Chinese Professor Claims Online Gaming Destroys Lives

In a lovely bit of contradictory news, The Escapist reports that a university professor in China has accused online gaming of destroying lives and lowering IQs:

Tao Hongkai, a professor at Huazhong Normal University, claims that studies in over 100 Chinese cities have shown that 70 percent of juvenile delinquent behavior can be blamed on internet addiction. In an article in the English-language Shanghai Daily, he said that number was "easy to understand, given that 80 percent of online videogames have violent, pornographic or fraudulent elements." College students are hit especially hard, according to his numbers; a survey of 13 colleges found that 90 percent of flunk-outs are the result of internet addiction.

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That's a classic situation of correlation without causation. College drop-outs are just slackers who did not have the self-discipline to go to class and do homework. If you are living in dorms and not going to class and not doing homework you are naturally going to spend a lot of time on the internet. Additionally, if you are spending a lot of time on the internet you are probably going to end up playing online games. But it's not that going on the internet and playing online games caused them to stop going to class, it's that they started going on the internet and playing online games because they stopped going to class. If there weren't an internet and online games they'd be doing something else other than going to class. People act like no one was ever a slacker until the internet came out.

Yep. If it wasn't internet addiction that led to flunk-outs, it would probably be drug/alcohol addiction.