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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."
Yes, but children do a funny thing...they grow up. It's better to get them engaged at ANY age so that when they're 18, they have a better chance of having better formed opinions than their peers. Bonus points if you can get them interested before the teen years and raging hormones REALLY set in.
Not meaning to troll, but this aversion to politics and world-affairs as "stress inducers" seems to be uniquely American. Elsewhere, children are subjected to things called "Geography" and "Civics" from very early on.
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
Top marks for good fatherhood. Let me recant a story.
Ok, i was born a bit early for computer games but I can see the effect and congratulations are in order. I read war and peace at the age of 9, but the school still made me read johnny appleseed because I was supposed to. I hate that book.
However I didn't really fall in love with books until I real frederich pohl and stephen baxter.
I am a librarian now, and work in the field of human/computer interaction
If I never was shown the right book way back in 1997 I would be a welder right now. Thank you awesome librarians of stafford in the UK
Protip: In some countries that's called bribery. In some countries, bribery is illegal both for the briber and the accepting bribee.
Perhaps America needs to stop playing semantics and think about that.
Shouldn't we be teaching kids to avoid conflict, rather than create it? To seek peaceful solutions, and not rely on coercion?
And be taken advantage of by every kid that didn't get this pacifistic brain washing.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
However,it is safe interaction. So computer gaming is good for children if for no other reason than it is a safer form of unsupervised interaction and playing ie. they are playing at home in a relatively safe environment rather than out on the streets. Not that it should be their only activity, obviously outdoor play is also very important, however to be as safe it does require parental supervision, often a difficult thing to arrange. So it is not suprising so many parents decide to dump their child in front of a video gaming device, it keeps them relatively safe, it keeps the occupied so they get into mischief digital mayhem being far safer and less costly and the parent gets to avoid parenting for quite a few hours.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
In general, peaceful solutions only work if the other side is willing to be peaceful.
Still, peaceful solutions are the best, so try those first, but always have a non-peaceful backup plan handy for when they don't work.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
a small script written by any slashdotter that takes care of this debate once or twice a month, randomly. there are only two possible outcomes based on the jack.thompson randomizer, which decreases in value daily.
Good people go to bed earlier.