Online games are actually run by the server form internet browser and it requires connecting to internet. The internet is a network that linked computer networking in worldwide, and it is access to average people nowadays, these linked computers transmit data through Internet protocol (IP) and it allows usher to download, upload, sending message and search from internet.
What is gamer?
Gamer are people who play video/online games (Dictionary.com, 2012). A gamer is a royal player of electronic games, especially for the gaming devices like computer and PSP for such games, and in more recent trend is playing online games.
Teenagers
Teenagers is any people who aged between 13 years old to 19 years old, (UrbanDictionary, 2012). According to National geographic (2011), teenager like to act different, they are aspire to become adult and always involve in complex behaviors like smoking, sex before married, gambling and also online gaming.
Parents
According to Oxford Dictionaries.com (2012), parent refer to a person’s father and mother and the person who give birth and raise a children. Parents always worry and concern to their children, especially the children facing the development stage in the aged between 13 years old to 19 years old (UrbanDictionary, 2012). Parents are seldom concerned about teenagers to engage in academic activities like sport and reading, as these are the activities seen as healthy social behaviors.
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The reasons why teenagers playing online games
There are some basic reasons why teenagers easy to get attracted by online games. First is the price of games, games are cheap and even free for download through online space. Second reason is the competitive behavior, most gamer will spend so many time to hit the game’s result and also compete with the others gamers through online, they play non-stop to complete the mission on game to get digital reward like new weapon. We all like to be superior at something. For a teen who isn’t necessarily a brilliant student, he/she may be ranked in the top 5 in worldwide for Tetris Battle. The sense of subjugating digital competitor is self-satisfying and isn’t too difficult once teenagers has played a game for long time. Maintaining the position of rank in the online games become a serious business, and they putting effort in the hours as a way to achieve it (Hartney, 2011).
What is addiction?
Addiction has long been understood as a person unable to control one habit, alcohol or drug use (Hartney, 2011). This is because of the physical effects of these substances on the body, especially the brain, people often think that “real” addiction only occur when people often use these substances(Robinson & Berridge, 2003). People also can develop addictive behavior, such as online gaming, even quite ordinary and necessary activities, such as exercise and diet (Charlton & Danforth, 2007).
What Is Game Addiciton
According to Hartney (2011), game addiction is a form of computer addiction or internet addiction. Game addiction often happen on teenagers, over 70% of children aged between 13 and 19 years old play games once in awhile , while 40% of adolescents play an online multiplayer game (Van Rooij & Van den Eijnden, 2007). Online gaming allows teenagers to behave very differently from their real life, like a shy child can suddenly became active; a passive child can become aggressive (CRC, 2011). According to research from University of Southern California, the growing popularity of online video games, it will increase the risk of game addiction. The popular games such as “World of Warcraft”, the massive multi-online role playing games attract gamers to behave in different role in real life if gamers spending in excess of 40 to 50 hours per week playing games, this allow the happen of game addiction(Yong,2009).
Gaming affects family relations
MMORP is the game with virtual social environment created by multiple gamers. A study conducted by the International Gaming Research Unit at Nottingham Trent University in UK has examined the social interactions that occur both within and outside of MMORPs (Cole and Griffiths, 2007). The study showed MMORPs can be extremely social games, with the high percentages of gamers making life-long friends and partners. The gaming addict stops interacting and participating that the real-life relationships, gamers only spend time on playing games (Kolo and Baur, 2004).
Games addiction strain relationships with family. According to the study by Brigham Young University, undergrad Jensen & Walker (2009), was based on the information from 813 college students, the more time students spent playing video games, the worse their relationships with parents and friends. This is because the gamers have problems making social connection after spending too much time on online gaming.
Some teenagers lying or hiding gaming use to family, they lie to family about what they are really doing on computer, and usually tell them that they are using the computer for work and study (Yong, 2009). Teenagers misuse money in order to spend in game-related items, some of them steal money from family members, and they lie to their family, all to find more time to play the game, this make their relationships with family worst. Teenagers spend more time in front of computer becomes withdrawn from their family and the quality of relation between families members drift apart. Walker said “relationship quality is one of a cluster of things that we found to be modestly associated with video games.”
