Unmarried College Students May Have Poor Relationships

Seriously, I don’t know what else to say about this study.  GamePolitics has a sharp post up about the research, published by BYU professors who themselves admit that the results aren’t particularly conclusive of any course of action.  The authors indicate (the study itself is paywalled) the following:

People who play lots of games tend to have poorer relationships. 
Study interpretation: Video games destroy friendships!
Perfectly innocuous interpretation: The fewer friends and family you have to do things with, the more you’re going to engage in activities that don’t require other people.  Since the study indicates that the correlation is modest here, it’s not too hard to take the leap of faith that when you lump the antisocial in with a larger pool of people, the average is going to get pulled down in the “poorer social relationships” side of things. 

Women who play games have lower self-esteem.
Study interpretation: Video games destroy your self-image!
Perfectly innocuous interpretation: Basically the same as the above.  People who isolate themselves engage in more solo activities, and they’re going to pull the study in the same direction even though if games didn’t exist they’d just watch TV or read or do a million other such things by themselves.

A fascinating quote from the Deseret News article on the same subject:

“The study didn’t allow Jensen and Walker to determine whether video games are drawing college-age adults away from social settings or if they are a way for those already struggling with relationships to spend their time. Walker guesses both are at play.”

In other words, this study tells you absolutely nothing about what you should do as a result of the study.  It might as well indicate that the sky is blue; is that a bad thing?  Is it good?  Should we try to make it more purple?  Moreover, not only has the study lacked the intellectual curiosity to investigate the causes of its findings, the authors decided that publicizing the results wildly without context is wise.  This crosses the line from simple laziness to intellectual dishonesty.

Fnally, a commenter on the GP site notes that when your sample includes only the unmarried, you’re excluding by definition a lot of the people whose relationships are solid, biasing your study in favor of a negative result.

GamePolitics has the good catch that the study is appearing in a Utah-based university just as a debate on the subject begins to intensify.