For Men, Playing Video Games Associated With Relationship Conflict | Hacker News Reader

For Men, Playing Video Games Associated With Relationship Conflict

blog.socialsci.com

11 pointscalinet66 comments

Spending more time doing X is correlated with spending more time talking about X?

Spending more time talking about X is correlated with spending more time arguing about X?

Spending more time arguing is correlated with higher relationship conflict?

All completely obvious results, strung together with logical fallacies to conclude that video games are correlated with relationship conflict. Although I do have to give the article credit for not implying causation—wait, they do, never mind.

For example, I can assure you that: 1) men who cook more also talk about cooking more, 2) men who talk about cooking more (all other things, including amount talked about in other areas, equal) argue about cooking more, and 3) men who argue about cooking more (all other things, including levels of argument in other areas, equal) exhibit more physical aggression towards their partners. Using the exact same logic, I can conclude that cooking causes relationship abuse.

Do women who cook talk about cooking more? Do women argue about it more? Why is it different for one sex than the other?

To play devil's advocate, women who play video games may be more likely to be with boys who play video games, or otherwise have a partner that can identify with having a time consuming and less than social hobby, one that is also mostly designed to cater to men.

No way! The people that play video games are the ones that argue about playing video games? I completely expected those not playing video games to be the ones being chided for their game playing.

I think the point was that when women played games more, that didn't result in an additional problem or conflict in the relationship.

I feel like this same effect could apply to most things that are "addicting". When something is taking time away from a relationship, it is most likely going to cause problems.

Things that cause similar problems in excess: Porn, Sports, Friends, Alcohol, Drugs, Consistent but time consuming hobbies like surfing, Startups ...

What I am getting at is that basically anything could cause similar problems, though the exact side-effects could be slightly different because of differing situations.

Growing up in a small surfing community, I witnessed surfing to be a pretty common relationship problem. Many were so addicted to surfing that they wouldn't spend enough time with their families.

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