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If you believe what many in the media and on Capitol Hill say then you probably think that video games are a horrible influence on children and that gaming is making the world a worse place by teaching adolescents how to rape, rob, kill and pillage. Cheryl K. Olson, one of the authors of the book Grand Theft Childhood, has released a new article, titled "Children’s Motivations for Video Game Play in the Context of Normal Development," which says differently.
This article, which is based on a study that surveyed 1,254 middle school children, lists a number of healthy reasons why adolescents play video games. Let’s look at some of these reasons and see why they list them as healthy influences on children.
-Competition, Challenge and Mastery
"More than four of five boys surveyed indicated that they were motivated by competition, and 57% strongly agreed. The theme of competition also arose in nearly every focus group we conducted with young adolescent boys (Olson et al., 2008). For example, when a researcher asked one boy what part of a game was his favorite, he responded, 'Beating people!'"
"For boys, video games may be a means to jockey for social status, similar to the healthy developmental role filled by 'rough and tumble' play (Pellegrini, 2003). Boys can gain status among peers by owning or mastering a popular game. A study of male social identity that included 149 boys 14–15 years of age (Tarrant et al., 2001) found that “good at computer/video games” was second only to being “fun” as a desirable trait among one’s in-group members."
Not only was competition seen as a positive aspect of gaming by the children surveyed, but it also helped improve their self image.
"…Games can provide a safe space for young people to negotiate rules and discover the boundaries of acceptable behavior— such as the point where creative strategies are viewed as crossing the line into cheating or taking unfair advantage"
"Compared with other entertainment media (TV, radio, books), video game play demands a wider range of skills as well as a high tolerance for frustration. Specialized knowledge is required to install and use the game on the console or computer and to master the ever-evolving game controllers or game-specific keyboard commands. With each new game or game series, the player must figure out that game world’s regulatory mechanisms and causal connections before any fun can be had (Klimmt & Hartmann, 2006)."
-Cooperative Learning
I am currently in a program to become a middle school teacher, and cannot even begin to tell you how often our program focuses on the positive effects of cooperative learning.
"As one father said, 'Most of the interaction my son has with his buddies is about solving situations within a game. It’s all about how do you go from this place to that place, or collect the certain things that you need, and combine them in ways that are going to help you to succeed.' Peer-based learning can be seen as the positive flip side of the much-maligned “peer pressure” (Ito et al., 2009). In peer-based learning, young people congregate around common interests and motivate one another to learn through a combination of affiliation and competition."
"A study of discussion threads (public written conversations) in a multiplayer online game found that (aside from social banter) the majority of content focused on joint problem solving, including knowledge sharing and evidence-based debate (Steinkuehler & Duncan, 2008). The authors posit that this promotes “scientific habits of mind” and could be an important adjunct to school-based science education."
-Making Friends
Think about how many of your friends are also gamers. You might even have friends you never would have if not for gaming. Some of us bond over Call of Duty, Word of Warcraft or even Pokemon, but it is nearly universal that gaming brings people together, be it through sites like this one, gaming tournaments or online gaming.
"Whether to compete or connect, making friends is a major attraction of online games for adolescents and adults (Przybylski, Rigby, & Ryan, 2010; Yee, 2006b). The fact that they may never meet in the real world does not diminish the connection felt by online gamers. In his multiyear study of 30,000 players of MMORPGs… found that among players ages 12 to 17, 54.2% of girls and 30.0% of boys reported confiding secrets or personal issues to online gaming buddies that they had withheld from real-world friends."
-Leadership Opportunities
"In studies of multiplayer online games (Yee, 2006a), many adolescent players felt they had learned leadership skills such as mediation, persuasion, and motivation through their online group play experiences. Online gaming appears to offer a rare opportunity for an adolescent to take multiple roles (including leader) in a diverse, multiage team. As Yee (2006a) notes, “There are very few activities, hobbies or games in real life where you would find people with ages ranging from 11 to 69 interacting and collaborating to achieve shared goals” (p. 324)."
