Effects of Video Gaming on Children
The home video game industry is now over 30 years old. In that time, computer technology has improved at a geometric rate. A high speed elevator now has more computing power than the Apollo spacecraft that landed on the moon. Over the same period, video games have also moved into children’s homes. Children began playing video games for increasing amounts of time, and the games themselves became more graphically violent over time leading parents, educators, physicians, and researchers to question the impact of these changes.
Similar to earlier studies about television, children’s video gaming habits can be correlated with risk factors for health and with poorer academic performance. When video game play is analyzed for violent content, additional risk factors are observed for aggressive behavior and desensitization to violence.
Video games are natural teachers. Children find them highly motivating: by virtue of their interactive nature, are actively engaged with them: they provide repeated practice: and include rewards for skillful play.
Video games have been shown to teach children healthy skills for self-care of asthma and diabetes, and have been successful at imparting the attitudes, skills, and behaviors that they were designed to teach. Studies with adults show that experience with video games is related to better surgical skills. Research also suggests that people can learn iconic, spatial, and visual attention skills from video games.
Given the fact that video games are able to have several positive effects, it should come as no surprise that they also can have negative effects. These negative effects tell on the children’s physical health, including obesity, video-induced seizures. and postural, muscular and skeletal disorders, such as tendonitis, nerve compression etc. However, it is of utmost importance that parents be concerned about two things: the amount of time that children play, and the content of the games that they play.
Simply put, the amount of time spent playing video games has a negative correlation with academic performance. Playing violent games has a positive correlation with antisocial and aggressive behavior (violence in games is when the player can intentionally harm other characters in the game). Content analyses show that a majority of games contain some violence. A majority of 4th to 8th grade children prefer violent games.
Looking across the dozens of studies that have now been conducted on violent video games, there appear to be five major effects. Playing violent games leads to increased physiological arousal, aggressive thoughts and feelings, increased aggressive behaviors, and decreased pro-social helping. A study of over 400 3rd-5th graders showed that the students who played more violent video games early in the school year changed to become more physically aggressive later in the school year, even after statistically controlling for sex, race, total screen time, prior aggression, and other relevant variables. Apparently practice does make perfect.
The research also seems to show that parents have an important role to play. Children whose parents limited the amount of time they could play and also used the video game ratings to limit the content of the games have children who do better in school and also get into fewer fights. Regarding limiting the time, experts recommend not more than one to two hours per day in front of all electronic screens, including TV, DVDs, videos, video games and computers (for non-academic use). The average school-age child spends over 37 hours a week in front of a screen.
Regarding content, educational games are likely to have positive effects and violent games are likely to have negative effects. Almost all (98%) pediatricians believe that violent media have a negative effect on children.
The conclusion from the accumulated research is that the question of whether video games are “good” or “bad” for children is oversimplified. Playing a violent game for hours every day could decrease school performance, increase aggressive behaviors, and improve visual attention skills. Instead, parents should recognize that video games can have powerful effects on children, and should therefore set limits on the amount and content of games their children play. In this way, we can realize the potential benefits while minimizing the potential harms.
