Should kids play videogames?
 

I would have put this in the gaming forum, but I think it opens up a wide enough debate on parenting in general to be worth a vigourous general discussion. I thought it was a great article with some well made points. So without further ado:

Clickety.

My feelings on this are roughly analogous to my feelings on TV - too much of it is bad for you. I think he could be right in that videogaming is severely hampering creativity and critical thinking in young people, but I think the same is true for lots of things.

What do you reckon?

Moderation in everything....even in itself.

That and...if you're worried about them gaming too much, then it's time to....BE A PARENT.

I haven't gotten my four year-old a gaming system yet...but she's sure showing interest in my games. I'm gonna have to give in soon. But, be damned sure that I'll know what she's playing, will play it with her, and will limit the amount of time that she has to game.

Just like my parents did.

You're going to buy your 4 year old kid a video game console??

Jesus... when I was four I was still playing with the pots and pans in my parents' kitchen.

I wouldn't let my kids get a game console until they were like eight or nine.. Hell, maybe not even that early.

how timely and interesting. I too am buying (have bought) my 8 y/o, as well as my 13 y/o each a DS for Christmas.

But they will not be having it in their rooms at night. The same rules apply as with the PS2 - after poor self moderation, the kids all have to obtain their memory cards from us, and get to use the games for a specific duration (let's say 2 hrs) and then turn the cards back in.

The machine is unplugged during the school week as well.

So we have no problem playing the harsh parent, and many of their friends think that way, or did until my son's neighbour friend had his father actually trash the PS2 because of poor report card and a hidden copy of GTA2.

Also, on the topic of sleep - kids and adolescants require 10 hrs of sleep. Most growth is done during sleep. We don't buy the arguement that teenagers have different sleep patterns. I'm not going to have them wandering the house while I am trying to sleep my self!. Nope the rule in my house: bed times to be observed. If they want to read a bit that's fine, as long as they are winding down.

So my 16 y/o: in bed by 10:30. yes he can read for a bit.
My 13 y/o: 9:30.
the 8 y/o: 8:30

no gameboys, or DS or other game systems in the rooms. Forget about the computer or TV. And us parents being IT professionals means that they can't pull one over on us with respect to the computer.

I talk about my horrible nephews a lot...

Both boys, now 11 and 9 I think, have been playing video games of any sort since they were in pre-school... and not necessarily the 'educational' variety either. Both boys have absolutely no social skills, their verbal skills are atrocious (the 9 year old still baby talks), will rarely pick up a book to read, and for any 'family' event, their nose is usually in their game boys.

Moderation would have been the key -- or just unplugging the system. I think there are things a kid needs first... Playing with friends... Using their imagination... Reading... Creative games... I think that video games take all that away...

seems to me people think that parenting just happens....

they put jr down in front of the TV, videogame, computer, etc. and then wonder why they aren't socialized properly or behave well.

Parenting is 100% active duty 24/7/365 until the child is 18.

I never owned a true gaming console as a kid--still don't, though I enjoy gaming on the PC. Instead, my parents bought me an educational gaming system called the Socrates.

http://oregonstate.edu/~jansenli/socrates.jpg

I really did enjoy that thing, and I learned a lot from it. When I got older, we got a Macintosh and I played mostly educational (Oregon Trail, Carmen Sandiego, Amazon Trail) games on that as well. It wasn't until we got our first PC that I ventured into other games, and even then it was historical RTS (Age of Empires). I also didn't watch a lot of TV as a kid...instead I read a lot. I plan on encouraging my children to do the same.

If my (future and theoretical) kids want a console, they're going to have to buy it themselves. I refuse to purchase something of that nature for them. Educational games are a different story, but traditional consoles come with very few educational games worth talking about. So I think I'll stick with a PC, monitor their usage of said PC, and encourage them in pursuits such as reading or playing with friends. That, in my mind, will have a better impact on their intellectual and social development than letting them play console games--even while being monitored. It's healthier for children to be up and around exercising, or exercising their minds with a book, than to be vegged out in front of the TV--no matter what's happening on said TV.

I don't think there are many people who are going to say that letting a child under the age of twelve have free reign of video games is a good idea.

Perhaps a short while on something educational is okay. Kids will need to learn how to use multimedia systems eventually, and I know that I certaintly learned a bit from games. But, kids who get to play ten hours of even G rated games like Mario Kart are lacking some sort of essential developmental practices, I'm sure.

To be honest, what kid is going to get ten hours straight of gaming time? They come home from school, and a good way for them to relax is to play games. I think they key difference between games and normal TV is that games generally actively engage the mind. Problems to solve and obstacles to overcome - much more mentally engaging than books or TV. Fair enough if you don't want them killing pedestrians in GTA, get them an alternative.

