addictions

Nerdfest! Dong tells us about the very exciting nerdfest he had this weekend and how the Xbox 360 controller sucks compared to the keyboard and mouse. And excuses, excuses, excuses about why he didn't win. He's just bitter.

Then he explains why his media center is better than anyone Else's. He may actually have a point here, especially compared to mine. Since I don't have one.

Also, ever not been able to pull yourself away from a game? Sure, we all have. We speak a little about the science of this phenomenon.

Finally, In keeping with … Read more

Only a few years ago, I could shock people by divulging that I don't own a TV. Since Hulu and others let me get my show fix online, I now seem to be part of a growing minority who only have one kind of box at home.

But I still shock people. All I have to do is admit I'm not on Facebook. According to most people I talk to, at least, this is truly strange behavior.

So it's not surprising that so many people rely on social media, for both work and play, every day--a statistic … Read more

Do you sleep with your iPhone? A recent survey found a lot of people who do.

Among 200 Stanford University students questioned about their iPhone habits, 75 percent said they fall asleep with their iPhones snuggled next to them. But they're just as attached to their phones in the daytime.

When leaving for school in the morning, 69 percent said they're more likely to forget their wallets than their iPhones. The phone has also pushed aside other devices--84 percent of the students said they use it as their watch and 89 percent use it as an alarm.

But … Read more

Do you check your e-mail while driving or during an "intimate moment?" If so, you may be one of many e-mail addicts.

E-mail addiction is causing people to engage in risky or inappropriate behavior, according to a study conducted by Osterman Research and commissioned by Neverfail. Released on Wednesday, the second annual "Mobile Messaging Study" surveyed employees at businesses to learn about their e-mail habits.

The study found that 95 percent of those questioned check their business e-mail outside of work, 78 percent while in the bathroom and 11 percent during "intimate moments." (The … Read more

This is not your average Danielle Steel tale. But it is one where the reported facts would surely make Nabokov want to immediately finger his keyboard.

It begins with a simple, everyday event: a 16-year-old Canadian boy met an older woman online while playing World of Warcraft.

The Toronto Globe and Mail described in some detail how the youth from Barrie, Ontario, enjoyed an online relationship with a 42-year-old mother of four from Houston. In our modern, socially entangled world, these things happen.

What perhaps happens slightly less often is everything that reportedly followed. Including the rather difficult ending.

The … Read more

A 14-year-old boy's mother had enough with her son's gaming over the weekend. After turning off the console hoping he would stop gaming, she called police to ask for their help in solving her son's "addiction."

According to the story first reported in the Boston Herald, Angela Mejia had enough with her son's gaming when she found him playing Grand Theft Auto at 2:30 a.m. She told him to go to sleep, but he refused.

"Sometimes I want to run away, too," Mejia told the Boston Herald. "I have … Read more

A new study out of Iowa State University finds that people who play video games for 40-plus hours a week have a harder time focusing on certain tasks than those who play just a few hours a week. Published in the latest issue of the journal Psychophysiology, the study also supports research published earlier this year that found a positive correlation between video game addiction and Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD).

Researchers collected data from 51 Iowa State undergrads ages 18 to 33, about half of whom reported playing less than a couple hours of video games a week, and about … Read more

While recent research suggests that video game addiction is reaching pandemic levels, the prevalence of such addictions is being disputed widely.

Video games are indeed an easy target for many societal ills, not just addiction. Driving home that point, Neils Clark, co-author of "Game Addiction: The Experience and the Effects," on Saturday described in a blog post what he deems 10 game addiction fallacies.

The list of fallacies includes the fact that games aren't drugs, which means that treatment will vary greatly. In addition, because definitions and methodologies used in studies are varied, criteria by which addiction … Read more

Cocaine addiction is notoriously tough to beat. Engineers at the University of Missouri in Columbia, using computational models, think they now better understand why.

"Our model showed that the glutamate transporters, a protein present around these connections that remove glutamate, are almost 40 percent less functional after chronic cocaine usage," says Ashwin Mohan, a doctoral student in the department of electrical and computer engineering. "This damage is long lasting, and there is no way for the brain to regulate itself. Thus, the brain structure in this context actually changes in cocaine addicts."

The team found that … Read more