Can Videogames re-wire your brain to be worse?

I’m a pseudoscience-pleb and I have been thinking about this a lot recently; if videogames can in the long run rewire your brain and how you handle rewards and stimulation.

Basically, my argument is this.
In the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment we saw children given marshmallows, but told that if they did not eat it for a time they would be given another one. The kids were agonized by the test, many ate it, some took bites of it, others looked away.
But the interesting part about this experiment is that it was followed for 12 years, and they found the kids who could resist the marshmallow had done much better in life. Better careers, better income, more happy.

The people who play games like CS:GO, Overwatch or Dota 2 are the same as the kids who could not stop themselves from eating the marshmallow.
It is a lot of short-term gratification, and these game actively teaches you to enjoy short-term rewards. Quick goals. You gain a level. You gain XP. Things that stimulate dopamine rushes, and can cause addiction.
These rushes will in the long run deplete you from being able to have long term goals, and other videogames that are too slow will become boring to you. (Unless that person decides for themselves to stop).

(1/2)

However, it’s now harder to stop because a lot of these videogames rely on gambling mechanics like lootboxes. It is an addiction to these dopamine rushes, and since they seem to trigger the most when we anticipate a reward, not when we achieve something.
This means a game doesn’t have to be GOOD to be addictive, it just has to be addictive. This also plays into the “Sunk cost fallacy”, which means the more you have invested time or money into something, the harder it is to let go of it.

I think this does not mean ALL videogames are bad for you, I don't play Dark Souls but I think someone who does play it might be able to handle things better.
You know there's a goal, and your progress, even though it's slow, you can see that you're moving forward. Dodging and fighting a boss feels great. Failing feels like learning.
This would stimulate long-term rewards.
However, I think current videogames are mentally damaging people, and we already saw this with the previous generation addicted to games like World of Warcraft.

I actually agree. I have been addicted to league of legends for 7 years now. I estimate ive spent 5000-6000 Hours on the game. What do I have to show for it nothing. The games reset after about 45 minutes. I long ago stopped enjoying the game and played to feel that dopamine rush which becomes more and more rare but I play it more and more just to "kill time" and actively feel bad when I dont play it.

This addiction has placed huge stress on my social life, my relationship with my girlfriend. I perform worse at my job and often leave early or go in late or not at all because I want to play just "one game" that turns into 10 hours of gaming.

I have attempted to quit multiple times but never managed. I have written about this addiction many times but my brain tells me ohh you didnt play for a while. Now you can just enjoy the game again play one or two games with friends. Of course thats the lie every addict tells himself.

We need to actively protect our kids from this addiction. Now I am not saying everyone gets addicted no its obviously a complex interaction just as with alcohol where only 10% of users become problem drinkers (funnily enough I was also an alcoholic).

Anyway, I think the main problem is that these games are actively made to be addictive. League of Legends employs a horde of psychologists that shape how the game is designed to make it more "enjoyable". These games need clear warning labels as is seen on cigarettes. Furthermore, they need to acknowledge that a subset of users become problem users and need to facilitate treatment.

Anyway, I hope that at some point I can stop playing :). The difficulty is this game is also a major social interaction for me. Leaving it would mean leaving behind so many friends. It is the same problem faced by heroin addicts who have to cut off their old social circle of users if they want to get clean.

Anyway, yeah I think your right.

Thanks, it's nice to see someone agrees. Basically what caused me to wonder this is because I started playing Overwatch six months ago.
I'm an illustrator who makes art for a living, which means having to sit for hours and hours dealing with problem-solving paint and lines.
But since I started playing Overwatch I suddenly found it insanely hard to focus on painting and drawing.

As if every time I started to work I felt like, this just wasn't enough.
Usually what kept me drawing and painting was the idea of having a finished painting, but that is such a loose concept compared to "capture this point, kill the enemy, move the payload". It wasn't rewarding or stimulating compared to playing the game.

I also tried to quit over and over and kept coming back, because it would be a waste not to get the "daily xp bonus", and of course one game turned into 3-5 hours.

I'm curious if this not only causes addiction, but affects general mental health.
I became very immobile, unmotivated and felt tired all the time during that period and it took me some time to accept that I was actually suffering from depression.

I have heard that depression can be caused by how rewards and stimulation has been affected in your brain, and maybe this is me projecting things, but I've felt so much happier since trying to force myself to enjoy "long term reward" activities again like painting and reading.

