posted by
janrinok
on Saturday April 05 2014, @05:07AM
from the daft-as-a-brush-but-good-reflexes dept.
from the daft-as-a-brush-but-good-reflexes dept.
A new open access study has been released that looks at whether video gaming has an effect on academic performance in industrialised nations.
"In sum, across more than 192,000 students in 22 countries, video-gaming behaviour had little effect on psychometrically valid assessments of academic performance in science, mathematics, or reading. The results suggest that the impact of video-gaming on academic performance is too small to be considered problematic."
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Video Gaming has Little Effect On Academic Ability
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(Score: 2, Funny) by tomp on Saturday April 05 2014, @05:26AM
Hair color has little effect on Steam inventory.
(Score: 2, Funny) by sudo rm -rf on Saturday April 05 2014, @06:17AM
Citation needed
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 05 2014, @07:04AM
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/03/29/goat-si mulator-video-stream-preview/ [rockpapershotgun.com]
GMTA
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday April 05 2014, @08:26AM
Is that "Ender's Game" was fiction? Or that military thinking, and reflex reaction to being bullied, are not the stuff of academic success.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 05 2014, @08:32AM
It's lunch time, you're hungry, we know how you feel. Your mouth wants Little Caesars and your wallet wants a deal. Four slices of DEEP!DEEP! Dish and a soda are for you. Hot-N-Ready for $5 and this is what you do. Bite bite, sip sip, that's what makes the combo. Bite bite, Sip sip, do the DEEP!DEEP! Dish Combo Mambo. For lunch!
(Score: 1) by Magic Oddball on Saturday April 05 2014, @09:00AM
I agree that playing games in general won't hurt academic performance. I want to say that I spent enough of my youth playing them to act as proof, but the kinds of games I played were too different from today's types to draw parallels.
IMHO the question shouldn't be whether games hurt academic performance, but which kinds of games (modern or historic genres) or other recreational activities *improve* different subject areas. That is, if a kid's playing FPSes during most of their free time, would any or all of their academic skills improve if they spent half that time practicing an instrument, reading, playing late-80s arcade games, creating art, or playing interactive fiction? IOW, it's not just what the student does that matters, it's what activities they're not spending the time on as a result...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 05 2014, @01:40PM
No correlation with academic performance. Videogame players are still low browed mouth breathers with greasy controllers and cheeto residue on their fingertips.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Tork on Saturday April 05 2014, @09:20AM
I'm at a point in my life right now where video gaming when I was a teen has actually turned out to have done me a lot of good. Even as a kid, I was observant about when game interfaces were good, and when they were lame. (If this concept seems strange to you, do a search on Youtube for 'Angry Video Game Nerd Ninja Turtles' before hitting reply) Today I create tools for technical people and creatives as well, and I have been thriving for quite a while. I don't know how a story like mine, assuming it is fairly common, could be measured.
Academia has its place, but I place a greater value on putting a roof over my head. It turns out that lots of things, even wastes of time, often need employees. Yeah, I'm a little off-topic, but I have a chip on my shoulder about all the emphasis that was placed on grades when I was a kid. Many of the very things that were called a 'waste of time' are serving me quite well, now. I do believe the intentions were good, but I do feel like some more supportive guidance then would have left me a stronger performer in the field, now.
Maybe I'm just resentful that the English teacher that wanted me to read and write a multi-page report on a boring novel every week plus the math teacher that wanted me to decode a new type of equation every other day and the history teacher who wanted me to understand the difference between the Sumerian and the Babylonian gods didn't anticipate that I'd need to know that modal windows are almost always a bad way to warn a user that one of a dozen settings might be harmful.
