Attachment style may be a factor in how many choose and interact with online gaming, according to a Huffington Post article.
Psychologists John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth discovered in the 1960s and 1970s that children who displayed anxiety had insecure attachment growing up and that could complicate their interactions with the outside world. These anxious adults often seek out a lot of social comfort and can become needy or clingy in relationships. But of course insecure attachment can also lead to people who are avoidant in which children, who later become adults, anticipate that people in their relationships will be undependable and therefore they are likely to rely on outside relationships less.
“In a study that is currently in press (Kowert, R. & Oldmeadow, J. Computers in Human Behavior, vol. 39, 2014) researchers from Germany and Australia collaborated in an effort to cast light on this issue of whether online gaming can be detrimental to social development…”
“What this research yielded challenges to a significant extent the popular belief that “excessive” online gaming is psychologically harmful, or that “gamers” lack social skills. What they found was that social skills were not predictive of devoting more time to online gaming. The authors conclude that “sensitivity” — or shyness — by itself did not account for an individual’s inclination to spend more time on line.
In contrast to the findings on social skills, the data on attachment styles led to different insights. Of the two varieties of insecure attachment, those who identified themselves as having anxious attachment styles were more inclined to utilize Internet connections, including gaming, and to do so because it was a source of social comfort. Meanwhile, those with an avoidant attachment style also utilized on line gaming more, but not for social comfort as much as for the sheer entertainment value.”
