Timeout from gaming? |
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Remember the news going around last year about a South Korean man who dropped dead after a 50-hour Star Craft marathon? While it's an extreme case of gaming addiction (and 2005's bet for the Darwin Awards), a recent study sheds more light on the more juvenile ties between gaming and academics.Published this year in the October issue of "Pediatrics" magazine, the study was conducted on 4,500 students from the 5th to 8th grade living in the New Hampshire and Vermont area. Volunteers were asked what they thought their school performance was based on the ratings "excellent", "good", "average", or "below average", and were also asked about how much time they spent gaming and watching TV.
"On weekdays, the more they watched, the worse they did," study co-author Dr. Iman Sharif pointed out, adding that while there was a strong connection between how the kids felt about their performance and their viewing time, the study also indicated that gaming and TV viewing on weekends didn't seem to dent their performance. That is, if the kiddies stuck to viewing and playing for four hours tops per day.
So, what's the safe "fun" quota for the moment?
The American Academy of Pediatrics currently states that the safe limit for most kids in this age group is two hours of gaming and viewing time (that's both, not each), and that kids below the age of two should not be exposed to TV at all, recent studies showing they were far more sensitive to TV ads than at a later age.
Dr. Sharif added that keeping the view time to one hour had healthy effects on the kid's school performance, at least according to the study.
While the study does have a pretty limited scope - remember that output was based on the student's personal opinions instead of their actual grades - it does add solidity to the long-time issue of just how much time parents should allow for gaming. That, and the recent influx of immersive MMO's like WoW could provide a reference for later (and comprehensive) studies.
Via ars technica
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Comments [refresh]
This wasn't a -study-. This was a questionairre. There was no experiment performed. No kids were 'kept to 1 hour'. All that they have shown is that there is a correlation between the kids who watched tv/games less and had better grades.
To prove how pointless this is, there is a direct correlation between the number of pirates in existance and global warming. (http://venganza.org/) A correlation is a good indicator, but it doesn't prove anything, and it certainly doesn't prove that you can pull kids away from games and magically make their grades improve.
Ars technica wrote it, but there isn't a source for the actual study they wrote the article on.
Not a for or against person in this matter, but there's not really enough info to get a good idea of the study itself, so I'm not going to put a verdict on the article.
Till then, someone better tell the young ones to stop playing before they end up forgetting to sleep and study. Preferably someone in chain mail, brandishing a war hammer, and possibly four feet tall: Super Dwarf nanny FTW!