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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."
You really can't make generalizations about children when it comes to things like this. Different children develop differently, and generalizations become too broad to be useful applications. But here are the rules for my kids. The homework is done first. After that they get a modest amount of playtime. We check the homework, if the homework is done well then the kids deserve a little playtime.
I am in grade 10. I use my computer all night, and will sometimes play games (or read wikipedia! Great passtime.). Every day of the week. My average last year sat at around 87%. I cannot stress enough that the same thing is not always true for everyone. Some people would never do a good job on their homework if they sat around watching TV or playing games all the time, for others it works fine. Also, moderation is key. You need to know when to say "enough playing games, time to get homework done". Of course, for some people, it's best to do homework first, but I never do that! ;)
Also, some people have suggested time spent playing video games could instead be spent studying. In practise, everyone seems to do the bare minimum and never studies if it's not required.
s.clementmonkey@sympatico.ca, remove the 'monkey'.
I am a counter-example myself, also my math grades were the best among my class, seriously.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
The conclusion may be true, but parents need to be careful how they define "playing video games". Much of my childhoot computer recreation time was spent programming for fun. Often testing games that I had programmed. That would certainly have IMPROVED my grades.
When I was a kid, I was pretty into video games; but if grades slipped for anybody in the house, then my old man came in with a box and unhooked everything.
I wouldn't say the worry with many people is about video games as much as the fact that the way kids physically interact with their toys has changed. Even in the early 90's, when we were beginning to see the adolescense of the video game industry explode, many of my toys did not have transistors. Granted the gameboy I got for christmas was snuck onto the school playground even after the teachers banned such things to avoid theft and fights, that was about it... well, that and a decaying teddy ruxpin doll from the mid 80's.
Time studying or doing homework isn't that much of an issue, given kids who don't want to do homework have historically found ways and excuses to get around it. The worry lies in "the good old days of running or bicycle riding" or something equally nostalgic for old people, however video games are also moving to deeper levels of physical interaction, take a look at the necessity to pantomime gestures with the Wii or exert high impact aerobic routines with dance dance revolution.
The same study has probably been performed in the past about kids who watch too much TV and probably wielded similar results. This is nothing new, and as the OP stated, moderation and parental ivolvement are the key to raising a child who one day takes over the world and gives mommy and daddy control of some country in europe as a way of saying thanks.
Let me preface by saying that I am a high school teacher, and I spend my entire day talking to kids. There are probably only one or two of those kids who spend their time on the computer learning anything constructive. Several of them are, however, masters at WoW and Oblivion. Unfortunately, those skills are not what are being tested by NCLB, nor are they likely to improve their employment opportunities. I agree that interactive entertainment is superb at teaching children, but teaching them what?
I don't think it's playing by itself as much as the time listed there. Four hours per day was where they started measuring some impact. I don't know about others but I usually got home from school at 16:00 or 17:00, playing for four hours would keep me busy till 20 or 21 o'clock, if we add dinner, homework and whatever chores you do at your house to that you'd easily end up going to bed at 23 o'clock or later. Assuming you have to get out of bed at 6-7 you're not getting a lot of sleep. No wonder the grades slip if the kid doesn't get enough sleep, concentrating on a subject is pretty hard if you're sleepy.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
The problem with moderation is PARENTS don't know how to say stop. As long as their kid is in front of the TV and not bothering them, they just let them play. Out of sight, out of mind.
I use games as a motivation for my son. The general rule is no games during the weekday, but if he does really well, or I get him to do all his homework plus some extra studying, he gets 30min of play(notice I did not say 1hr). I also use this tactic on weekends. Study 30min = 1hr game play with me.
He gets excited about doing homework so he can play multi-player games with Dad.
Problem is, most parents don't know how to handle this, and they don't know what buttons to push to motivate their kids.
As Mark Twain said "Figures don't lie, but liars figure." Statistics are easily pressganged. The real question here is causation: Why believe that vidgames cause low marks when low marks might just as easily cause [frustration] vid.games? Most likely, a third cause [independance] affects both to a very limited extent.
Wow. It's not often that we actually get to witness someone touting their lack of education and willingness to settle as virtues.
/. postings and more people devote time to their private programming project.
I applaud your honesty.
Graduating in the top 20 of HS with a 3.98 GPA and with a BS in CS with 3.75 GPA, I consider myself fairly "educated." I consider it more of life style choices. I don't choose to go home and spend the entire night "enriching" myself. I go home watch some anime, read some manga, or play some video games. I don't really care about programming for programming's sake. I doubt many on slashdot actually do as a personal choice or we'd see much less
Here is another example. Do you go home, and spend from 4:00-9:00 working on projects for work? That's basically what students see themselves as doing when they get home and are expected to spend the entire time on homework for homework's sake or studying because its bound to be better than TV or video games. I liked to watch TLC, History Channel, and Discovery channel. Now a days I watch cartoon network with the kids and get horrified at the toons that I used to watch growing up. I don't change the station or prevent my kids from watching what I watched growing up though. I read far more now than I did in HS or college. I read a 300 pg fiction book a night. I don't watch TV really, but do play video games. I consider the standard education that folks like you would like to cram down everyone's throats as mainly a waste of time. I didn't really appreciate that opinion until I was finished with organized education. I can now safely say most of education is BS to keep the populance busy and unproductive. Really, we could start being productive adults at 12 or 13, but that would cut down on our education, reduce the number of teachers, and be "child labor" so it must be an evil concept.