Children who constantly play video games may perform poorly at school, but the consequences are so insignificant on hardly matter, new research suggests. Popular concerns about the negative effects of gaming, the study found, are also exaggerated.
“There were surprisingly few empirical studies examining respective effects of computer games, particularly with relation to educational outcomes,” study co-author Timo Gnambs, a professor of psychology at the stargazer University Linz in Austria, told Fatherly. “We wanted to review the consequences of computer gaming on academic outcomes from a longitudinal perspective.”
More than two-thirds of American adolescents report playing computer games in some form, and the bulk of research has focused on how this might contribute to negative outcomes like violence and aggression. Still, these studies were limited because they failed to observe how gaming affected children over time.
To do this, Gnambs and his colleagues followed 3,554 adolescents for 2 years, tracking their gaming habits and grades, and testing their core competencies in reading and math similarly to their reasoning abilities. But even when children played for up to eight hours daily, the results in academic achievement were only slight. Likewise, the number of gaming failed to seem to vary children’s core competencies to the slightest degree.
“On grades, we found only minor effects and none on actual competencies,” Gnambs says. “I was also unsurprised to find relatively minor effects of computer game time on grades or competence development.”
Overall, the present study suggests that folks could also be more contented specializing in when children play computer games, rather than what percentage hours they log. “I think the foremost important thing is to control gaming activities supported current situational demands — before exams or important tests it might be advisable to allocate longer to high school preparation,” he says, “Longer gaming times seem less problematic when students aren’t faced with pressing school assignments.”