ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI -- Deniz C. Ince, an 11-year-old from St. Louis, Missouri, was squeezing orange juice one day when his thumb started to hurt.
“I asked my dad if I was going to get arthritis or tendonitis,” said Deniz. “I wanted to know which video game causes more pain iTouch or Game Boy.”
Deniz father, a rheumatologist, didn’t have an answer for his son. So Deniz set out to determine if there was an association between these devices and wrist and finger pain in young children.
“I wanted to find out if my friends were experiencing similar pain," he said.
What he found, along with the help of a rheumatologist research team, was that playing with a video game console is associated with increased pain in young children.
The results, presented this week at the American College of Rheumatology Annual Scientific Meeting in Philadelphia, showed that increased pain was more likely among younger players, with seven year-olds reporting the most pain.
Additionally, researchers noted that playing a Nintendo Wii exclusively resulted in more self-reported pain regardless of age and hours of play. Further, nearly 12 percent of the 171 children who participated in the study reported finger pain and nearly 10 percent reported wrist pain.
The researchers administered questionnaires to children ages seven to 12 years old who attended Rossman Elementary School in St. Louis, Missouri. The questions were geared to help the researchers examine the possible association of the type of game device, age of the children and hours played would have with pain severity.
Fifty-four percent of the students who took part of the study were female with an average age of 9.3 years old. Forty-nine percent reported using these games and devices zero to one hour per day; 33.9 percent reported one to two hours per day; seven percent reported two to three hours per day; and 6.4 percent reported over three hours per day.
After the results, researchers suggested that there be a minimum age for children to start using these games and devices. They also backed up other theories that children should spend less time playing with these games.
“My original goal was to prove that the new game systems don’t cause any problem or pain because they are mostly tilt, not press, but my study showed otherwise,” Deniz said. “I hope my friends won’t be too mad at me.”