Research Problem:
With the advancement of technology today, the new technology seems to create another problem, which is game addiction. According to an article in the CRC Health Group Educational website (2011), the advance technology has created a lot of games with better graphic, features and characters. The problem of game addiction is increasingly in diverse of age range and especially in teenagers, some teenagers even addicted to the fantasy of gaming and ignore to their family, school, homework and friends. A study done by Brand, Borchard and Holmes (2009) in Australia, they found that game addiction affects on different age range of people which 8 % are over 55 years old, the average age of game players is 29 years old and most of them are male.
In the research of Hauge and Gentile (2003) show that most of the game addiction appears in male and game addiction will also cause the problem of lower school performance and aggressive attitudes and behavior.
The issue of game addiction has widely research by the Western researcher, but there is less research on the Asian context especially Malaysia, Malaysia is a multicultural country with diverse of culture and value of races. In Malaysia, cyber café are easily found in anywhere. With the growth of economy, more and more people own a computer in their house. This has convenient the teenagers to play games either in their house or outside the house. Teenagers may spend a lot of time on playing games and playing games among teenagers have become a very common thing. In Malaysia, the issue of students skips class because they want to go for playing games is a rifeness phenomenon. Whether these students have got addicted to gaming? So this research want to find out how much time teenagers in Malaysia use to play games and accompany their parents and also to see whether teenagers will lie to their parents for their gaming habits. This all will conclude and show that whether the research of game addiction on the Western context are applicable to the Malaysia context.
Research Question:
Does gaming can affect the relationship between teenagers and their parents?
Research Objectives
Main Objective: To find out whether gaming can affect the relationship between teenagers and their parents.
Sub Objective:
To find out how much time teenagers spend on playing games.
To find out how much time teenagers spend in the family activities.
To find out whether teenagers will lie to their parents about their gaming habits.
Research Scope:
In this research, the sample used will be the teenagers. According to Dictionary.com, teenager is referring to people who are age between 13 to 19 years old. This research is a quantitative research which using questionnaire to collect data from the samples. The samples selected are the purposive sample which is in the categories of non probability sample which the sample must be the teenager which are 13 to 19 years old.
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The location is the 3 Internet café around Penang Island area and the teenagers will be asked question like ‘How old are you?’ before giving the questionnaire to the sample to make sure the person answering the questionnaire are the correct sample. This can filter out the other non target sample and reduce the chance of getting conflict in answering questionnaire and also reduce the unnecessary error in sampling.
Before distributing the questionnaire to the targeted sample, the questionnaire will gone through a pilot test on 30 of the TARC students to verify and refined the question in the questionnaire to make it more relevant and effective in gathering data.
The research will be conducted for about 1 week in 3 different Internet café in Penang Island area. The sample size is 150 target teenagers and 50 samples for each of the Internet café. This is due to the time and financial limitation so the sample size has to cut down into 150 peoples.
Significance of Study:
The game addiction in teenagers has become a common social issue since the development of technology. The researcher has done a lot of research on this issue but most of them are based on the Western context and the result cannot be generalized as same with the Asian context. Malaysia is a multicultural country with a diverse culture and ethnicity, the people’s mind thinking and behavior also not the same.
So this research aim to find out whether game addiction will affect the socialization between teenagers and their parents in Penang are which the research sample are targeting on the teenagers of Penang. The result found out will contribute to the research field in the topic of game addiction as reference for the future research. This research will also motivate and encourage the other researchers to find out more proof and evidence in this topic. The development of research will help to identify the reason and effect of gaming in the society and will contribute in aiding this social issue. Society can understand the gaming reason and effects and also will alert the authority group and parents in paying attention to this social issue.
Chapter 2: Literary review
What is online game?
According to Kramer (2000), in the past games are the activities that related to release pressure and to get fun. Every activity that makes you happy and brings you pleasures is a game, for example like playing Barbie dolls, listen to music and dancing. It is an activity to help you release stress and give you a pastime and amusement. In the present society, the term of “games” is usually linked to online games (Puentedura, 2010). Online game (web game) is actually run by the server form internet browser and it requires connecting to internet. The internet is a network that linked computer networking in worldwide, and it is access to average people nowadays, these linked computers transmit data through Internet protocol (IP) and it allows usher to download, upload, sending message and search from internet, example like download and playing online games (yourmaindomain.com, 2012). Nowadays, there are so many online games provided for free and can be play for unlimited time, the freeware programs allow player to download and play. Besides, playing online games also make the opportunity to generate revenue from promoting the downloadable version. Promotional games are normally featured with limited in order to get the user buy the full version. For most of the online games that available on internet are written in Java languages (Programming language and computing platform, (Java.com, 2012).).
