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Video Game Impact on Brain Development
According to a recent study of 1,178 children in
the US, almost 9 percent of child gamers are
pathologically or clinically "addicted" to playing
video games.
However, 23 percent of youth say that they have
felt "addicted to video games," with about
one-third of males and a little more than one in 10
females reporting the sensation, according to the
survey by Harris Interactive.
Forty-four percent of the youth 8 to 18 also
reported their friends are addicted to video games,
the survey said. The average child 8 to 12 plays 13
hours of video games per week, while teens age 13
to 18 year play 14 hours of video games per week,
according to the survey.
These statistics raise some interesting
questions. While the majority of kids who play
video games don’t become addicted, what does
it say about our culture when one third of our boys
have felt addicted to video games? How do video
games and other stimulating products prepare our
kids for the future? What child, after the
excitement of 14 hours of video games each week,
doesn’t get bored when faced with
“spending time with grandma”, or some
other activity that doesn’t provide intense
stimulation?
Furthermore, Japanese researchers found that
playing computer games stunted the development of
the frontal lobe of the brain in teenagers, which
is a crucial part of developing impulse control.
The tendency to lose control is not due to children
absorbing the aggression involved in the computer
game itself, as previous researchers have
suggested, but rather to the damage done by
stunting the developing mind. The full article can
be accessed here: observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,539166,00.html
I don’t know about you, but when it comes
to decreasing the chances of my kids’
developing as well as they can, I don’t like
to take any chances. I don’t like to allow my
own denial to impact their
development—socially, physically, or any other
way.
Letting your kids play video games for hours
each week? Their brains only have one chance to
develop.
Can you really live with that?
© 2008 Mark
Brandenburg
Other Father Issues,
Books,
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* * *
To this day I can remember my father's
voice, singing over me in the stillness of the
night. - Carl G. Jung
Mark has
a Masters degree in counseling psychology and has
been a counselor, business consultant, sports
counselor, and a certified life and business coach.
He has worked with individuals, teams, and
businesses to improve their performance for over 20
years. Prior to life and business coaching Mark was
a world-ranked professional tennis player and has
coached other world-ranked athletes. He has helped
hundreds of individuals to implement his coaching
techniques. Mark specializes in coaching men to
balance their lives and to improve the important
relationships in their lives. He is the author of
the popular e-books, 25
Secrets of Emotionally Intelligent
Fathers
,
and Fix
Your Wife in 30 Days or Less (And Improve Yourself
at the Same Time
).
Mark is also the publisher of the “Dads
Don’t Fix your Kids” ezine for fathers.
To sign up, go to www.markbrandenburg.com
or E-Mail
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