If your child gets angry when you take away their gaming device, is secretive about their game usage and is isolating their friends and family to play video games, experts say they may have an issue with addiction.
Too much gaming can affect kids attention spans, sleep patterns and relationships.
Some say that kids who game a lot can become disillusioned with the real world, feeling that it isn’t as exciting as a gaming world. Video games are even accused of giving kids attention deficit disorder.
But is a lot of this just fear mongering? Are video games really that bad for kids?
The popular opinion is to say yes. And we say yes because mostly we don’t know what we’re talking about.
My daughters brand new pre-school is very sound and not far off the spoof twitter account for the uber politically correct fake daycare centre: Loz Feliz Daycare
At orientation night when I asked about technology and gaming in the classroom, all the parents tut tutted and said that they would be happier without the introduction of the evil forces of technology introduced to their untarnished offspring thank you very much. I think most of these opinions come out of ignorance more than anything else. And I think they’re missing out.
Yes there should be limits on the time kids spend on tech devices, and of course, parents should be monitoring what kids are playing, but good games teach kids so much. And they are here to stay.
Gaming expert, Gabe Zichermann, is an entrepreneur and author who has coined the term ‘gamification’. He believes the right games can help engage people and build strong organisations and communities.
When parents and teachers complain about short attention spans, he poses the question: “Do kids these days have short attention spans, or does the world just move too slow?”
He also believes that today's video games are making kids brighter, better problem solvers and help them to be champion multi taskers.
In a recent TED Talk, Zichermann says that we need to adapt and change, not the kids. He says that kids are learning in different ways and traditional teaching and positive reinforcement methods are becoming outdated. And this is not a bad thing, so long as we embrace it.
Researchers are starting to look at the positive impacts that gaming can have on the brain. They found that kids who played Tetris for 30 minutes a day for 3 months had a thicker cortex than those who didn’t play. (The cortex being the hub of co-ordination and information processing.)
It’s all about balance and commonsense. There are real dangers in the online world, but it’s great to focus on the positives too.
I think we as parents are starting to realise this. Technology, gaming and social media are going to be very important in our kids lives, and parents and teachers need to reflect this in their teaching styles and life lessons.
So I’m going to take my iPad in on the first day of pre-school, interrupt the knitting circle and FREAK ALL THE MUMS OUT, just for fun.
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