Slashdot Mirror
Game Boy Effective Kid Tranq
yali writes "A new study shows that Game Boys are better than tranquilizers for calming children before surgery. Kids allowed to bring Game Boys into the OR showed no change in anxiety (compared to a small increase with tranquilizers, and a big increase in a control condition.) Kind of puts a different spin on analogies between games and drugs."
And to think, we're buying them for our kids this Christmas to be an effective tranquilizer on road trips.
As a frequent traveler, I still get a little scared during really rough flights. I whip out the gameboy and I don't really pay attention to what is going on anymore. Fear is all mental. The more you let your mind think, the more you are scared. Gameboys divert all thinking to trying to defeat the other army in Advance Wars.
and this study puts some validity to the feeling of being "in the zone" when playing a favorite game. I think it's a zen-like state where outside influences can easily be ignored. As for the link between gaming and drugs, I'd like to see a study where kids are given a game boy AND a bong... wouldn't even need the anesthetic!
When I was a kid the orthodontist had gameboys for kids to play. But he wasn't very good about keeping batteries and games fresh. He did have Metroid II and Zelda: Link's Awakening. I think its rather obvious that the reason the gameboy works is because it distracts the mind from thinking about it. Anxiety forms when you keep thinking about what they're going to do to you and how much it will be unpleasant. If you don't think about it, you stop worrying.
Kind of like how the government and the megacorps use television to distract people so they don't worry about what's really going on in the world.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Considering the ramifications of this article, I urge any of you with spare cash/games to check out Child's Play. It's a huge charity that collects video games and systems for children in hospitals, run by the folks at Penny Arcade
I normally don't plug things, but this is too relevant to the article to ignore, and it can help out a lot of kids.
GeekNights!
Late Night Radio for Geeks!
I don't really share your point of view on that. I mean no offense, but if you're going to be in some kind of surgery or something else that you know will involve pain. I don't care how many times somebody tells me, "Everything will be okay." I'm still going to be extremely nervous and uneasy thinking about it. But if I find something to distract myself from the thought, then I tend to feel less distraught about the upcoming moment of pain. Comfort from your family or friends is what you need after the pain.
I brought my DS with me before getting surgery last Tuesday for a pilonidal cyst and honestly it didn't do anything to calm my nerves. Even while playing I couldn't get the painful future recovery out of my mind. In my case I could look more into the future then kids despite distractions.
Chika Chik-ah... do-e ow ow.
Let's see what these kids are like as adults.
...Right?
We won't have to wait very long. We ARE those kids remember. Majority of slashdotters are 15~30 years old I should think(Aplogies in advance to the legions of outrages 0-14 and 31-127 age groupers). Most of us grew up on gameboy, SNES, Genesis and Playstation. And guess what! Society isn't falling apart after all.
Or is it? Video games, TV, porn, drugs, education, emancapation, the vote, tolerence, cars, secularism and the internet have all failed, despite all doomsday predictions to the contrary, to tear the fabric of society apart. However I personally fell that our new found 14 hour day work ethic could have a fair stab at bringing about an Escape From New York or Mad Max type senario. The reason people are turning to Gameboys and Riddlin as babysitters is because they're exhausted after slogging for corperate masters all day so they don't lose their job to offshoring.
Naturally of course free market economics will eventually solve this problem. So goes the prevailing theory anyway. It's more likely however that kids and teenagers will just have to make to with Super Mario and Gordon Freeman as role models while their parents spend most of their free time sleeping or driving.
But hey! We beat the commies right!?
May the Maths Be with you!
Buy a copy of Boktai or Boktai 2 and the sun is your ally.
Also, the GBA SP is backlit, and you can mod the original GBA to add backlighting, so this is not really a big deal.
...I remember having surgery when I was a kid and having the doctor tell my mother to take my GB out of the hospital room, because Playing Video Games Is Bad For You(TM). Glad to see that the medical profession has changed its mind. And indeed, I find the argument that "video games destroy childrens' minds and will turn them into psychopathic lunatics" to have already been disproven, given that my siblings and I all grew up playing Nintendo/GB/etc. like there was no tomorrow, and now we're all scientists. The non-mad kind of scientists, even. So I think we turned out OK in spite of having Mario as a childhood companion.