boy sitting at a desktop computer. He has short blond hair and baby fat in his cheeks. My guess is he's about thirteen or fourteen years old. In the short video that's been uploaded on YouTube, he is seen avidly playing an online game. His eyes are glued to the screen. Something upsets him—the game doesn't go the way he hoped. He begins rocking back and forth in his chair. Things seem to get worse, and he begins hyperventilating, pounding his fists on his keyboard. “Think positive! Think positive!” he chants to himself, while rocking. Suddenly he laughs maniacally, as if he's totally out of control.

“What? What's this?” he begins screaming at the screen. The game is going terribly, and he can't get control of himself. He screams louder and louder. He is foaming at the mouth; his breath becomes shallow, his voice hoarse. He begins pounding even more violently on the keyboard—and keys begin to fly behind him, and other plastic pieces. He chants: “I don't need help,
I don't need help!
”

But doesn't he?

If you don't believe that young people have trouble quitting an addictive online game after they've logged eight hours of play or more, then go on YouTube and check out “Gaming Freak Outs.” These are viral videos of kids—usually teenage boys—becoming hysterical while playing an online game. These videos are popular for teen viewing because they are extreme and therefore entertaining. But for me, as a cyberpsychologist, it's pretty hard to find them funny.

So engrossed in playing a game, and so invested in success and continuation, a gamer becomes inordinately distressed when he makes a mistake, or is interrupted by a person in the real world (often a younger sibling), or is told that he must stop playing, usually by a parent.

What happens next is a tantrum and meltdown and breakdown rolled into one. Gamers scream and cry, explode into obscenities, throw their Wii remotes into a TV screen—and sometimes break it. There are many videos of small children, under nine, shouting words they shouldn't know yet while being pulled away from violent shooting games like
Call of Duty
, which they shouldn't be playing.

While teens and other gamers love to watch freak-outs and cheer and laugh and share their favorites, what they are seeing is really a kind of dissociative episode, because these young people no longer have a handle on reality or even a memory of it. (As
many as 41 percent of the participants of a 2009 study said they played video and computer games to escape reality.) The only world they recognize in that moment is the gaming world. It is an all-consuming, compulsive behavior. The only thing they care about is succeeding at the game and satisfying their craving to play.

But it's actually even worse than that. These freak-outs, cruelly recorded by people who are supposedly “loved ones” and “friends” of the gamer, are then posted online. The gamer who is experiencing a terrifying breakdown—which is truly not funny—will be humiliated again and again, possibly for the rest of his life, as fellow gamers and other strangers around the globe watch his freak-out and cry with laughter.

The humiliation is also eternal. That's the online
escalation
piece of this new behavior, something that technology makes possible. Prior to the Internet, the proverbial “sore loser” of a kickball game on an outdoor playground might dissolve in tears but would be soothed, and the scene would be over in a matter of minutes. Kids being kids, that playground tantrum might not be forgotten immediately, but it would likely pass into folklore, and the memory of it, even for the sore loser, would fade in time. There would be no actual record of it. Online, a freak-out can last forever.