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The Popularity of Video Games and Their Effects on Obesity in Children

Introduction

Research supports the idea that childhood obesity is related to increased time engaged in sedentary activities such as television watching, video game playing, and working on computers. The research demonstrates that child obesity is linked to video games and the level of body fat is related to television watching. In addition, research indicates that the more time a child spends engaging in such sedentary activities the greater the likelihood that the child will be obese; and that the relation between lack of physical exercise and being overweight begins early, during the preschool years (Anderson, 35). Within this environment, certain children may be at particular risk for obesity.

There have been many reports of behavioral signs of video game dependency among adolescents, including stealing money to play arcade games or to buy new game cartridges, skipping school and sacrificing social activities to play video games, not doing homework, getting bad marks at school, becoming irritable or annoyed if unable to play, and playing longer than intended. Other, indirect evidence of addictive and excessive play comes from the many health consequences that have been reported in the literature. These have included photosensitive epilepsy, auditory hallucinations, enuresis, encoprisis, wrist pain, neck pain, elbow pain, tenosynovitis (also called “nintendinitis”), hand-arm vibration syndrome, repetitive strain injuries, and obesity.

Discussion

A number of researchers (and press commentators) have tried to draw a connection between excessive electronic game use and obesity among children and adolescents, just as earlier studies have attempted (largely unsuccessfully) to link obesity with television watching. A large-scale study in the United States (from data collected in 1997) found that lower-weight children played electronic games either very little or a lot, and that girls with higher weight played more games, but boys did not—results that ...