No Video Games on School Nights

Donkey Konga writes "In the latest round of the ongoing debate on the effect of video games and TV on academics, a new study in Pediatrics says that any amount of gaming is too much if if happens on a school night. '"On weekdays, the more they watched, the worse they did," said study coauthor Dr. Sharif. Weekends were another matter, with gaming and TV watching habits showing little or no effect on academic performance, as long as the kids spent no more than four hours per day in front of the console or TV." Of course we all know that correlation does not equal causation, but the study is sure to get many parents thinking about how much time in front of the Xbox and idiot box is too much."

Comments

Re:Oh please

[grasshoppa]

I don't buy it; Non-interactive entertainment is bad, I've always believed that. But time on the computer? I've spent a significant portion of my life on the computer, and aside from a burning hatred of humanity, I'm just fine and very successful ( primarly because I spend so much time learning about thigns on the computer, frankly ).

Reading...

[MMaestro]

Researchers asked the students to rate their own performance in school on a scale ranging from "below average" to "excellent," instead of looking directly at their grades or other metrics of academic performance.

Stop! Enough said.

Re:Sharif, really?

[nevergleam]

The Robber's Cave Study was performed by Muzafer and Carolyn Sharif, not the Iman Sharif who did this study.

Re:moderation & motivation

[Shaper_pmp]

In addition, has anyone noticed the really, really important part of the article? The bit where it says, right up-front:

Researchers asked the students to rate their own performance in school on a scale ranging from "below average" to "excellent," instead of looking directly at their grades or other metrics of academic performance. The study also took different parenting styles into account, but did not look at specific household rules covering homework, gaming, and watching TV.

Study coauthor Dr. Iman Sharif belives that using students' own self-ratings of academic performance provided data accurate enough to draw conclusions from. Although students routinely exaggerate their academic performance when asked, according to other studies, students of all stripes over-report, leading Dr. Sharif to conclude that self-reporting is a viable means of collecting data in this case.

This doesn't prove jack-shit. The conclusion of this study should have been that kids who routinely play computer games perceive they're doing worse in school than those who don't.

How many kids did you know in school who didn't play computer games? I haven't been in school for fifteen years, and even then the only people who never played computer games were the handful of nerdy geek kids who didn't own a computer and/or would rather play scrabble with their parents.

Big surprise if the ultra-nerdy kids who real encyclopedias for fun on average, as a group are more intelligent than those who play computer games (ie, a significant fraction of "everyone").

It's a bit like comparing people who listen to classical music or join the debate club with "everyone else". Generally it's the really nerdy academic kids that do this, but according to the logic of this article the conclusion should be that not arguing with people makes me thicker. Oh noes!!!!111!11one!

This smacks of a bullshit agenda-driven experiment. Why get kids to self-report on their progress? Why not use actual grades achieved? It's subjective as all hell. And why merely use "the amount of TV watched", rather than taking into account different parenting styles, whether kids or their parents chose how much TV was watched, etc, etc, etc.