Three in four adults have experienced harassment while gaming online

[Shawn Knight]

A hot potato: There’s a line between competitive trash talking and outright harassment and unfortunately, most of those surveyed have been on the wrong side of it. A full 65 percent of those polled said they have experienced severe harassment including physical threats, stalking and sustained harassment.

Nearly three in four adults that play video games online have experienced some form of harassment according to a new report from the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Technology and Society.

Among those that have been harassed, 53 percent said they were targeted because of their race, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, ethnicity or ability.

Specifically, 38 percent of women and 35 percent of LGBTQ+ players reported being harassed based on their gender and sexual orientation. A full 24 percent of Hispanic players, 31 percent of African American players and 23 percent of Asian Americans experienced harassment due to racial or ethnic identity.

More concerning still, 29 percent of players claim to have been doxed – that is, having had their personal information exposed.

The ADL also examined individual games and found that harassment is more prevalent in some than others. The top five games in which players experienced the most harassment were DOTA 2 (79 percent), Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (75 percent), PlayerUnknown Battlegrounds (75 percent), Overwatch (75 percent) and League of Legends (75 percent).

The ADL surveyed 1,045 mobile, PC and console gamers between the ages of 18 and 45 for its study. Surveys were conducted between April 19 and May 1, 2019, with a margin of error of four percent.

Masthead credit: young girl playing computer games by OHishiapply

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/81141-three-four-adults-have-experienced-harassment-while-gaming.html

 

[Hexic]

I read “sexually harassed” as “sexually aroused”. I don’t know about others, with only 35%, those are rookie numbers in my case.

I’m a terrible person.

 

[TomSEA]

This is why my online gaming constitutes only about 5% of my total gaming. Like I want to spend my precious recreational time being screamed at by some foul-mouthed, 14-year-old simpleton.

 

[texasrattler]

This is why my online gaming constitutes only about 5% of my total gaming. Like I want to spend my precious recreational time being screamed at by some foul-mouthed, 14-year-old simpleton.

Thats why they have a mute button or you could simply not use a headset but that defeats the purpose of playing a online game in most cases.
Its not just kids. There are a lot of adults doing these things.

 

[stewi0001]

Personally I would bet that in reality that 100% have been harassed.

 

[Burty117]

Personally I would bet that in reality that 100% have been harassed.

Agreed, it's definitely 100%.

Thats why they have a mute button

The Mute button is a fantastic button, Same with the Block button. The Report button can be useful, the matchmaker tends to then not match you with said Reported person.

Its not just kids. There are a lot of adults doing these things.

It's mainly adults I run into personally. Although I mainly game on the PC. From what I've read on forum's, Consoles seem to have a bigger issue with kids.

I play online every single day, either by myself or with friends and I feel sometimes these reports are just trying to make Gamers sound like a group of evil people when in reality, you run into the odd nasty and you just block them or report them or whatever the option is for that game and move on. Nothing that bad. I can only talk for PC online though, I wouldn't be surprised if Consoles have it worse.

 

[gusticles41]

Any online game with open chat will result in 100% harassment rates, that's a given. And from my experience, young adults are the worst. Granted, I don't play Fortnite. And it's not just the "I effed your mom" stuff anymore. Insults have gotten really...dark.

That said, Mute - Report player - Move on. Never engage an online psychopath.

 

[treetops]

The only game I really wore a headset on was WoW during raids. Chat is nasty enough... I thought it would be 100%, they must be including people who use smart phones? Back 10-15+ years ago I had someone say bye, next thing I know my computer crashed. More commonly the game itself.

Mobas have always been terrrrible, dota in warcraft 3 omg.... Only matched by the Diablo 2s red hot pvping hatred. Pre report button\perma mute days were death toxic.... At least Diablo 2 had the /away command, which of course was handy if you added "with your mom".

 

[zorven]

I would be curious as to the average age of the players in the games they surveyed. Can't say I have seen that level of harassment in the online game I play where the average age is I think 45.

 

[kmo911]

And no way to tell them go away. trolling are not fun. put som admins thats not can play shoot other and invincible and got admin watcher on chest and back. just start recording . and watch if some one that not supose to be on can join. and passwordprotect and hide servers away if its PRO players. record wit amd nvidia own recorder tool and deliver it to admin. we see soome cheaters and some boots even on private play. just stop playing or put it on pause and then start up a nother server thats are password portecded. fake and real. record trolls with print screen tooo in bmp send to ADMIN. ps some older amd nvidia cant even start recording if they are too old. if then use FRAPS v??

 

[Maxiking]

I play online mainly so I wonder how do people get harassed over their sexual preference or gender identity.

So they join a competitive match in Counter Strike GO and the very first thing they say : Hey teammates! I identify as a nonbinary asexual lesbian tranny....?

It is easy to recognize women, by their voice... But LGBT?

 

[wiyosaya]

Any online game with open chat will result in 100% harassment rates, that's a given. And from my experience, young adults are the worst. Granted, I don't play Fortnite. And it's not just the "I effed your mom" stuff anymore. Insults have gotten really...dark.

That said, Mute - Report player - Move on. Never engage an online psychopath.

Agreed!

One thing, though, I can see where it might be hard to hide your gender unless there's something that will shift the frequency of your voice, however, in literally any of those games, why are people exposing their sexual orientation?

For me, that is a detail absolutely no one needs to know, and in some cases, as indicated by the survey, exposing such is exposing one's self to a higher probability of attack. I am far from saying that the attack is right; however, I am deeply questioning the need to expose that bit of information in the first place.

Admittedly, I know nothing about these games, though. Is there some reason that sexual orientation would need to be exposed in the game? Are these games about pretend dating?

