Are Video Games Truly Bad for Kids’ Health? Video games take a lot of heat.
They’re blamed for making kids fat, lazy, violent, and withdrawn, among other social ills. But are these criticisms justified? A recent study in the journal Pediatrics set out to determine whether all video game playing is bad for kids’ health, and which factors determine whether certain kids might be more at risk. Arthur Carlo Franco Researchers surveyed more than four thousand public high school students in Connecticut. The results suggest that physical and mental health problems linked to video games depend on a student’s psychological investment in those games. The researchers classified a student as a problematic video gamer if he or she agreed with all of the following statements: I have been unsuccessful in cutting back.I experience an irresistible urge to play.I experience tension that is only relieved by playing. Excessive video game playing in adults is associated with negative physical and mental health outcomes. In the past, research into the negative health impact of spending too many hours each day glued to a TV set, video game console or computer screen has focused on “tweens” and adolescents, generally between the ages of 8-18.
While this age group certainly earns their reputation as gamers—with 59–73% manning the controller on an average day—new research published in the October issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine turns the microscope on a different class of video game enthusiasts, adults. In a study of 562 people between the ages of 19–90 living in the Seattle-Tacoma area, 45.1% said they played video games regularly. The concentration of gamers didn’t surprise researchers too much, considering that the hub of Microsoft and Amazon is the country’s 13th largest media market, and has its highest level of internet use. Yet, what was illuminating for researchers led by James B. In an accompanying editorial, Dr. 6 Reasons Violent Video Games Are Bad for Young Brains.
Photo: Laura St.
John / Discovery Kids Puterbugs As my little jedi knights have a Star Wars lightsaber war behind me as I start to write this, I get worried thinking about the day that their real-life fascination for shooting and blasting things will meet their virtual counterpart: violent video games. As co-creator of an online educational game series for kids that goes up to age eight, I've become really comfortable in my innocent world of clean, ad-free, safe characters.
But now my soon-to-be eight year old is at the cusp -- and he knows other kids his age whose parents let them play anything -- so I dug a little deeper to find out what these violent video games could be doing to our kids, without so many of us even knowing it. The Dirt. How Might Video Games Be Good for Us? Is gameplay good for us?
It’s a question I hear daily from gamers – as well as from their parents, teachers, doctors, therapists, and pastors. There’s certainly good reason to ask this question. Collectively, as a planet, we now spend more than one billion hours every single day playing videogames – a total that’s up more than 50% from just three years ago. Meanwhile, the average young person racks up 10,000 hours playing videogames by the age of twenty-one. (By comparison, they will spend just 10,084 hours in the classroom throughout all of middle school and high school combined.) The more we play, the more we reasonably want to know: Are we spending our time wisely, or are we wasting it? Let me propose three different ways of looking for the “good” of games – three questions that define “good for us” in substantially different ways. 1. 2. 3.
What Scientists Say Do videogames make us better at anything? The research here is increasingly persuasive. What Gamers Say. Top 5 Reasons Why Video Games Can Be Bad For You - Mental Environment - Lifestyles - Family Resource. By: Jon Henshaw, M.A.
Video games can be bad for you, but not for the reasons you might think. They're not bad for you because they'll make you violent — because they won't. However they can be bad for you for other reasons. Here's a look at the top 5 reasons why video games can be bad for you. 1. Addiction is defined as "The condition of being habitually or compulsively occupied with or involved in something 2. It cost a lot of money to stay current with the latest video games and hardware (console and/or computer). 3. There's often a direct correlation with the amount of time spent playing video games, and the amount of time spent engaging in a quality relationship.
Update: A reader brought to my attention an online group dedicated to loved ones who have been affected by their partner's addiction to World of WarCraft (WoW). Do you have a loved one that plays World of Warcraft so much that you feel like you are a widow? 4. 5.