Wednesday, March 17, 2010:
Video games can prove as compulsive an addiction as alcohol and cigarettes. Now a study has discovered that young boys who get their first video game system don't perform as well as boys who lack access to such devices. It was found that the average reading and writing scores of young players don't decline, but they don't show any remarkable improvement either, said Robert Weis of Denison University, Ohio, co-author of the study.
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"For children without games, scores go up over time," Weis said. "For boys with games, scores remain relatively stable. You don't see the typical development in reading and writing." It was found that these youngsters spent an average of about 40 minutes per day on the PlayStation II system, which results in their studies and play to suffer. Those children who lacked access to these devices averaged nine minutes a day of video gaming, mostly at their friends' homes, reports msnbc.com.
"Can anyone be surprised that kids tend to play more with new video games, or toys or bicycles, than with the older ones?" said Richard Taylor, senior vice president, communications, Entertainment Software Association, a trade group for video game makers. But children can soon get bored with the games and "the authors themselves note that they are not sure the effect would exist after four months," Taylor said.
Weis said studies had yet to be done to assess the effects of long-term ownership of video games. The study was published last week in the journal 'Psychological Science'.
Ashish Joshi, EFYTIMES News Network
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