If they play handhelds while they should be sleeping, could be cause for concern. But hell, I used to sneak into the toilet at night so I could read for an hour or so after I was told lights out. I don't think there's an expert on the planet that would deduce that I had a dangerous addiction to reading. During school I couldn't concentrate, I never had a good night's sleep and could never be bothered doing homework. I could sit here all day and blame games, books, TV, rock music or an allergy to moonlight. Turned out it was ADHD that had gone undiagnosed because a) teachers are too afraid to suggest it and b) parents want their kids to be perfect.

On having a console in the room - odds are, once this happens, they get bored of it extremely quickly. Most games have 10-15 hours of useful gameplay unless there's more than one person to play, and at the levels you guys seem to be concerned about that's a day or two of playing. Blaming games for introverted, socially awkward kids is bunk, they existed before games and will exist long into the future as well. maleficent - perhaps those horrible nephews have a problem further down than their games?

To parents; IMO, if you don't want your kids to become fat and lazy from games, involve them in a sport. Something every child should be doing, anyway. Just don't go nuts and make them do 23048854 extra-curricular activities and have no free time. I felt so sorry for those kids...

Yeah, kinda disjointed as a post, but the original article doesn't have any grounds in anything other than the writer's beliefs. I certainly have never come across the notion that gaming increases creativity, and I'm knee-deep in what goes on with them. Better hand-eye co-ordination, problem solving skills and attitudes towards failure, these things come from games. Creativity is far more internal than that.

Of course kids should play video games!! I played video games all my life and look how i turned out!..... okay bad example but it helps build motor skills and its fun...better than kids doing drugs and doing naughty things right?

Yeah good, games are a distraction... rather than be good parents and teach them the way things are, just make it easy on yourself by not doing anything. I'm not arguing "for" videogames, I'm just ridiculing the idea that people would rather try taking it away entirely rather than take the time to educate their kids on the proper use of time with regard to "play" and "important" (i.e. school, exercise, etc.).

In a video game, isn't the easiest way to deal with failure... just to reset the game or start the game over? Rather than showing a kid the way to deal with adversity is to face it and work thru it and triumph over it?

Partly. What leads on from that is gamers tend not to see mistakes as failures, but rather an opportunity to do things better the next time. Example - they're guiding Jack Marine through a level, they lose concentration or goof up and they die. They don't just give up and never play again - they give it another shot, work out the best way to get past it and end up succeeding. You don't find anyone resetting a game once they hit a hard part; it's counter-productive and utterly pointless. They'll keep working away at it until it's done. Starting over would erase all the hard work they've done to that point.

hulk: sometimes that true, it depends on the individual. There are those who cannot deal with frustration well and just bail on the game when it gets hard. Maybe they set the difficulty to easy, use cheats etc. These people will no doubt be worse off than those that can perservere and triumph to the end.

There are some that do get very creative in their solutions when there is a problem. Translate that to business and usually companies cannot afford to make mistakes since they can be costly and cannot try over and over until they find the right actions. They strive to get it right on the first try.

Gaming to an excessive amount can cause serious problems.
therefore
We should not allow children to play games.

Eating to an excessive amount can cause serious problems.
therefore
We should not allow children to eat.


For a dissenting opinion on the "common wisdom' with regards to contemporary popular culture (including video games) I whole heartedly recommend the book 'Everything Bad Is Good For You' by Steven Johnson.

and...

Not to lay blame on anybody, but a lot of low-income kids know little or nothing in their lives except video games and TV. Because (choose one or more):

*they're in a single-parent family, Mom is working two jobs to survive, the 12-year-old supervises the younger kids, and the only way to keep them under control is the near-hypnotic state of videogaming

*the parent(s) are substance-abusers who can't actually cope with raising a kid. Easier to throw a console at him and buy him whatever he wants.

* The kid's been physically abused by Mom, Dad, or one of a series of temporary stepfathers. Kids with a lot of rage tend to retreat into video games.

* The parents are poorly educated or illiterate, _both_ work two jobs to keep the family afloat, and when they come home, have just enough energy to get supper on the table and then collapse. They know they don't spend enough time with the kids, and buy them video consoles and games to do what they can to keep them happy. And occupied. Of course there's no time for anything else.