Gamer
Gamer is people who play video/online games (Dictionary.com, 2012). A gamer is a royal player of electronic games, especially for the gaming devices like computer and PSP for such games, and in more recent trend is playing online games. When we think about the term “gaming” and “online game”, we will directly linked the stereotypically gamer are teenagers (Hartney, 2011). According to Shimai and Kishimoto (1990), male have more chance to involve in online gaming. The research done by Silvern and Williamson (1987), has shown that men have more experience in online gaming, this is because the different beliefs exist to gender.
Teenagers
Teenagers is any people who aged between 13 years old to 19 years old, this is one of the important stage of changing in mental and also the physical (UrbanDictionary, 2012). The examples of changes boys and girls go through the puberty like become aggressive, sexual maturity and psychological changes. This process may happen in different age and time. According to National geographic (2011), teenager like to act different, they are aspire to become adult and always involve in complex behaviors like smoking, sex before married, gambling and also online gaming. Teenager are the part of the social group, the way they behave does not necessarily have to be negative. But most of the time “teenagers” refer to socially undesirable behaviors, such as over gaming, rather than socially desirable behaviors, like reading. Although it could be applied to either and either could be a positive or a negative experience for the individual. Teenager need to face the problem of “Peer pressure”, they are easy to get influence and vulnerable to the peer pressure. This is due to the stage of changing when they spend less time with their parent and start to become more independent. They are not yet ready in understanding their own understanding about the relationships with others or the consequences of their behavior, this is because they are under mature. This will cause them to involve in behaviors that maybe wrong and unethical (Hartney, 2011).
Parents
According to Oxford Dictionaries.com (2012), parent refer to a person’s father and mother and the person who give birth and raise a children. Parents always worry and concern to their children, especially the children facing the development stage in the aged between 13 years old to 19 years old (UrbanDictionary, 2012). Parents are seldom concerned about teenagers to engage in academic activities like sport and reading, as these are the activities seen as healthy social behaviors. In parent’s perspective, addiction is a complex process, which is caused by many different factors. Teenagers always have been worries to engage in the potentially addictive activities, such as online gaming, gambling, drug use, sexual behavior and also other unethical activities (Ledwith, 2012). According to a study by Sneed and Runco (1992), parents are not all oppose to the gaming habit of their children, for them, gaming is not just about negative effects. By playing online, their children can train their eyes-hand coordination, killtime and be familiar to the use of computer, but it also included some negative effect like the risk of taking potentially aggressive behavior, waste money to buy gaming products and also increase of the competitive values. For sure, parent also worry about their relationship with children will become drift apart. Even the side effect of gaming is very terrible, parents still willing to buy them the gaming devices, such as computer, PSP, smart phone and other devices that can play game and access to internet. They provide the opportunities for their children to access and play games, but they hope children can use it wisely (Berthelsen, 2009). According to McGillicuddy-DeLisi (1985), parent’s behavior is the example to their children. Inside the family context, gaming can be happened not only on children or teenager, but also parents. Parents might also play online games before and continued their gaming life after married. Some parents playing online games mostly believe that gaming can help children to learn about the usage of computer, so they allow their children to play online games. Goodnow and Collins (1990) also argued that parent’s knowledge and beliefs should improve on understanding of parental actions. These beliefs and knowledge can be the use of computer to progress online gaming.
The reasons why teenagers playing online games
There are some basic reasons why teenagers easy to get attracted by online games. First is the price of games, games are cheap and even free for download through online space. For example, teenagers buy the top up card for only RM10 from 7-eleven to update their gaming tools on facebook games called “Boomz”. Second reason is the competitive behavior, most gamer will spend so many time to hit the game’s result and also compete with the others gamers through online, they play non-stop to complete the mission on game to get digital reward like new weapon. We all like to be superior at something. For a teen who isn’t necessarily a brilliant student, he/she may be ranked in the top 5 in worldwide for Tetris Battle. The sense of subjugating digital competitor is self-satisfying and isn’t too difficult once teenagers has played a game for long time. Maintaining the position of rank in the online games become a serious business, and they putting effort in the hours as a way to achieve it (Hartney, 2011).
