How Mining Too Many Diamonds Can Impact Your Financial Decisions
By Helena Moore
Gaming is an extremely popular pastime for children and adults alike, since there is a seemingly endless amount of games available in any genre. A globally popular game amidst the sea is Minecraft, the timeless sandbox survival game. With its boundless possibilities, Minecraft can be played over and over, and in any style the player wants; they may want to start a world in Creative Mode and build scale models of cities, or enter Survival Mode to collect resources and survive the nights filled with monsters, then “beat” the game by slaying the Ender Dragon. Minecraft is a game where players can pull off impressive feats, but it is worth it to question how addictive games like this are, and how that may affect the sleep quality of the people who play. This effect may even cause greater issues, specifically with one’s ability to make sound financial decisions.
With so many possibilities, it is no wonder that Minecraft is considered the most addictive game based on the score given by gamers who consider that game as one of their most-played. In a study by Clutch, it was reported that Minecraft comes out to be the most addictive, with a score of 37.9.
This is a high number compared to the other scores, even if Clutch does not give a proper scale. Does this mean that gaming in general is an addiction? What is considered an addiction?
According to the article “Why anything can be addictive”, an addiction is a behavior that eventually becomes the most important thing in one’s life, often overshadowing that person’s relationships and work life. They may also feel the need to consume more in order to get the same feeling that they did when they first started the behavior, and they even experience withdrawal symptoms (Griffith). Since addictions are not just limited to drugs or alcohol, it is entirely possible that gaming can become an addiction. Gaming, in general, has negative side effects, especially with sleep; someone with a gaming addiction may feel even larger side effects due to constant gaming.
Many studies have analyzed the relationship between excessive gaming and sleep. One article, “Sleep in Habitual Adult Video Gamers: A Systematic Review”, summarizes these studies. It was found that “Gamers with higher gaming addiction scores were more likely to have shorter, poorer quality sleep and greater daytime sleepiness and insomnia scores than gamers with lower gaming addiction scores and non-gamers” (Kemp et al.). In comparison to non-gamers or more casual players, constant gamers were reported to have poorer sleep and increased issues with sleep. Considering that Minecraft is a global powerhouse of a game, it is clear to see that players who are addicted to playing the game will more likely experience strong and negative effects on their sleep cycles because of their extended playtime, debatably even more than players of games with less addictive scores.
The sleep cycle is a delicate one, as emphasized with Kemp and others. Humans function on what is known as a circadian rhythm, which is our body’s natural 24-hour cycle. Gaming can disrupt this cycle because the bright and blue lights emitted from screens may “delay the onset of nocturnal melatonin secretion by the pineal gland and increase neurophysiologic arousal; this, in turn, delays sleepiness and thus, the onset of sleep, as well as the phase of other circadian-regulated processes” (Gooley et al., 2011; Shechter et al., 2018 as cited in Kemp et al.). The authors suggest that blue lights at night prevent the natural increase of melatonin in the brain, and the attention required to play a game keeps the brain even more active and awake at later hours. Since the body goes into a rhythm of sleep and wakefulness, gaming at night can disrupt this cycle and cause addicted players to feel more sleepy during the day. With a lack of sleep, the brain’s ability to function is reduced, which cause issues with going about day-to-day life, or even with important financial decisions.
Financial decisions are often difficult to make and tend to have lasting effects on one’s life. The research paper, “DEEP Sleep: The Impact of Sleep on Financial Risk Taking”, looks into how sleep and financial decisions are related; what happens if someone is required to make a decision, or risk, with a suboptimal amount of sleep? It was found, by the authors, that “individuals who have poor sleep assessed by the Sleep Index have greater distortion of probability, a stronger present bias, and a higher discounting rate. Similarly, subjects with poorer self-reported sleep quality have a higher distortion of probability, [..] and are less loss averse” (Nofsinger et al.). The declined function of the brain due to lack of sleep proves that people are more likely to miscalculate factors like discounts and probability. They also appear to be more willing to lose something than to keep it. This may directly connect to addicted gamers, who have been confirmed to have poorer sleep and higher daytime drowsiness compared to others; it is safe to say that, if someone who was addicted to gaming had to make a decision, they would most likely be fighting against drowsiness and will end up making errors in important calculations. This, compared with the gravity of many financial situations and decisions, may prove to be less than ideal for the general lives of a gamer with a gaming addiction.
It can be said that a game like Minecraft, which has a high addiction score due to endless possibilities and play styles, may have a negative impact on a gamer who is more likely to be addicted to games. Poor sleep quality and increased daytime sleepiness are among these impacts, which have their own effects; one who has decreased brain function due to lack of sleep will be more likely to make errors when calculating numbers like probabilities and discounts, as well as being more likely to let go of something. Although Minecraft is a fun game and a wonderful pastime, it is — like everything else — extremely important to manage time wisely to avoid the gaining of an addiction.
References
Kemp, Chadley, et al. “Sleep in Habitual Adult Video Gamers: A Systematic Review.” Frontiers in Neuroscience, vol. 15, 2021. Frontiers, https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnins.2021.781351.
Nofsinger, John R., and Corey A. Shank. DEEP Sleep: The Impact of Sleep on Financial Risk Taking. SSRN Scholarly Paper, ID 3017965, Social Science Research Network, 17 Apr. 2018. papers.ssrn.com, https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=3017965.
Probasco, Ryan. Losing Control: A Study of Video Game Addiction | Clutch.Win. 23 Dec. 2019, https://web.archive.org/web/20200123183617/https://clutch.win/blog/video-game-addiction/.
