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Apparently Video Games Are Turning Teenagers into Drunks

According to a new study from the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies, video games that reference alcohol and tobacco could be encouraging teenagers who play them to take up drinking and smoking.
Phoebe Hurst
London, GB
Foto von Peter Anderson via Flickr

A lot of stuff gets blamed for leading impressionable teenagers astray. Bacardi Breezers, cool kids with the Marlboro Lights behind the maths block, the Kardashians.

And now, it seems we can add gaming to the list of bad influences. According to a new study from the Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies at the University of Nottingham, video games that reference alcohol and tobacco could be encouraging teenagers to take up drinking and smoking.

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Published in the Cyberpsychology, Behaviour, and Social Networking journal, the study looked at the content of Britain's 32 best-selling video games between 2012 and 2013. The researchers focused on stealth and action world games, as they tend to include avatars who look and act—and drink and smoke—like real people.

READ MORE: British Parents Are Rewarding Kids' Good Behaviour with Alcohol

The study found that 44 percent of these games included images of alcohol and tobacco. Out of the most popular games, Grand Theft Auto V and Call of Duty contained the most references to booze and cigarettes.

Researchers then carried out an online survey of 1,094 11 to 17-year-old gamers. The teens were asked whether they had played any of the alcohol and tobacco-referencing games, and to what extent they smoked or drank.

The findings? Teenagers who had played at least one game with booze or smoking images were twice as likely to have smoked or consumed alcohol themselves.

In a press statement, psychologist Joanne Cranwell from the Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies reacted to the findings. She said: "Video games are clearly attractive to adolescents regardless of age classification. It appears that official Pan-European Games Information (PEGI) content descriptors are failing to restrict youth access to age inappropriate content. We think that the PEGI system needs to include both alcohol and tobacco in their content descriptors."

READ MORE: Teenagers Will Eat Healthily If They Think They're Sticking It to the Man

It's not the first time gaming has been criticised for leading kids astray. The link between playing violent video games and increased aggression is a long-running topic of debate, with the American Psychological Association asserting last year that there was "no single risk factor" to blame for aggression, but that violent video games could contribute in some cases.

The Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies is now calling for stricter age regulation from the Video Standards Council on games that include alcohol and smoking references. Cranwell added: "Future research should focus on identifying the levels of exposure in terms of dose that youth gamers are exposed to during actual gameplay and the effects of this on long-term alcohol and smoking behaviour."

The game continues.