This month, a new article was published in Computers in Human Behavior called “The relationship between loot box buying, gambling, internet gaming, and mental health: Investigating the moderating effect of impulsivity, depression, anxiety, and stress.”[1] This research confirms already established correlational relationships between loot box spending, problem gambling symptoms and internet gaming disorder. However, it adds new insights by finding that these relationships may be moderated by depression, anxiety, stress, and impulsivity.
Loot boxes are relatively new technologies, and there may be cause for alarm as there is growing empirical evidence surrounding loot boxes’ financial and mental health risks. However, did you know society once panicked about novels and crossword puzzles, too?
In the late 1700s, German theologian and historian Johann Gottfried wrote extensively on the social dangers of children reading adventure novels, claiming that they led to foolish compulsions that were a waste of time.[2] Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau similarly wrote in his seminal work Émile that premature literacy was detrimental to a child’s natural development, denouncing reading as “the plague of childhood” and asserting that fables were corrupting, encouraged self-importance and vanity, and distanced children from reality.[3]
In the 1920s, the public hysteria over crossword puzzles led them to be described by newspapers and magazines as a “menace” to society.[4] Far from the respectable pastime they are today, these puzzles were criticized as a superfluous use of time and energy and were blamed for causing a decline in “reading and intelligent conversation.”[5] Bookshops reported falling sales of novels in favour of dictionaries and glossaries, while cinemas suffered as patrons abandoned film screenings to solve puzzles at home.[6] Consequently, one editorial, the Tamworth Herald, sounded the alarm by claiming that crosswords directly threatened the economy and family structure, declaring that they “have been known to break up homes.”[7] Attempts at regulation involved police magistrates “sternly rationing addicts to three puzzles a day.”[8] The prizes for completing puzzles soon resulted in the legal system becoming entangled in the debate, with courts weighing whether crossword contests constituted games of skill or illegal lotteries.[9]
Over a century later, it is interesting to see how societal skepticism follows a similar pattern throughout history, with many of the same talking points recycled and adapted to criticize newer forms of media like gaming and social media. Could loot boxes be yet another reiteration of moral panic?
[1] C. Villalba-García et al., “The relationship between loot box buying, gambling, internet gaming, and mental health: Investigating the moderating effect of impulsivity, depression, anxiety, and stress” (2025) 166 Computers in Human Behavior at p 4.
[2] N.D. Bowman, “The Rise (and Refinement) of Moral Panic” in R. Kowert & T. Quandt, eds, The Video Game Debate (Routledge, 2015) at p 25.
[3] D.M. Welch, “Blake and Rousseau on Children’s Reading, Pleasure, and Imagination” (2011) 35:3 The Lion and the Unicorn at p 204.
[4] A. Shectman, “Escaping Into the Crossword Puzzle” The New Yorker (21 December 2021) https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/12/27/escaping-into-the-crossword-puzzle.
[5] A. Connor, “Crosswords: the meow meow of the 1920s” The Guardian (15 December 2011) https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/crossword-blog/2011/dec/15/crosswords-meow-meow-1920s.
[6] A. Connor, “Crosswords: the meow meow of the 1920s” The Guardian (15 December 2011) https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/crossword-blog/2011/dec/15/crosswords-meow-meow-1920s.
[7] A. Connor, “Crosswords: the meow meow of the 1920s” The Guardian (15 December 2011) https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/crossword-blog/2011/dec/15/crosswords-meow-meow-1920s.
[8] A. Connor, “Crosswords: the meow meow of the 1920s” The Guardian (15 December 2011) https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/crossword-blog/2011/dec/15/crosswords-meow-meow-1920s.
[9] A. Connor, “Crosswords: the meow meow of the 1920s” The Guardian (15 December 2011) https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/crossword-blog/2011/dec/15/crosswords-meow-meow-1920s.
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Hi Samuel,
Thanks for the really interesting read. I had no idea there were similar moral panics and arguments made in regard to things like crossword puzzles and reading. The fact that people were addicted to crossword puzzles and police magistrates were suggesting rationing addicts to three puzzles a day is quite funny but also highlights something really important. If something is fun, there almost always will be people who are excessive regarding that fun thing, irrespective of whether the fun thing is harmful itself. In this case it was crossword puzzles which isn’t something harmful but if people were addicted to them, it could have had repercussions (people stop interacting with others or going to work etc.).
While empirical evidence is beginning to show that there are negative effects associated with loot box buying, I do not think loot boxes themselves are necessarily problematic. When someone buys loot boxes in moderation it’s comparable to someone buying trading cards which is not treated as a cause for concern. Both trading cards and loot boxes are designed for people to buy more of them yet typically it is harder for kids to buy trading cards in excess due to their parents (while purchasing loot boxes often can be unsupervised and excessive). While I do not think loot boxes themselves are problematic, there is an issue when a game is designed to give substantial advantages to players who purchase loot boxes (essentially a pay-to-win structure). This is commonly seen with sports games or Star Wars Battlefront 2 in relation to unlocking characters. When a game is pay-to-win it forces players to purchase loot boxes if they want to have a chance at competing on a level playing field with other players and can also result in the excessive purchasing of loot boxes. Loot boxes that involve cosmetics like skins on the other hand are less harmful in my opinion because I believe they are less likely to result in problematic purchasing of loot boxes. Sure some people buy loot boxes excessively in order to get a cosmetic item like a skin but going back to the people who were addicted to crossword puzzles, there will almost always be people that act excessively in regard to something fun like opening loot boxes.
Ultimately, I don’t feel like loot boxes are a moral panic because there are real harms associated with loot boxes. However, those harms stem more so from the lack of effective regulation regarding loot boxes (namely preventing the excessive purchasing of loot boxes and preventing pay-to-win models in games) opposed to the loot boxes themselves being problematic. I would not be surprised if in a few years it is shown that loot boxes were a moral panic and effective regulation that makes purchasing loot boxes more similar to the purchase of trading cards resolves many of the harms associated with buying loot boxes.