Susan Forsyth's Smoking & Video Gaming Experience Research

Photo: Susan Forsyth

Susan Forsyth, a fourth-year doctoral candidate in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at UCSF School of Nursing, has designed and implemented a quantitative pilot study to explore "how adolescents experience tobacco imagery in video games, how it relates to their virtual role-playing and practice in games, and how it may influence health practices and risk decisions."
Susan cites that "research suggests that the prevalence of smoking imagery in video games is rising. A 2012 article in The Lancet Oncology found that in games rated as appropriate for everyone over the age of 10, reported tobacco content increased nearly 16-fold, from being in 0.8 percent of games in 2005 to 12.6 percent of games in 2011."
You can read more about her research here.