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A recent survey by the Entertainment Software Association (2018) found that at least one person in most households played video games (64 percent). More surprisingly, it found that 70 percent of those players were over 18.
When surveyed, almost two of three parents played video games with their kids, and most parents thought that games were beneficial.
Why Does Every Article on Video Gaming and Kids Sound Like It Should Have Scary Music Playing in the Background?
Despite the ubiquity of gaming in our lives, we know very little about the "beneficial or harmful aspects of video games for school‐age children's cognition or learning." What we do seem to know about video games is that they worry us.
There are a few things we do know about video games and young children:
- Patterns of video game use seem to be established early: Heavy child users become heavy teen and adult users.
- Time spent gaming increases with age.
According to the 2017 Common Sense Media Survey of 0-8 year-olds in the U.S.:
- Children under 2 are not gamers.
- 2-4-year-olds played about 21 minutes a day.
- 5-8-year-olds played about 42 minutes a day.
8-12-year-olds interacted with a "device" (phone/computer/tablet) about once an hour for a total of an hour and 20 minutes a day—about the same as teenagers. Twenty-seven percent of boys and 2 percent of girls said that gaming was their favorite activity.
Teachers often use games and "educational apps" (games) in school. More than 80 percent of teachers reported using them as far back as 2015, and computers, tablets, and phones have become more common in classrooms now than they were then.
Should we worry?
As found in research on television, the answer is: "It depends."
I quote directly from the Society for Research on Child Development's report:
"Two major points emerge from this research. First, effects depend on the content of the programming. For instance, while preschool educational television viewing has long‐term positive associations with academic achievement in English, math, and science (Anderson, Huston, Schmitt, Linebarger, & Wright, 2001; Fisch, Lesh, Motoki, Crespo, & Melfi, 2014), exposure to violent or even solely entertaining television has been shown to be negatively associated with cognitive development (Kirkorian, Wartella, & Anderson, 2008). Second, although television may appear to be a solitary activity, parenting moderates the effects of television viewing. Specifically, parents affect their children's television viewing by guiding content choices, and through co‐viewing behaviors (see Uhls & Robb, 2017, for a review). For example, high‐quality parent-child interactions during television viewing, including the use of dialogic questioning and praise, augment the degree to which young children engage with and learn from educational television programs (Anderson & Pempek, 2005; Strouse, O'Doherty, & Troseth, 2013). Indeed, the American Academy of Pediatrics (2016a,b) incorporated this research into its policy recommendations, encouraging co‐viewing."
As a parent, this tells me three things.
- I need to know what my child is playing. There are creative and exciting games out there. That's why we like them—they're fun. But just like frightening or overly sexualized movies, adult fare is not appropriate for children.
- The best way to know is to do it with them. If I'm playing along with them, we can talk about it, I can watch how they react, and I don't feel intrusive.
The last point strongly emphasized by SRCD is one I stated many years ago—way before research on this came out: Very young toddlers should be interacting with the real world, not with screens. Screens provide a visually exciting environment, but they are a sensory desert. Small children need to learn to manipulate their environment physically—they don't yet know how to move their hands and bodies through space! They don't know how real things interact. Video games provide fantastic, amazing simulations, but they are very predictable. The real world lets the child engage in many more unexpected interactions. Each of those interactions is a learning experience. Playing first in the real world may expand their understanding in ways an app can only aspire to.
So should we let younger kids play with video games?
If they're over 5, the games are age appropriate, and we play with them, sure! We might even enjoy it.
If they're younger than 5, probably not. There are other things that they'll probably enjoy more and that are better for them.
