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Study Recommends Online Gaming, Social Networking For Kids
Blue's News pointed out a report about a study sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation which found that online gaming and social networking are beneficial to children, teaching them basic technical skills and how to communicate in the Information Age. The study was conducted over a period of three years, with researchers interviewing hundreds of children and monitoring thousands of hours of online time. The full white paper (PDF) is also available.
"For a minority of children, the casual use of social media served as a springboard to them gaining technological expertise — labeled in the study as 'geeking out,' the researchers said. By asking friends or getting help from people met through online groups, some children learned to adjust the software code underpinning some of the video games they played, edit videos and fix computer hardware. Given that the use of social media serves as inspiration to learning, schools should abandon their hostility and support children when they want to learn some skills more sophisticated than simply designing their Facebook page, the study said."
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I can certainly see how online gaming or social networking might help these kids develop a better understanding of technology. However, we probably don't want them to become obsessed with these kinds of interactions and become completely inadequate in conventional social situations.
Yes but it reduces the amount of abductions in parks.
Well, think positively: if someone abducts your child in an online game and takes them into the depths of some dungeon, chances are your kid will only need to use his hearthstone to teleport back to the inn ;)
Plus, if it's a raid dungeon, they'll probably argue about loot and split up sooner or later anyway ;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
As a parent, techy and gamer - I hope no one is swallowing this load of tripe...
If you want to teach your kids to socialize - have them go out and socialize, or socialize with them!!
This is the kind of study that tells people what they want to hear.
Hey! You parents that are sticking your kids on an XBox for 6 hours a day to shut them up: You're all doing a great job! Keep up the good work!!
And for all you guys who live your lives gaming and never see the light of day - no, you're really the outgoing, social ones!
I'm going to teach my kids to smoke - to help them build up their immunity to pollution...
1. Better/more productive interaction with trolls and orcs
2. Able to dual wield weapons years earlier than other kids
3. Greater self-esteem when leveling
and most importantly...
4. Able to talk to virtual characters of the female (elf, dwarf, whatever) persuasion!!
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
Its far better than dressing in tight clothes, playing with dolls and being sensitive.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
What follows is not a comment on the story, but a meta-comment. Feel free to mod as you wish.
This is classic Slashdot. The story is tagged "suddenoutbreakofcommonsense". If the exact same study had come to the opposite conclusion (ie. online gaming and social networking is bad for kids), it would be tagged "correlationisnotcausation", and everyone would be trashing the methodology.
Slashdot is funny. This is part of why I keep coming back here.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
I admit it, I'm an old geezer at 34. I write in complete sentences and check my spelling before sending out important communications. Most of my peers do not. I have seen many e-mails and other casual messages going out to our customers with tons of Web 2.0 speak in them.
I understand the fact that the world is moving on and communication is getting less formal. After all, most people don't send out formal business memos anymore; they write e-mail and use IM software. However, I still think people need to be able to spell and write clearly. Exposing kids to more of the Web 2.0 stuff before teaching them how to write formally is just going to make things worse IMO. Feel free to disagree, but how many times have you gotten an e-mail from a co-worker with one or more of the following:
I'm really just curious how much of my concern is due to the fact that I'm "between generations," and how much of it is the geriatric fool stuck in the 1980s/90s talking...
And no, I'm not a grammar Nazi. Readable is just fine for me -- grammatically perfect is less of a concern.
Moderation is key. Online gaming and social networks have a nasty habit of eating people (metaphorically, of course). That needs to be prevented. But as long as they're in moderation, carefully balanced with other activities (and more to the point, activity) and monitored for safety, then these things can indeed be great learning tools for children.
In other news today, Jenny Tildwell and Brock Johnson, both sixth-graders, broke up on Facebook in the late afternoon, between seventh and eight period. A rampaging horde of schoolchildren across the country, composed of Jenny and Brock's entire extended networks, clogged the tubes to post, twitter, stream, or otherwise network their personal reactions to this saucy development. The internet promptly refused to put up with that shit and died. "We accidentally the whole internet," said one fifth grader, showcasing what was either a working knowledge of internet memes or the total and utter failure of the public school system's English language instruction. Neither Jenny nor Brock could be reached for comment, but the sharp increase in the amount of Facebook wall posts made by Brock on the profile of one Pearl Jaysberg, eighth-grader, seems to indicate that the drama is only beginning to come to a boil. We have been assured that the entire goddamn school will keep us updated.
My son is learning to type by entering in his favorite cheat codes for Jedi Academy. For the longest time I've had to put them in for him, but recently I decided to have him do it and now he's all over it. Having fun and learning a new skill at the same time. Who'd a thunk it?
Even the study mentions obsessive, addicted individuals with a smile and a wink thinking it's cute that:
two dating 17-year olds ... wake up and immediately instant message each other, then switch to mobile phones while on route to campus, then send text messages during class. After spending time together doing homework, they talk on the phone or send text messages
Yes, videogames and social networking can be good things for kids -- in restricted moderation, but they have to be just a supplement to physical and cognitive-developmental activities -- not the overarching structure of their entire lives. It's sickening to see people spend all their time on sites doing absolutely nothing, wondering why everyone's getting fat, lonely, depressed, and socially anxious. Moderation needs to be brought to people's lives, and not through oversaturation (I can only spend x number of minutes doing this, because I have to do x number of other things today!) but through self discipline (I'm spending x number of minutes doing this, because there are better things I could be doing with my time.... but I deserve this break.)
