Boys and Video Games

When my son was younger he played video games for hours. I struggled with this apparent obsession worrying about the impact many of the violent games were having on him. I worked hard to limit the amount of time he was spending with a controller in his hand waiting for someone to die. I often tried to engage in a dialogue with him around the violence and aggression he was witnessing on the screen.

Thankfully his love of video games passed and he moved on to other things. When I look at him at 16, soon to be 17 I can’t see that he suffered from playing the games. He’s always been a physically active boy so his involvement in sports has always kept him fit.

I recently read an interesting article in our local newspaper titled: “Boys exhibit high literacy skills with video games.” The headline caught my eye. The article outlined the results of research done at the University of Victoria in British Columbia that concluded that “even though girls consistently outscore boys on school standardized tests for reading and writing, the boys exhibited high level literacy skills while engaged in a leisure activity often blamed for instilling negative values.”

The article went on to say that although it may appear to a non -video player that staring at a video game screen may seem to be without purpose, designing and playing the games actually “helps to develop sophisticated operation, cultural and critical literacy skills.”

The article does point out as well that excessive participation in video games is contributing to childhood obesity and parents need to be aware of the violent and sexist messages they send.