New research finds video games are better for children than TV
By Jess Colwill on January 10, 2013 at 6:07 pm
We’ve all heard the joke(?) about TV being a better parent than some of our actual parents. New research shows, however, that playing video games is an even better parent than TV! Well, specifically that gaming is better for them than watching TV. This story was featured on the ABC News and the clip is linked below, but I’ll give you the highlights anyway.
Research found that playing video games helped boost self-esteem and mental development as well as physical activity levels. The lady anchor seems kind of pissed at the prospect, but the research seems sound! The government currently recommends children spend no longer than an hour a day in front of a screen. According to Dr Daniel Johnson of the Queensland University of Technology though, the right child playing the right game could spend 3 or 4 hours playing and still be considered a healthy amount.
The ABC won’t let me embed their video, but check it out here for more details on this new research.
Source: ABC News
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Cool. Good to see research being done into stuff like this that isn’t straight from the point of view that “Games are bad”, regardless of the results of that research.
Nice, now we just need to convince the government and all involved parties that the price for this ‘education’ and ‘self esteem boosting activity’ is way too high in Aus and we are being gouged……*cough*
Worth a shot.
Take THAT Southington game burners!
I think this is correct so long as the right games are played and by that I mean games such as Minecraft where the child can use their imagination and creativity to explore things in a virtual envrionment. Games such as Call of duty (even though its bullet hits consist of money and jam spraying forth) are definately wrong for kids under a certain age.
inaugural, that’s only partially true about CoD. What kid doesn’t play cops and robbers in the school yard though? If the child can properly differentiate between a game and the real world, then there’s little harm in playing FPS’s. The harm only exists when the personality has a defect and takes the fictional actions as real or a good thing to try in real life.
CoD and other fast past FPS games are very very good for getting children’s hand eye co-ordination and reaction speeds to be better and faster. Racing games which are realistic can help children learn what it is to drive a real car well before they ever turn a wheel like in Shift 2 for instance (it’s not perfect, but then most 17yr olds aren’t either!).
So while of course a few take things to extremes, it’s far less dangerous than having your children indoctrinated by a religious organisation every weekend…
Considering the study was specifically focused on 2 to 5 year old kids, no you should not be getting your preschoolers to play COD.
Bad RSOblivion *smacks*
stoibs,
But a lot of things are good for the development of children that no government or institution would necessarily encourage or promote. Peer pressure and talking to strangers are two such social sins that are in fact amazing for emotional development. And on the flip side, failure and telling a child they are amazing whatever anyone else says is, for the most part, quite damaging because they create glass egos to say the least.
It is kind of like the same as you do not tell your children to eat as much dirt and roll in as much mud as possible because it will give them one hell of an immune system, regardless of the truth it holds…