I've seen it. It's my opinion that at least 10 percent of kids today fall into these categories. I had a job working with homeless kids for a while -- kids with few social skills, little impulse control, little ability to focus on tasks. If something wasn't happening _every second_ they were bored. The only way to completely occupy them was to hand them a Gameboy. They'd been conditioned by a "world" in which stimulation is constant, feedback is immediate, and all the focus is internal, not external. When you got some of these kids to actually play, physically, they'd act out videogames on the playground. Just like that unreleased Xbox ad, only not funny.

Kids like this -- and there are a lot -- have _nothing else in their lives._ Was talking to a teacher in a low-income area the other day. She talked about visiting poor households where they had practically nothing, little furniture, few clothes, no books; but managed to have a TV or game console in _every room._ And the kids get a breakfast of Hot Cheetos on the way to school. These are not evil parents; they're stressed out, overworked, and completely uneducated. Which means they're also uneducated about the way to raise kids, nutrition, etc.

Where am I going with this. Guess I'm saying that unrestrained video console use is a problem. And there may be some lazy parents out there who could do better, but choose not to. But there's a real problem in that a whole lot of parents don't actually realize the damage they're doing, and actually _can't_ both raise the kid right and keep a roof over their heads simultaneously.

Back at the turn of the '20th century, there was a national outcry over a product called "Mother's Helper." It was a product meant to keep children quiet and docile when working-class mothers had to leave them home alone while they went off to work 12 hours in a clothing sweatshop. Turned out that "Mother's Helper" was full of opium, which was _not_ on the label. Outrage over products like "Mother's Helper" launced the federal regulatory initiatives that led to product safety laws, labeling regulations, the Food and Drug Administration, and more.

Eventually we'll find out what's "not on the label" with videogaming. We'll find out that too much of it has a deleterious and possibly irreversible effect on the young brain.

Let's not confuse the problems that come with poverty with the problems that come with video game console ownership.

Exactly. And certain types of video games may stimulate creativity, and they all improve certain mental abilities (hand-eye coordination, multitasking, reflexes). Not to mention, there are educational video/computer games that can help children learn math or reading if the parents find their children are not particularly attracted to these subjects.

My point is that videogames become a crutch used to keep together bad family situations. And videogames just make the problems worse -- like a drug. Like a drug that was once given to children to keep them quiet because there was no child care, back 100 years ago.

And there are parents who could do a better job but don't choose to, and let their kiddies veg on videogames instead of developing any skills at all, much less social skills. I'd argue that poverty's an issue there, too -- 10 or 20 years down the road, and especially when they start dropping kids of their own.

Wow, Rodney, you just described my aunt and her family to a tee.

Odd how that works.

1. Eating is a necessity of life. If you don't eat, you die.

2. Video games are a form of entertainment. If you don't play videogames, you have to find a different way to use your recreational time. Also, the author of the article advocates limiting media time, not eliminating it, which would make the analogy go like this:

1. Excessive video game playing can be harmful so we should play in moderation.

2. Excessive food can be harmful, so we should eat a moderate amount of food.

When Sissy came to live with me (age 15), the rule was that she could earn media time by doing certain non-media related activities such as studying and reading, with an exception made for family activities.

Also, I have to disagree with hulk about what engages the mind most. Reading engages the mind much more than tv, movies, or video games because it gives you the least to work with, requiring the most from the audience. Doom creator John Romero once described the most popular FPS as a high tech version of Whack-a-mole. Sure it requires some puzzle solving skills, but not to nearly the same degree that reading a book requires.

I'm not attacking video game playing, but agree that limiting it for younger kids is a good thing.

Gilda

As a side note:

An EXCELLENT video game series for children to play is the Zelda line. My friend's sister (who is pretty much my sister, now) was 4 and a half when we started her on the Zelda series. Any one of the 3d ones will do - Ocarina of Time or Majora's Mask on the Nintendo 64 (rereleased for gamecube) or the Windwaker on the Gamecube itself... Windwaker is the best to start out on, and then comes Ocarina and Mask, in order. She's now just turned 7, and we've noticed that her hand-eye coordination is absolutely incredible. She can now play the songs on the instruments in game, and she can fight the boss battles and win... She was encouraged to read because of her interest in the games' storylines, and we also spend time with her by reading to her from the game and watching her solve the puzzles. Overall, the games have been a great tool in her education and upbringing - parents and siblings just need to make SURE to know what the games they're getting their children are like. Games like madden and tony hawk's pro skater and even mario can be entertaining, and they may be what the child asks for, but there are better games out there that will give back much more by letting the children and parents play together and learn things that will contribute to, rather than waste, their lives.

