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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."
Shouldn't they be called Pew-Pew Internet and American Life? :P
Commenting on website boards? Well, it certainly doesn't help their grammar, if YouTube comment sections are any indication.
This "study" is about as worthless as they get. They ask a bunch of questions to both parents and teens and attempt to create a correlation to the questions they stuck in there. The parents are asked about their community involvement, and knowledge of current events. Teens are asked if they think communication is a good thing (paraphrased).
There's three numbers of any interest to me: ~70% of teens have high speed Internet at home. ~60% of them use the Internet daily. Finally, ~60% of parents think that their teen's gaming has no positive or negative effect on them.Overall, the study certainly doesn't make any quantifiable findings about the effect of video games on kids.
It does, however, show that kids today have a lot better access to the Internet than 10 years ago (surprise!) and that many of them use it on a regular basis (again, surprise!). I'd say that this study shows a stronger correlation between using the Internet regularly and civic involvement than anything to do with video games. In the end, however, it's still just correlation.
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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.
Maybe I'm just old, but when I was a kid, we left grown up matters like politics to the adults.
Well, that explains the ignorance of the modern voter. I kid... Mostly...
Every study hides and undisputable fact of life:
"People (and groups) are self-interested first and foremost."
Games aren't a public service -- there is a profit motive behind them whether or not they're bad for children. Likewise, studies that claim the opposite (in lieu of other child-vices) have the same root -- a profit motive.
Here is a study I'd like to see:
1. Which is better for children: Throwing rocks at my neighbor's window or playing GTA?
2. Which is better for children: Attending a public school or playing Age of Conan.
At the end of the day, I'm the parent and I'll decide what's good or bad for my children -- I don't need some pointy-head-pencil-pusher to feed me agenda-ized information.
Whereas the average adult has control over politics...
Nope, didn't think so.
Whether or not a person can vote is frankly irrelevant to the issue.
In general: Knowledge is Power. Kids will grow up and later be able to vote, and are directly affected by various issues under the control of politicians.
I am frankly surprised that anybody is worried that kids are taking interest in their surrounding environment and it's social mechanisms, I personally am more concerned about kids *not* taking an interest in politics, but then again I'm from the UK and currently living in France, where things are done differently to the US (which I assume is where you're referring to).
Children are not illiterate and incompetent sheep up until the age of majority, whereupon they suddenly become intelligent voters who know all about politics.
Worrying about things which you have no control of is often justified if those things have significant and pervasive control over you.
Although the leap from "interested in" to "worried about" is somewhat tenuous IMO.
Given the current political climate and pre-election/leadership issues publicity in many parts of the world including the US and the UK, a child would inevitably be exposed to significant quantities of information on the subject (in a easily digestible and hype-enhanced format most likely, too).
Disclaimer: I am 18 and about to commence university studies in the UK.
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overly aggressive video games like manhunt and GTAx can be very bad for children who have not developed proper conflict resolution skills.
I certainly don't agree with banning games like that since they provide many hours of enjoyment to me.
I will not let my son play them until he's mature enough to demonstrate the ability to choose something other than aggression.
I do support game ratings and I wish retailers would enforce them. I don't agree with government regulation of games or movies. That would be censorship.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Exactly. Shouldn't we be teaching kids to avoid conflict, rather than create it? To seek peaceful solutions, and not rely on coercion?
Then point them to the Libertarian Party. Ignorance and disinterest in just how your government is screwing everyone, and what they should be up to, isn't the way.
I've never been a huge fan "educational" games. I do think there are some good titles, but I think that the majority of educational games fail because they think that the emphasis is on being "educational". The underlying game has to be fun or the kid will throw it aside.
That said, I think that *all* games are educational. When my daughter was three she picked up my wife's Animal Crossing game and fell in love with it. I sat down and played with her and read all dialogue. Eventually I had to read to her less and less as she was increasingly able to recognize words. Today she's five and reads at a 3rd-grade level. Obviously it's not solely due to games like Animal Crossing, but I think it certainly helped.
Yes. Because adults are so much better at decision making. (sarcasm should be dripping off your screen by now)
Quite frankly, my experience is that people who were idiots in middle-school still were idiots in middle-age. They even had the same attitudes. This means that age has little to do with whether you're worth listening to. And any attempt to deride someone's interest based on their age is merely an attempt by someone older to keep the competition out.
Not to mention that it is only beneficial to develop and study interests early rather than late.
I'm not sure where you got this idea from, but I find it highly disturbing.
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... a study will find that Video Games *Are* Bad for Kids.
Umm.. how exactly is kids being interested in politics a good thing?
Because we can't expect kids to suddenly pick up a full set of political knowledge and opinions on their 18th birthdays. If they start being interested sooner, they'll be better prepared when they're finally able to vote, and we'll hopefully see higher turnout among young adults.
It's the same reason that kids who start drinking at a younger age, with their parents' supervision, end up with healthier attitudes toward alcohol. The ones who have no experience with alcohol before turning 21 (or moving out of the house) are the ones who turn into binge drinkers as soon as they have the chance.
Being that children can't vote, and no-one cares about their political opinions,
It's unfortunate that no one cares about their political opinions, because minors are certainly affected by political decisions. Recall that one of the reasons the USA split away from Britain was that it was being affected by decisions it had no power over ("no taxation without representation").
Still, for the health of our democracy, we should encourage kids to think about political issues before they start voting. That way, when the time comes, they'll be more likely to make a decision based on substance instead of treating it like American Idol.
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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.
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Nowhere else in the world is politics so uniquely American.
Jeezus. With an attitude like that, I hope you also choose to leave "grown up matters like politics" to others. The last thing this country's (or any's) politics needs is more people who didn't bother to contrive a political awareness until they were 18.
And who are you to assert no one cares about children's opinions, political or otherwise, asshole?
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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..."
Maybe I'm just old, but when I was a kid, we left grown up matters like politics to the adults.
And our politicians are still acting like children, so we can see how well that mentality worked out.
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so until you turned 18 you never read the news or took any interest in current affairs? no wonder our democracy is in such sad state.
politics covers social issues that affect us all, regardless of one's age. it isn't just an abstract academic exercise to be left to professional politicians. public policy affects our daily lives and touches on issues of morality and justice--concepts which don't just suddenly become relevant only once you're eligible to vote.
personally, i've never considered being politically informed as stressful. forming my own views & opinions about the world i live in isn't a chore; it's my democratic prerogative. i know it's become trendy to act/be apathetic, but that has never appealed to me, not even as a kid. i've always found intellectual pursuits to be very exhilarating, and i like challenging my own assumptions to improve my understanding of the world.
long before i turned 18 i was already involved in community service and social & political activism in my local community. you don't have to be able to vote to understand poverty and social injustice. raising money for charities or working at a soup kitchen aren't just activities for adults. and it's not at all stressful. if anything it's spiritually uplifting and gives one a sense of empowerment.
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.
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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.
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.
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They didn't prove a negative. The proof wasn't that games aren't bad for kids, but that they were GOOD for kids.
If they're good they can't be bad.
"Proving a negative" would be proving the nonexistance of something, such as proving that God doesn't exist, or proving that games are never good (or bad) for children.
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