I'm totally open to hearing opposing views though.

This is not at all what you claimed in the original thread.
I am happy to see that you have, despite spending the last hour insulting me, read and learned from my posts. Cheers.

Sorry about that this was what I was trying to get across, but I became a big too focused on the whole "dopamine" aspect. I think the "/v/ mentality" got to everyone in that thread and things got a bit crazy.

For context: I posted a similar question in at thread on /v/

Also for context: It became a big argument about how dopamine works and nothing else.

I have a very strong reaction towards people defending pop-science over actual science.

>/v/ mentality
Yeah, its a chain reaction, only takes one guy starting and the whole thread goes to 9001 anger levels.

About your question, consider that there are many people who play video games for tens of hours, or watch pornography, and are happy and satisfied.
They have to be explained away if you will insist that your depression is caused by video games. They aren't a rare minority, in fact I feel most people who play video games enjoy doing so.

Yes it happens
it probably works like food addiction and other such things

That's true. I guess it's possible that the depression is caused by an external factor like procrastination (I know I should be doing something else but I am not) and then as a result self-hatred (I am an idiot for not doing the thing), or something similar.
Whereas most people would be fine with spending all day playing videogames because they don't have bigger goals or things to do.

So the videogames would actually keep you happy until you feel like you want to do something bigger, study, work, and you suddenly feel stuck with videogames.

Do the following experiment:
Think of something that
>1. You should do, and you know for a fact you should do.
>2. You could do, and you know for a fact you could do.
>3. You would do, and you know for a fact you would do.
>4. You aren't doing.

So a think that you have to do, can do, and want to do, but don't do.
If you can think of such a thing, go and do it. If you can't, seek a doctor, and take the drugs he gives you.

I'm at the stage where I CAN'T play a game. For some reason I rewired my brain to the point I can't even play a casual phone game if tried. This is coming from someone that would play 12+ competitive matches on CSGO. Here'sI did to the best of memory.
>Payed for a ridiculous good UD cheat (getting banned would make me relapse) got Global.
>Recorded my reaction of getting Global
>Uninstalled every game I had
>If for any reason I reinstalled, I would uninstall right away
>Begin substituting all that free time with what I actually should be doing (building a business centered on laptop repair, reading, schoolwork)
I like I said it's really hard for me to play a game unless it's with someone else I know IRL, and it feels like a chore even then.

Ironically enough I own 18 high end gaming laptops (GTX 900 series and 1000 series) but it's purely for business.

>going straight for pharmacotherapy without trying psychotherapy first

Long time gamer, I get frustrated easily with tedious tasks. I think you might be onto something, OP.

The ultimate truth behind the marshmallow experiment is that most important decisions in life are between immediate and long-term gratification, and that we form habits of doing one or the other.
I think this probably has something to do with depression. In my case when I was at the lowest point it was because there were a lot of things that I wanted to do and knew that I should do but because I was not doing it I felt like I couldn't, and instead turned to time wasting activities as a coping mechanism. This is a really horrible thing because it becomes harder to resist the more you do it.

This seems like a good idea, I'll have to try it.
I'm making a sort of journal about my recovery from depression that I'll maybe make into a book someday.

You are oversimplifying everything, but if it works as a placebo, go ahead.

how did you feel back then and how do you feel now?

which part

Eh, I kinda feel the same.
There is no reason for me to play a videogame, any other hobby is more interesting. If I play it's because I like my wow guild.

The whole thread. Every single reason every single posters considers for depression can be shown to not by itself caused depression.
There are people who exhibit each kind of behavior you link to depression, without being depressed.

you realize none of your evidence supports any of your thesis and you've done nothing here but waste words on a disingenuous pathos argument

maybe, but they're at least branches of a common root, or maybe they're the same thing viewed from different perspectives

/thread

this
also it seems like youve never played any of the games youve listed or if you have you are a casual shitter with no insight as to what drives a large chunk of the player base to play all day. people would play quake all day.

i have about 3k hours of cs because i just procrastinate and am a lazy pos. i didnt play any vidya for like 6 months but still did and achieved nothing because playing cs just became browsing Veeky Forums and other waste of time bullshit.