 

[Burty117]

And no way to tell them go away. trolling are not fun. put som admins thats not can play shoot other and invincible and got admin watcher on chest and back. just start recording . and watch if some one that not supose to be on can join. and passwordprotect and hide servers away if its PRO players. record wit amd nvidia own recorder tool and deliver it to admin. we see soome cheaters and some boots even on private play. just stop playing or put it on pause and then start up a nother server thats are password portecded. fake and real. record trolls with print screen tooo in bmp send to ADMIN. ps some older amd nvidia cant even start recording if they are too old. if then use FRAPS v??

I'm assuming English isn't your first language, however, that can't be what Google Translate spat out?

I think I understand what you're trying to say though, record trolls and cheaters and send them to server admin. Problem is, server admins are becoming rare. Games are just using matchmaking on their own private servers these days, it's a shame, a server with a decent admin is what landed said server into my favourites list.

 

[Lew Zealand]

"I rarely game online, but when I do, I swear by Tres Equis."

"Con su madre, por supuesto."

 

[Stiqy]

3 out of 4 have participated in harassment as well, so....

 

[toooooot]

Such a tragedy. Oh what a tragedy it is. Lets kill the switch, turn the internet off. Lets do what has to be done.

 

[wiyosaya]

3 out of 4 have participated in harassment as well, so....

Karma is a b1tch!

 

[kmo911]

And no way to tell them go away. trolling are not fun. put some admins thats not can play shoot other and invincible and got admin watcher on chest and back. just start recording . and watch if some one that not supose to be on can join. and passwordprotect and hide servers away if its PRO players. record with amd nvidia own recorder tool and deliver it to admin. we see soome cheates and some boots even on private play. just stop playing or put it on pause and then start up a nother server thats are passwordportecded. fake and real. recod trolls with print screen tooo in bmp (bitmap) send to ADMIN. the problem is that new games must get ignored and old ones mus be on halt for newbies. im on internet and young rookies are welcome. even if they cant play. should there be a L mark on chest on them too ? CANT play daddy like in doom. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC7Onhm3tto
Edit or delete this

 

[brucek]

I'm surprised at the 29% doxxed rate. Is it that easy to gain personal information from your matched opponents? Is this a bug in the individual games or what's up with that?

As far as I know there is no way for any of the people I play with in any of my online games to gain any real life information about me, but perhaps I don't know as much as I should?

 

[brucek]

There's certainly a plentiful supply of trolls and worse in online games, and perhaps an even greater number of clueless children and/or people with different community / social standards.

But I also wonder at what "harassment" really means these days. It seems like it is such a wide umbrella term these days that it can apply to anything from "actual realistic threats of physical assault requiring protective action" all the way to "someone told an off-color joke to a chat channel generally, not even addressed to any individual, yet some individuals feeling individually harassed."

I mention this because it means reports like these are essentially meaningless. As others have said, under at least some people's definitions of harassment, it's guaranteed 100%.

 

[treetops]

Any online game with open chat will result in 100% harassment rates, that's a given. And from my experience, young adults are the worst. Granted, I don't play Fortnite. And it's not just the "I effed your mom" stuff anymore. Insults have gotten really...dark.

That said, Mute - Report player - Move on. Never engage an online psychopath.

Agreed!

One thing, though, I can see where it might be hard to hide your gender unless there's something that will shift the frequency of your voice, however, in literally any of those games, why are people exposing their sexual orientation?

For me, that is a detail absolutely no one needs to know, and in some cases, as indicated by the survey, exposing such is exposing one's self to a higher probability of attack. I am far from saying that the attack is right; however, I am deeply questioning the need to expose that bit of information in the first place.

Admittedly, I know nothing about these games, though. Is there some reason that sexual orientation would need to be exposed in the game? Are these games about pretend dating?

Guy hears a girls voice, hits on her, she says I'm gay. That's my guess on the unfolding.

I'm surprised at the 29% doxxed rate. Is it that easy to gain personal information from your matched opponents? Is this a bug in the individual games or what's up with that?

As far as I know there is no way for any of the people I play with in any of my online games to gain any real life information about me, but perhaps I don't know as much as I should?

Steam for instance will show your name, Steam community ID and location by default.(correct me if I'm wrong on the name) All they have to do is click on you in game to bring up your steam profile. They can also friend you, then follow you around. And if you link with Facebook I don't even know. Then there are other little tricks, that I doubt account for much. I won't give anyone any ideas. On top of that, hackers? I had some little group following me around... So I cleaned up my friends list and took out location etc. To much pewpew makes people qq.

 

[Hardwire22]

Am I missing something? How do you get harassed based on your gender profile or race or age? Unless you add those things to your profile and most people aren't looking you up they are just spewing foul nonsense to get under your skin. I agree it is unacceptable but I am unsure how these numbers were reached. I game and have been called all kinds of foul names that didn't apply - because the odd one applied doesn't mean I was targeted but I guarantee that if I let it be known one hit the mark then there would be a double down in abuse related to that area. That's how bullies and abusers work.

 

[Nero7]

Bunch of weak and frail softies... some smack talk is an essential part of the online experience.

I miss the cold war. It produced hard men and common sense and a thick skin. Today's breed goes into a corner to cry after being teabagged then escalates on social media.

There is a mute button and for good reason.

 

[paul1122]

If you want to avoid being harassed, play GW2. No one EVER says anything to anyone in that game. They are all too busy doxing to harass you.

 

[gusticles41]

Bunch of weak and frail softies... some smack talk is an essential part of the online experience.

I miss the cold war. It produced hard men and common sense and a thick skin. Today's breed goes into a corner to cry after being teabagged then escalates on social media.

There is a mute button and for good reason.

Taking the time to look up someone's personal info, then saying they're going to murder you and your family while including personal details is far from "smack talk".

Herpderp snowflake safe space.