Thursday, July 24, 2008

Gaming Junkies



So here's an interesting story I spent months working on, and it finally aired Thursday for sweeps.

When is playing video games a fun hobby and when is it an addiction? The medical community is debating that issue right now, and some psychologists believe gaming is just as addictive as drugs or alcohol. The doctor I talked to is a gambling expert and says video games are set up with the same type of reward system that gambling has. The more you play, the more you want to play, the more you need to play.

But he says the most important reason why video game addiction should be considered a mental disorder is so more study will be done on treatment and people needing treatment would be eligible for insurance coverage.

I think it's an interesting debate. I'm sure everyone has their own opinion about it. When I was in college, I got so hooked on a Tetris game on my computer that I would dream in Tetris. But it never got to an extreme point where it was impacting other parts of my life. If someone had an obsessive personality though, I could see how that would happen.

Watch the story by clicking here.

Or you can read the text of the story by clicking here.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Putting Citizens to the Test

So I did a pretty fun story recently. I went to a class where immigrants are preparing to take their naturalization test. We borrowed some flash cards, and then hit the streets to ask every day people if they knew the answers... if US Citizens would be able to pass the test people have to take to become a US CItizen.

I thought it was pretty interesting, and it generated a lot of traffic on the web.

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE STORY