This is coming from someone that would play 12+ competitive matches on CSGO. Here'sI did to the best of memory.
>Payed for a ridiculous good UD cheat (getting banned would make me relapse) got Global.
>Recorded my reaction of getting Global

the fact that you are a living breathing real human bean is concerning

first, we dont "feel" dopamine rushes. dopamine isnt in itself responsible for any pleasure.

how do you know the games are causing problems. it might be that people with those inhibition problems or whatever tend to play the game more. it doesnt have to be that the game is the cause.

I don't play video games, yet I still feel like I'm a victim to instant gratification.

At the moment your theory is very weak, you are only looking at a small number of things which could be chalked up to confirmation bias.

Why doesn't everyone become addicted to video games?
How does it compare to other sources of short-term gratification?
How do you decide what is and isn't short-term gratification?

For example compare video games with Chad partying with Stacy. The only delay is the journey to the pub or wherever, during which time Chad will be joking with his mates and gf or something anyway which is not a boring experience for someone with such well refined social skills and charisma, from then on it is short-term gratification for hours and hours. Despite this Chad has a successful career and 6 pack abs.

By any measure it would seem that there is no difference. It is more likely video game addiction has an underlying cause.

That's pretty reasonable, I have probably been looking at this entirely from my own perspective of things, but I came here looking for insight from others and this would make sense. Thanks for replying.

>>How do you decide what is and isn't short-term gratification?

Activities whose pursuant goal is not attained within X units of time. Most popular videogames, such as RPG or shooting games, involve attaining a small goal, such as defeating an enemy, within a couple minutes of play.

Compare this to finishing a chapter in a book, or understanding a mathematical proof. These may require an hour to undertake, but completion rewards achieving a more complex goal.

>>Why doesn't everyone become addicted to video games?

Elon Musk plays Overwatch in his downtime. He spends a larger amount of time pursuing his dreams, which require working towards complex goals.

I'll define short-term gratification: you feel good first and then feel worse afterward, whereas long-term gratification is the reverse.

Your example of "Chad" is a very specific and arguably rare occurrence, how many people do you know with a successful career, good body and hot girlfriend, and how many of those people still need to go to parties to feel good?

Furthermore, "party" is a pretty wide blanket term, most people go to parties to get high and get laid, which are both perfect examples of "short-term" gratification. If you take away those things, "party" now probably refers only to music and dancing and being around lots of people, which isn't necessarily under the "short-term" category, but is only fun for extroverted people (and maybe dancers). Introverts, which I assume most of us are, tend to be more attracted to video games than parties.

Normies think dopamine is a unit of measuring pleasure, because of pop-science and the Youtube community that also butchered IQ and r/K selection and so on.

I couldn't focus on anything besides playing dust 2 in my head. Im sure if I played for money I'd make a killing. Also there's good reason to assume alot of pro CSGO players use some kind of cheat. The amount of control you have over these chests and tweaking it to look more legit is insane. I actually felt some of the kills I got toggled off completely felt more like a cheater than when I was actually full toggled. I would constantly be conscience of how to not look obvious, at time deliberately make common yet not ridiculous mistakes. I feel alot better with where my life is going. Ow though. It probably has to do with how much less junk food I ate to get an edge like monster energy drinks and such.

>This means a game doesn’t have to be GOOD to be addictive, it just has to be addictive. This also plays into the “Sunk cost fallacy”, which means the more you have invested time or money into something, the harder it is to let go of it.
>I think this does not mean ALL videogames are bad for you, I don't play Dark Souls but I think someone who does play it might be able to handle things better.
>You know there's a goal, and your progress, even though it's slow, you can see that you're moving forward. Dodging and fighting a boss feels great. Failing feels like learning.
>This would stimulate long-term rewards.
>However, I think current videogames are mentally damaging people, and we already saw this with the previous generation addicted to games like World of Warcraft.

This is pretty much it. Sunk cost fallacy is huge factor in video game popularity and addiction.
Hence why so many brainlets love WoW. It's shit, blizzard "games" are shit supported by skinner boxes.
This is why popular games tend to be mediocre/bad and genuinely good games are unpopular obscure. Because the good games you play, beat, and are done with it. The skinner boxes keep people playing so more people play because "hey it's popular so it must be good" while relying on the "anything can be fun with friends" crutch. This is also why WoW will never die, the sunk cost is too strong for players to drop it in favor of a different MMO, even if that MMO is objectively superior to WoW.
This kind of stuff makes me really hate humanity, because it's obvious video games can be better, there IS the money for it, but no one will invest in good games because popular games make more money.

