Slashdot Mirror
Kid Health Experts Attack Video Game Summer Camp
Jack Action writes "The University of British Columbia runs a summer camp where kids get to play computer games for three hours a day. The camp organizers say it is 'a good social opportunity for some kids who didn't fit into other programs.' However, health professionals declare they are 'troubled' by the camp. A professor in UBC's department of medicine says kids should be outside and engaged in 'unstructured play,' while the CEO of an NGO that monitors kids' health chimes in that they already spend too much time in front of screens and not exercising. Do the health experts have a point, or are they just criticizing something they don't understand, or perhaps is not to their taste?"
The camp organizers say it is 'a good social opportunity for some kids who didn't fit into other programs.'
Back in High School we had a really cool teacher that let us setup a LAN with 5 computers in his classroom; We mostly played Quake and Warcraft II. It even expanded to the point that we had one guy running a D&D campaign, others would bring their MTG cards, and one guy was messing around with building robots. Point being, a good bulk of the guys that showed up were guys that weren't getting any meaningful peer interaction otherwise, because the other clubs and activities weren't up their alley . Gaming would happen, yes, but since there were only 5 computers a lot of socialization happened as well.