To extent and level up their game’s point, teenager become more and more aggressive to achieve target on gaming, example finish all level of Angry Birds to save the eggs. Third reason is the peer influence, teenagers follow what the friends do and act the way that they like (Steinberg, 2011). Since everyone playing online games, teenagers hate to become isolated and they tend to follow the trend, they enjoy playing online games and sharing the experience among their friends. Next reason is because to make new friends through online gaming, online games mostly have many players and they might not know each other at first, they can chat and share experience, it becomes a social contact in online space, these reasons may become the cause of game addiction (Horan, 2010). Teenagers playing games through online in order to manage feeling of depress like loneliness and anxiety (Saisan & Smith, 2012). When faced stress and have a bad day, we will find our ways to escape from the problems and seek for something fun to release stress, for example like gaming.
Effects of online gaming
According to CRC Health Group Educational Website (2011), there is several effect of online gaming usually occurring on teenagers. Spend too much time on gaming and having problem to complete their home task and also home work. Teenager have problem to manage their time wisely when playing games, they can play nonstop, hours per hours just to achieve the digital reward of online games, this become a problem to them because they cannot complete their task in real life and even concentrate on study at school. According to Yong(2009), teenagers who playing video games oftenly will have trouble like falling and losing grades at school. This is because homework becomes less of important and priority to them, they only care about the ranking of online games and also the world of cyber space. They also become more and more aggressive because of the competition on online games. Online gaming will also cause the negligence to consume foods and beverage, for example, they seldom to take food and even drink; they have some physical symptoms like dry eyes, headache or backache and also sleep disturbances isolation. Besides, they become reluctance to communicate with friends and family after school, and lack of communication skill to associate with people in real life. This will gradually affects their relation with parents.
Game Addiciton
Addiction has long been understood as a person unable to control one habit, alcohol or drug use (Hartney, 2011). This is because of the physical effects of these substances on the body, especially the brain, people often think that “real” addiction only occur when people often use these substances(Robinson & Berridge, 2003). People also can develop addictive behavior, such as online gaming, even quite ordinary and necessary activities, such as exercise and diet (Charlton & Danforth, 2007). According to Hartney (2011), game addiction is a form of computer addiction or internet addiction. Game addiction often happen on teenagers, over 70% of children aged between 13 and 19 years old play games once in awhile , while 40% of adolescents play an online multiplayer game (Van Rooij & Van den Eijnden, 2007). Online gaming allows teenagers to behave very differently from their real life, like a shy child can suddenly became active; a passive child can become aggressive (CRC, 2011). According to research from University of Southern California, the growing popularity of online video games, it will increase the risk of game addiction. The popular games such as “World of Warcraft”, the massive multi-online role playing games attract gamers to behave in different role in real life if gamers spending in excess of 40 to 50 hours per week playing games, this allow the happen of game addiction (Yong,2009).
Gaming affects family relations
MMORP is the game with virtual social environment created by multiple gamers. A study conducted by the International Gaming Research Unit at Nottingham Trent University in UK has examined the social interactions that occur both within and outside of MMORPs (Cole and Griffiths, 2007). The study showed MMORPs can be extremely social games, with the high percentages of gamers making life-long friends and partners. The gaming addict stops interacting and participating that the real-life relationships, gamers only spend time on playing games (Kolo and Baur, 2004).
The behavior of gaming will strain relationships with family. According to the study by Brigham Young University, undergrad Jensen & Walker (2009), was based on the information from 813 college students, the more time students spent playing video games, the worse their relationships with parents and friends. This is because the gamers have problems making social connection after spending too much time on online gaming.
Some teenagers lying or hiding gaming use to family, they lie to family about what they are really doing on computer, and usually tell them that they are using the computer for work and study (Yong, 2009). Teenagers misuse money in order to spend in game-related items, some of them steal money from family members, and they lie to their family, all to find more time to play the game, this make their relationships with family worst. Teenagers spend more time in front of computer becomes withdrawn from their family and the quality of relation between families members drift apart. Walker said “relationship quality is one of a cluster of things that we found to be modestly associated with video games.” For most of the teenager, the important way to overcome the addiction on game is to find alternate way to overcome these difficult of feelings, it is very important to take serious on finding ways to reduce stressful situations.
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