Study Finds Video Games Are Not Bad for Kids

mcgrew writes with news that a study done by the Pew Internet & American Life Project has found game playing is all but universal among teens, and it provides a "significant amount of social interaction and potential for civic engagement." 97% of teens responding to the survey said they played games (75% played weekly or more often), and roughly two-thirds of teens use games as a social experience. The full report (PDF) and the questionnaire with answer data (PDF) are both available for viewing. From the report: "Youth who take part in social interaction related to the game, such as commenting on websites or contributing to discussion boards, are more engaged civically and politically. Youth who play games where they are part of guilds are not more civically engaged than youth who play games alone."

Comments

Based on their results

[427_ci_505]

Shouldn't they be called Pew-Pew Internet and American Life? :P

Re:Based on their results

[davester666]

How dare this so-called study attempt to disparage the truthiness of teens being violent because of video games!

Re:Based on their results

[MRe_nl]

Video games don't influence young people.
Otherwise we'd all be listening to repetetive electronic music and eating pills all day ; )

Re:Based on their results

[Anonymous Coward]

Video games don't influence young people.
Otherwise we'd all be listening to repetetive electronic music and eating pills all day ; )

Wait, you don't?

Deterioration of language skills

[Anonymous Coward]

Commenting on website boards? Well, it certainly doesn't help their grammar, if YouTube comment sections are any indication.

Re:Deterioration of language skills

[Grimbleton]

your faverite band sux n u r a gay!!!!11!!

Re:Deterioration of language skills

[SkyDude]

Well, that's the way it's worked for most people here on /. because peer review will always be better than a moderated forum.

Peer review? Does this mean I have no peers if I don't wear a tinfoil hat?

Re:Deterioration of language skills

[wastedlife]

Indeed, the slashdot.org/~username page is probably one of the most significant elements of Slashdot's success, for the reasons you've stated.

Man, that guy hasn't made a post since October 21 2000. I really doubt that is one of the most significant elements of Slashdot's success.

Re:Deterioration of language skills

[Digital Believer]

You used the correct you{r|'re}, proving Darkness404's point.

Yes, but he should've said "there're plenty of terrible comments", not "there's ...". Sigh.

Re:Deterioration of language skills

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot's trolls are better written than the admin's posts on other forums.

You are cordially invited to view the following website, known as goatse for your distinct viewing pleasure. Please enjoy yourself, monsieur.

Re:Deterioration of language skills

[Dr Dodgy]

"here i am lighting my farts with an industrial-strenght flamethrower".

Link please?

Re:Deterioration of language skills

[Hal_Porter]

I think there should be a comma between off and cunt.

Apart from that the comment was flawless.

the art of the gank?

[Krater76]

For instance, you can play a mayor in âoeSimCity,â and get a close-up look at what it takes to build and maintain a community. Helping a newbie get his sea legs in a game simulates the real-world experience of volunteering.

So what does mercilessly ganking a low-level player in Thousand Needles simulate?

But seriously, did they check how social these kids were before playing the games? Just because someone is being more civic in their gameplay doesn't mean that they got that way from playing games, they could've been that way in the first place.

Re:political interests?!

[StellarFury]

Nowhere else in the world is politics so uniquely American.

Re:The same old rule applies

[Red Flayer]

Moderation in everything you do. I believe these words of wisdom are mentioned in the Psalms as well.

Yeah, I tried that. My wife modded all our sexy time as (-1, overrated).

So I modded her (-1, troll)...

Didn't work out so well, I'm sleeping in the garage nowadays.

Re:political interests?!

[philspear]

Not meaning to troll, but this aversion to politics and world-affairs as "stress inducers" seems to be uniquely American

Seems plausible to me that politics and world affairs are more stressful to americans because we feel responsible. "Oh crap, what has my country gone and done now?"

As an american, the answer is usually "I really don't want to know, it will only raise my blood pressure, I can only vote so many times each election."

If I were german, the answer might be "Well, probably nothing too bad compared to... you know..."

Yeah and this applies to board games too

[Orion Blastar]

because as you know both Bill Gates and Donald Trump used to play Monopoly a lot, and it taught them how to do business.

George W. Bush used to play a lot of Risk, Advanced Squad Leader, and Stratego games to help him figure out his foreign policies.

Linus Torvalds used to play a lot of Life and Scrabble which taught him sharing and unscrambling things to make them into something useful like Open Source Software.

Steve Jobs played Candy Land and Go, and got ideas from them how to make the Macintosh with eye candy and making it easy to use like Candy Land but complex like Go.