I do understand and even value the diversity they offered me so I could find my role in life, but I'd be damned if I claimed that I didn't wish for more free time and guidance for what truly interested me. I do hope the younger of my nerdy brethren have fared better than me. It turns out that not one employer of mine has checked my permanent reocrd.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday April 05 2014, @09:32AM
So who do you serve now, the Babylonian Gods, or the Sumerian? Or could it be Moloch? Not having enough education to realize how much education you are lacking, you will be eaten by a grue.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Saturday April 05 2014, @10:37AM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1) by velex on Saturday April 05 2014, @04:46PM
Agreed. Of all the things I wish I'd known when I was a sheltered teenager, I wish I would have known just how useless grades really were. The other funny thing about grades is how easily I could have gamed a 4.0 GPA for myself while taking way easier classes. Oh well, things turned out ok in the end.
I suppose the difference between a person leading an average life with a boring job in flyover country and somebody pulling in 6 figures doing something interesting and engaging is either having a waaay better bullshit detector in the teenage years or else having meaningful guidance from somebody who wants one to have a fulfilling career vs. guidance from folks more interested in being able to brag about one's grades and how many years one is "ahead" in this subject or that subject.
The focus on video games is misguided, and using "academic performance" as a metric is also misguided. Academic performance doesn't translate to real world success. A sure-fire way to burn a kid out is to prevent him from enjoying leisure time. Even if video games had some detrimental effect on "academic performance," having a kid get those straight As might make a parent feed good in the short term, but I wonder how that parent feels later on when that kid burns out and never goes on to become the millionaire the parent was hoping for.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khchung on Saturday April 05 2014, @10:22AM
This wouldn't be surprising to gamers at all. Play time is play time, whether you play computer games, chess, some sports, read fiction, or watch reality TV won't matter much. If you are obsessed with games so that you neglect your education, well, it wouldn't matter if you are obsessed with games, drug, alcohol, sex, or whatever. Games is just another thing people can obsess with.
This "play games will hurt your grade" meme is just an excuse for parents of child with poor grades, so they have something to blame instead of themselves. Yes, a child having poor grades is largely caused by parents. As evident in the corollary, that parents involved and concerned about their children's education usually have better academically performing children.
This meme won't change until enough gamers became parents themselves so they know the fact from experience. Then they will blame something else for their kids poor grades, usually something new that they haven't experienced first hand.
(Score: 1) by Hawkwind on Saturday April 05 2014, @03:18PM
So true. We really should be happy that kids have an option to obsess on games instead of destructive behavior.
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Saturday April 05 2014, @06:38PM
True in the most general sense, but I think you would find a real difference in measurable performance from someone that plays Farmville or watches Jerry Springer vs. playing, say, Minecraft or Spacechem or Kerbal Space Program. There's something to be said for just blowing off some steam in a mindless shooter or whatever, but even then you're developing/maintaining hand/eye coordination. I'd like to think it's possible for everyone to play casually but still be immersed in useful, practical information in some form.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 06 2014, @04:21PM
I am a parent who grew up on 8-bit Nintendo. I love spacechem. I love FTL and so do my kids. Not a fan of FPS. My kids like what I like because it is all they get. That said...
Video games have a general negative impact on behavior. Impatience, violence, sleep issues, distractions and such all to varying degrees. There are very few video games that are better than some real world activity(I can't think of any but I am leaving the possibility open). There is no video game that can develop the hand/eye coordination of playing catch.
Bad parents will look for any excuse. Better parents will look for whatever makes kids into their best. Video games can go into either category but the bad parents(and bad kids) definitely give them a bad name.
(Score: 1) by khchung on Monday April 07 2014, @11:44AM
"Impatience, violence, sleep issues, distractions"? Did you even read the headline before posting? We just had a study of 192,000 students that shown the effect of video gaming is "too small".
Yeah, I heard all about the "negative impact" that video games have, in fact, I heard them more times than I can remember, but seriously, citation needed, especially how the study distinguish between correlation and causation.
A reasonable man will question how playing, for example, Minecraft would cause more violence or sleep issues compared to watching, say, X-men or Game of Thrones, or any of the violence and gore filled TV shows of a typical American evening. If no one is blaming TV for causing bad behaviours, then blaming games is just finding a scape goat (most likely because the typical parents watch too much TV themselves?).
Bad parents will look for any excuse, that's for sure. Are you sure you aren't looking for excuse when blaming video games for all those "issues"?