Recent study suggests kids who are allowed more tv and video-game time are worse behaved than those who aren’t. Why am I not surprised?
I had just noticed one in passing and didn’t keep a note of it as I scan through so many papers. There’s quite a number on the subject, but some of them are low quality, for instance on cause and effect, e.g. data that could also be interpreted as suggesting that worse behaved children tend towards more tv and video-games rather than the latter
causing the behaviour. There’s also a question of what is ‘worse-behaved’ — for instance is idleness and watching tv rather doing homework an example or not. Or there’s credible-looking articles like
External Link/Members Only which, if I were looking at it critically would ask, how come it increases violence in American adolescents whereas in Japan (which I think has much more violent media) it does not? That assumption itself might be wrong according to some
External Link/Members OnlyThere’s a meta-analysis here:
External Link/Members OnlySummary here:
External Link/Members Onlywhich at least uses data rather than theory alone.
That a few players develop
External Link/Members Onlywith their pastimes seems hard to argue with.
If I was a parent, I’d be looking at what I felt was the influence on a particular child, though my rule-of-thumb would probably to set time limits. I’m slightly against tv and video games generally, so slightly biased, but I think at least the old video games that relied on constant fast reflexes were shown to
External Link/Members Only in adolescents (not young children).
Apologies for any typos — just a quick answer typed on my phone, but I agree it’s an interesting subject.