This article is a press release for a new book written by Dr. Kourosh Dini, a psychiatrist who has worked with children and adolescents in relation to gaming behavior and its effects. The book, Video Game Play and Addiction: A Guide for Parents, examines all sides of a contentious issue that continues to concern parents, medical groups, the media, and the highest legislative body of the U.S. ("Congress Ponders Videogame Warning Labels").
In the book, Dr. Dini, a gamer himself, not only covers the often cited issue of video game addiction and influence on violent behavior. He also presents the research on the effects of video games on development of improved learning and communications skills and on the development of empathy.
I'm personally interested in the subject matter of this book because I am a parent of both teenagers and a small child, and I am also a gamer myself. My own computer gaming history as a child began with a teacher sometime in kindergarten or first grade loading a game called "Space Invaders" on a TRS-80 computer. Later, after my father purchased the first model of IBM-PC, I voraciously found puzzle, adventure, and primitive video games to play. A fond memory is my father and I working for weeks to figure out the original Zork I adventure developed by Infocom.
I've always encouraged my kids to play video games of all sorts. I know that to learn the rules of a game and play it successfully is in itself an important learning experience. Doing so helps even the youngest children develop reasoning skills. This is true of any game, not just video games. When my youngest was two, I sat her down to a chess board and taught her the names of all the pieces. I would take one color of pieces, and she would take the other, and we would take turns putting our pieces somewhere on the board. No, this wasn't chess, nor was it competitive, but it laid the groundwork for teaching her some gaming concepts in the future, and it emphasized the always important skill of being able to take turns.
There are many examples I can give of game playing by my children, but I will use my now four-year-old's gaming experience to demonstrate the extremely positive influence that computerized games have on children. She has a character on the MMORPG World of Warcraft named Taena. She made all the decisions regarding the development of the character such as name and appearance, with us helping actually click in the right places. We taught her how to move her character around, and how to fight the monsters. When she plays, she often needs our help because it is a complicated game and she can get stuck on walls and fences when she walks around. But she is still able to do things in the game for herself before she gets frustrated with it.
Playing this game has given her experience with technology that will be all-important in her future. The interface of World of Warcraft, when broken down to its basic concept of using the keyboard and mouse as the cause to create resulting effects, gives her experience with how to manipulate computers in general. The world she lives in will never go back to a time when it was unnecessary to understand how to interface with a computer.She also is able to use World of Warcraft for the oldest and arguably most important childhood activity: pretend play. My husband had left her playing while he prepared dinner. He came back into the room and found her in a dining area of one of the game's many Inns. She had sat in one of the chairs and was pretending to have a surprise party with the characters that were in the room.
Another interesting experience related to her World of Warcraft play was when one of our cats died. She was very sad about it, and we were trying to explain the death to her and how we would always remember Sabrina but that she wasn't coming back. "Not like in World of Warcraft," she said. "Dead people come back because that's a game. Sabrina is gone because she's really dead." An interesting statement from a four-year-old considering lawmakers and medical practitioners would like us to believe that violent videogames blur the distinction between fantasy and reality for teenagers!
The last example, though there are many more, that I will give of the benefits I've seen videogames have for my daughter is from when she and I were looking at the games that came with our new laptop. We started a game I had never played before, and I was having trouble at first figuring out what to do because I didn't read the instructions. Just as I figured it out (a marble had to be put in the appropriately colored hole by using the walls, and a "marker" to draw walls), she shouted out "You draw around the ball to put it in the hole!" She was able to flex her reasoning "muscles" to figure out the game, and in fact did so as quickly as the adult she was observing play the game. Reasoning skills take practice and experience just as much as raw intelligence, and games provide an opportunity to use those skills.
If Dr. Dini's book is as fair-minded about its subject matter as the press release indicates, it should be required reading for Congress before voting on any further videogame related legislation.
That's a very interesting anecdote about your daughter being able to understand the difference between reality and fantasy, even at such a young age. It often seems like people don't give children enough credit for their ability to understand these distinctions. I recently read an article about how gamers make better employees. I think we are starting to learn how games can be useful for learning and communication. I'll be curious about your thoughts if you decide to read this book. If you are very interested in this topic, you might consider pursuing it for your annotated bibliography.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I agree that video games do give children a certain reasoning ability and general computer knowledge, and have every intention of allowing my children to play video games, I believe it should be heavily policed in young children. I also believe it should never take a higher priority over certain "old-fashioned activities" like reading and playing outside. Yes, they have less lifetime relevance, in that your ability to read and play sports will probably not play a major role in your career. But, it will play a huge role on their school career.
ReplyDeleteI started out as a voracious reader as a child (to the point that my eye doctor told my mom she had to keep me from reading as much, or I would lose what little eyesight I had). As a fairly direct result, my vocabulary, reasoning, and critical analysis skills in elementary school were very good. However, through high school and now in college I have begun to play video games more and more (although I certainly still would not call myself a hard-core gamer), and books have fallen by the wayside. In fact, to be completely honest, I have not read a book outside of school in over a year. And perhaps it is mere coincidence, but I doubt it, my reading and writing skills have also declined somewhat. Computer skills is something that children have tons of opportunities to learn as they go through school. However, the reading skills they gain will essentially set the foundation for all of their schooling to come.
P.s. I believe I'm in your group for this class, so I hope I didn't start that out on a bad note!