E-Mail Smartphone gaming can be harmful to players who game to escape their negative mood and feelings of boredom, a new study has found. Researchers at the University of Waterloo found that bored "escape players"--those who have difficulty engaging with the real environment and sustaining attention--may seek "flow," which is a deep and effortless state of concentration in an activity linked to loss of awareness of time and space. "We found that people who experience intense boredom frequently in everyday life reported playing smartphone games to escape or alleviate these feelings of boredom," said Chanel Larche, study lead author and a PhD candidate in cognitive neuroscience at Waterloo. "The problem with this boredom 'fix' is that they end up playing whenever they are bored, and end up experiencing problems tied to excessive game play.