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
I'm most emphatically not one of the "think of the children!" asshats, but all I can think, is that amidst a growing problem with childhood obesity and general disconnectedness from reality, we want to encourage kids to sit in front of a computer more than they already do? Instead of, say, something completely radical and outlandish, like, say, going outside, doing something physical, and maybe interacting with live, real children their own age??!? Quick, somebody do the research, find out which (or how many) of the game companies these people were paid by to do this so-called "study".
I don't believe this at all. Having played a number of online games dabbled in social networking somewhat I fail to see where the real benefit is, as described in this article. There still exists that barrier of anonymity and there is no real interaction with another human being. There's no eye contact, reading body language or a general need for considering the other persons thoughts and feelings.
Want to teach children communications skills. Hold big family gatherings where adults and children are all interacting with each other. Well, one problem I've encountered with many American families is that at gatherings children are usually segregated off to their own corner, relegated to the children's table.
I've observed this with friends and within my own family, kids are interact with real people on a regular basis tend to be more outgoing and mature. The kids and teenagers I know who are into gaming and networking either seem to always be in their own worlds at these gatherings. They either run off to the bedroom and sit in front of the computer, or they're sitting in some corner tapping away on a phone.
On a side note, I've noticed this tendency where whenever research demonstrates something positive about gaming it's embraced wholeheartedly. Whenever it shows something negative it's strongly dismissed as nonsense; the tag correlationnotcausation seems to be quite popular for those stories.
Hello no! I have already seen the detrimental effects of MMORPGS and other online games into adult's personalities, I don't even want to know what can happen to a kid.
Was the one in charge of this study a level 90 Paladin?
Is socl netwkng goin to teach them essntl comm skls lik speling and crct gramar?
IDTS
I had a computer ever since I was five or six, and I played tons of old DOS games while figuring out, with my dad, how to make autoexec.bat + config.sys boot disks in order to play certain games. It came to a point where I would much rather stay in my room and play video games rather than playing tag football or anything else outside with kids around my neighborhood.
Fast forward a few years, and I find myself struggling like crazy trying to relate to anyone on a personal level, up until my second or third year of college. Since much of college, at least in my experience, had to do with interaction with other people, I ended up losing a lot of confidence and went through the shitter for a while. I finally realized after a while that I had to force myself to interact with people: I started going to a coffee shop after I transferred schools and interacted with as many people as I could, while being hooped up on Zoloft in order to get rid of my social anxiety. Then eventually, I overcame my fear and am now fairly comfortable around people.
Now, of course this is all anecdotal evidence that could also possibly point to the benefits of FIRST being a socially inept geek, THEN learning how to socialize and having the best of both worlds. However, I also had the benefit of having parents encouraging me to socialize as much as possible while being somewhat understanding of me wanting to just stay at home, and I also had the benefit of growing up with computers back when they were starting to become popular (so it wasn't totally infeasible for someone else in the block to have a computer), but also back when you had to have motivation to get things to work properly.
Nowadays, Web 2.0 hands people the power to publish blogs, websites, etc. with almost no effort, and any drive to learn HTML / CSS / etc. is limited by the mere fact that most functionality is already implemented MUCH BETTER than what an average person can probably do. That, and most kids nowadays probably don't know any DOS games (and even if they did, they probably played it through DOSBox, which makes things infinitely easier than before.)
"Hegelians, who love a synthesis, will probably conclude that he wears a wig." - Bertrand Russell
As long as it's balanced with real life "social networking" online interaction is beneficial. But if the next generation of young people enter the real world knowing nothing but how to text each other, run a successful WoW raid and manage friends on Facebook, we're looking at an epidemic of cognitive dissonance.
Social networking can be just as dysfunctional offline as online. Once again I see demonstrated a prejudice to the online world. I've found "real life" and the "real world" concepts that have epidemic cognitive dissonance associated with them. Variety is often nice and sometimes useful however. I've generally found the online world to be more intelligent and safer. One can at least turn off a computer, ignore or ban a Troll or bully; it's much more difficult in "real" life. At least when I was a kid parents or teachers (or the law for that matter) did very little about this; these days (it seems) like the law and society are over-reacting. Intelligence is often hard to find, but the Internet makes it easier.
addictions to games IS a problem. Games need to be MODERATED, not played willy-nilly by uncontrolled kids and adults.
Kids maybe but adults?
I take it you're in the "it's for your own good" camp. Where you can decide what I do with my life based purely on what you think is "good" for me.
You have no right at all to stop me sitting playing any game I choose until I develop blood clots in my brain and die.
It is a minor problem. It's in not your problem. Run your own life, let others run theirs.
as for violent games:
http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/04/gaming-real-vio.html
"The graph makes no direct claims towards a relationship between real world and gaming violence, though it's interesting to see an inversely proportional trend of violent gaming releases and incidents of real crime."