I think what the marshmallow experiment shows is that some people are innately predisposed to not having self control, or choosing the short term reward, and these are the same sorts of people who end up doing drugs/playing these sorts of video game, etc. I dont believe that video games cause that sort of behavior, but that those sorts of people naturally gravitate towards those types of games.

Personally i play dota 2 and have played it for 5 years now, and im 5000 hours in. Im definitely the type of kid to take the marshmallow. However, even i have thought a lot about this phenomena and have observed it in my own life - i used to play so many rpgs and single player games and used to enjoy beating them, going through all the sidequests, etc, but i cant do that anymore. I enjoy dota not beacuse of some XP bullshit or items, but because i like getting better at the game, and making good plays and winning games with teamwork and skill feels really good and rewarding.

Of course, now, being more of an adult, ive realized what a waste of time all of it was and i've distanced myself from dota the best i can, but my 'instant gratification seeking' behavior remains. Its a deeper psychological problem for sure, not caused by video games, but perhaps by culture and society and MAYBE genetics. i dunno.

very interesting to think about however.

I think there is an innate nature to it, but I also think that it's possible to change.

For example I think videogames have changed a lot just in the past 5 years, and to the point where we might be changing how people deal with pleasure and reward.

But I also think it's possible to change.
In the example with the kids, some of them could've potentially had the realisation and changed it, but I don't think we've talked about things in terms of short-term and long-term gratification when it comes to what we indulge in. We just tend to think "this is good" and "this is bad".

I could blame videogames and say they are bad, but it would be a waste if I just replaced that videogame behavior with browsing facebook or watching TV.

i completely agree, it definitely is possible to change. The first step is self awareness. I have been shamelessly addicted to dota 2, and weed (compulsive habits basically) but once i realized what was happening, i stopped (for the most part).

So yea, it can be done. I wonder if therapy would help as well.

>The people who play games like CS:GO, Overwatch or Dota 2 are the same as the kids who could not stop themselves from eating the marshmallow.
It's not even that. When I was in daycare, there was a chocolate-eating competition, where the winner was the kid who could eat their chocolate the slowest, so basically the one with the most self-control. I would say it was pretty similar in nature to the marshmallow experiment. It ended up being a tie between me and another kid, because the staffers couldn't let the competition run any longer. Fast forward 15 years, and I'm a university dropout who has trouble getting himself to do the most basic tasks, because of laziness. In my opinion, video games, and the internet, have definitely contributed to me ending up like this (I'm not using this to deflect responsibility though, just saying).

there is literally no short term gratification in dota 2. it is made entirely of suffering until the exact point where you see your enemies driven before you and hear the lamentations of their farmers. this goal is so elusive most people don't even believe it can be done on purpose.

Not to proud of that time. I existed only to replay dust 2 and cache every 45min. That small little video was there to not make me relapse. Also it was legitimate addiction and breaking an addiction is never glamorous.

Also highest ranking achieved before I started cheating was supreme with 6 win streak. So I'm sorry I had to use chests to beat other cheaters. I joined alot of rage lobbies and even had a 5v5 hack vs hack with another rage lobby, it definitely involved a level of skill at that point.

It is worth noting that rage (and maybe grief/regret) also causes dopamine rushes similar to excitement and happiness.
It's possible that the rage and grief you felt actually kept you playing, and the breaking point would've been indifference.

It depends how you define success.

The same arguments you made for supporting dark souls also apply to to csgo/ow/dota. Reaching leaderboards is a longer term goal than anything you can do in dark souls, and there is more you can learn from losing in those games than there is in dark souls.
I would say that people who can learn effectively from their mistakes and climb to the top 1% of the ladder in competitive team games would be more successful than those who don't improve but keep playing.
It's difficult to make statements based on what people play, because 2 people can play the same thing for wildly different reasons.

It seems so but it depends on how you play, the game you're playing and how often you play. I think there are definitely brain benefits with moderation in playing almost any game.

I absolutely refuse to have a computer in my home because I'll get distracted and won't finish school. One of the reasons why I did poorly in high-school was because of video-game. I was playing too much Call of duty and Counter-strike. I found my high-school grade a long time ago and remember what grades I have, you know you are doing bad if you have a C- in art class.

I am doing much better without a computer in my home. Soon, if I even graduate, I'll get to play video-games all I want even if I means not playing any for 4.5 years.

Bump!

>I have been addicted to league of legends for 7 years now.