The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: September 20, 2009

Official News page 9


REAL LIFE NEWS: STUPID SURVEYS

by Hazed

While we were away, the results of a bunch of stupid surveys were published.

First up, a study purports to show that game-players tend to be larger, and less cheerful, than non-gamers. So if you're fat and miserable, you fit the stereotype! The survey was conducted by scientists from the US Centres for Disease Control. Quite what their interest in gaming is, I don't know; maybe they think a love of computer games is infectious?

They quizzed 500 adults from Washington state, of whom about 45% said they played games often. The results were that gamers are more depressed and less fit than non-gamers. At least, they are in this small part of the US! Read the story here.

Overweight, yes, I will go along with that, but more miserable? Sounds nonsense to me. Unless they were annoyed at having their gaming interrupted so they could answer stupid questions...

A study I find much more believable is that those who multitask don't really end up achieving more. It seems that those who regularly try to do more than one thing at a time have lower attention, memory and task-switching abilities than those who usually concentrate on one thing at a time. So if you're reading the Star while keeping one eye on the Fed screen, with music playing and the TV on in the background, you might want to go read the report here.

Finally, one that I would like to think is valid: men are much worse than women at password security. 47% of men use the same password for every website their visit, compared to just 26% of women. Go, females! In addition, nearly two-thirds of the men quizzed in the survey by PC Tools would open a link or attachment from a friend without first checking its validity, versus only 48% of women.

Read more about this here.


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