Yeah, but really anything can become a crutch. I agree that videogames are an inadequate replacement for human interaction and that there are parents who let their kiddies veg out on video games instead of developing any skills at all. But there are also plenty of parents who let their kids veg out on video games and their kids somehow still magically develop skills, including the social ones. I have a sneaking suspicion that the parent plays a much more significant role in the development of various skills than the average video gaming habits of the average child video gamer.

Well, to be fair, doom is a very simplistic game that, aside from the graphics, hasn't changed at all since it's inception. It is essentially a high tech version of whack a mole. It also isn't a very good example of a typical video game because it is so simplistic.

I wish I had not played video games as much in my younger days. My parents hardly ever bought me games, and hated that I played them a lot, but they never seemed to like letting me hang out with my friends either. Left me with a lot of spare time in the colder months.

Reading is definitely more involving than playing video games. Although if you're going to use Doom as an example of a video game, then to be fair you'd need to use something like Garfield as an example of reading.

I disagree - you're playing the wrong games ;) All of my favorites are extremely story-driven. Marathon, Deus Ex and Baldurs Gate. They're certainly much more engaging than trite like any Dan Brown novel, the difference being instead of imagining what happens you see it on the screen.

I disagree - you're reading the wrong books. :) Try reading The Divine Comedy sometime and tell me that it's light reading. :D

And I do play many, many RPGs. Much more so than the Doom-clones.

Or Paradise Lost, or any Shakespeare play, or a Dickens novel...

Or even some of our more modern fiction by Tolkien and even JK Rowling: unlike games, they take imagination to make them work.

Imagination is what makes games fun after you've beaten them. I see what you're saying but books require very little hand-eye coordination and unless you're into books about heuristics, can do little to teach problem solving of any sort.

I never said anything about light reading, the comment was in reference to how a story engages the viewer ;) A blanket statement about books being more engaging than games just ain't right.

it's great for hand eye coordination, and my four year old plays games and he can count to 1000 and can already add and subtract.

On a similar note, check this out:

http://www.playlimit.com/howplaylimitworks.htm

In filipino culture, parenting stops when the 'child' hits 30 (or so) :D

make them earn their game play.

yeah I still have some cousins that still live at "home" and they are in their mid40s

Reminds me of the old multi-purpose ethnic joke:

Q: How do we know Christ was (fill in ethnic group here: Italian, Irish, British, American, etc.)?

A. Because he lived at home until he was 30, he didn't have a job, and his mother treated him like he was God.

After reading through some of these posts I think some of you are taking this too far. Lets not analyze games to the point that they both make kids idiots and break apart families etc. I'm a younger guy who honestly started playing games (not intensely) but I did at a very young age. My parents had an Atari and I recall that I played my mom in games like COMBAT. Moving on I got a Nintendo for christmas from my uncle several years later. Continue you the pattern...I'm in college and I've gamed since I was about 4.

I think that the key is that as long as the kid lives a structured life where playing video games isn't the only thing then they will be fine. I played sports in leagues as a kid and I still try to exercise today. Trust me too, I'm a nerd. I have played at "BIG LAN PARTIES" and probably have played too many late hours in the night....that being said I think I'm a perfect well adjusted guy with a decent grasp on social interaction. OF course things could change, but I plan on letting my kids play videogames early on in their lives. I really want to start them with the original NES or something and I will be moderating them, but I really don't see any problem with them playing as early as 6 or so.

I think the article in the OP just draws a comparison though between what his daughter does now (writing, drawing and teaching herself to play the piano) and what she might end up doing if he plops her down in front of a games console and leaves her to it. I can see his point. Creativity is something to be valued and nurtured, and I do (seriously) believe that excessive immersion in passive media where you are not required to engage intellectually, is damaging to a person's creativity.

That's not to say games can't engage you intellectually, but they don't admit of the same depth as a novel, arguably never will be able to.

I don't see games as being as bad as TV, however - in front of which you can basically sit and drool - since you are required to put some input into your game, but it's not an engagement as such, is it? Compare that with say, a novel, which engages your imagination, your emotions and your intelligence. You form relationships with the characters, you come to care about them, and, importantly, you have a hand in creating them. They exist solely in your imagination.

If I ever become a parent, I will let my children watch television and play video games. But I won't allow them to spend every waking moment watching television and playing video games. I will encourage them to read, play sports, learn a martial art, ride dirt bikes, etc.

Hell, I had an Atari 400 computer when I was 4. I got it for my birthday. I've always had something to play games on (computers or consoles), but as someone said above, it has to be in moderation. THey should also play outside, play sports, read and do other activities. Yardwork and chores, let them help you cook and bake, whatever. Games and TV are fine, now and then.