This is basically saying that games can model leadership behavior to children. As I have been learning how to become a teacher there has been a lot of talk of modeling. The idea of modeling is not hard to figure out. Basically it is showing people how you want them to act or how to perform an action you want them to replicate. While it is not hard to imagine that there is a good bit of modeling of bad behavior in games, we must not ignore the many positive traits they can model as well.
-Regulating Feelings
"In our youth survey, two thirds (62%) of boys and 44% of girls who played electronic games somewhat or strongly agreed that they sometimes used games to help them relax; substantial numbers also used games to cope with anger (45% of boys and 29% of girls). Forgetting problems and coping with loneliness were also cited as reasons for play."
"…Video games can do more than purge negative feelings; they can provide fun and stimulation to promote a positive mood."
That last quote is very important. Not only did the study find that gaming can “purge negative feelings,” it found that it can “promote a positive mood.” That goes almost 100% against the critiques laid against gaming by it’s detractors.
-Identity Experimentation
Identity formation is large part of developmental growth during adolescence. It is a perilous time in their lives where they will make choices about who they are and who they want to be which can effect the rest of their life.
"Customizing game characters can also be one way to experiment with different identities. In virtual worlds and multiplayer online games, children can design characters that look like them or they can try out looks that represent different ideas about masculinity and femininity. They can also enjoy the transgressive role of a scammer or bad guy or girl without real-life consequences while keeping their offline self-image as a good person… Children also enjoy the chance to experience being powerful or famous through a game character."
-Curiosity, Discovery, and Learning
"More than half of the children in our survey agreed that they liked to learn new things from video games; nearly one child in five was strongly motivated to play by the chance to learn.Shaffer and Gee (2005) give the example of a child whose interest in mythology (and related topics such as cultures, geography, and history) is stoked by playing Age of Mythology. The ability to “mod” this game through designing and exchanging maps and scenarios with other players adds to the appeal (and to the acquisition of technical skills). The game also creates a “hook” parents can use to connect their child to related material in books, on the Web, and in museums."
As gaming covers a wider breadth of subjects, this effect can only grow. From World War II to the conflicts of today, gaming is covering more historical ground every year. While many of these titles might not be focused explicitly on educating the player about these time periods, just the mere fact that players are experiencing them can be a hook to lead adolescents to look further into these settings and events.
-Facing Fears
Our society has become more sheltering of adolescents. Many parents believe that it is best to hide the potentially scary elements of life from their children due to a belief that frightening ideas might damage them in some way, but is this true?
"An attraction to violent and scary themes seems to be part of normal development. Playing with those frightening images helps a child master the physical and emotional sensations that go with being afraid. Historically, that was an important and even lifesaving skill. Scary stories and games let children experience and deal with those feelings at a time and place where they know they are safe. That is why fairy tales often dealt with themes like abandonment, murder, even cannibalism, and other content we now think of as 'adult.'"
“A study by Cortez and Bugental (1995) points to potential benefits of mastering fear through use of frightening media content. A sample of 5- and 6-year-old children watched a short videotaped fairy tale (narration with pictures) with either a child narrator and a plot where children saved parents from doom or an adult narrator and a story about a mother rescuing her children from evil. Children then watched a short video about a child’s routine visit to a doctor. The authors found that children who were “primed” with the story of child control were buffered from stress and more able to take in new information.”
Despite how some in the media and government want to portray our beloved hobby, gaming can also have a wealth of potential positive effects. However, like any other activity, there are also a myriad of potential negative effects. The truth is that gaming cannot be defined from just one angle. To get a true picture of the effect of gaming you must in fact look at the whole picture. This study also sheds some interesting light on some of the potential negative effects of gaming on adolescents, which I will delve into deeper in a future post. For now, I think this information provides an excellent window for us all to think about the effects gaming has had on our lives.
What do you think of the ideas presented in this article? Do you any ways gaming has had a positive effect in your life? Tell me how you feel in the comment section below.