A group of researchers have found a link between impulsive adolescents and the amount of time they spend playing video games. They say in their paper published in the APA journal Psychology and Popular Media Culture, that the more impulsive children, are the more likely they are to play video games more often and for longer periods of time.
To come to these conclusions, the team studied 3,034 children from 12 different schools between the ages of eight and eighteen. Some of the children responded to written or oral questionnaires while some were interviewed directly. Questions focused on both video game playing habits and personality and included standard personality tests. The team also frequented public places where children have access to free video game playing to study their actual playing habits.
Also, the group found another alarming statistic that emerged from the data and that was some children appear to become more impulsive as a result of spending extensive amounts of time playing video games, which means that are being negatively influenced by their behavior.
The data also showed that the degree of violence in the games played didn’t appear to have any more of an impact on impulsivity than did any other video game and that the results were nearly identical for all age groups studied as well as for both genders. They also noted that they found the same results held true regardless of race or general economic background.
The researchers suggest that their results show that extended video game playing can lead to problems with concentration, despite the fact that most require a great deal of attention in order to be successfully played. They say this is an illusion as most children learn to use just a part of their thinking to play the games and the rest goes virtually silent, somewhat like people who quite often go on “auto pilot” when driving their car. On the other hand, they say such children appear to have better than average visual processing skills and of course highly developed hand eye coordination, though even that seems to be limited to those necessary to play a video game.
The research team concludes by suggesting that more study needs to be done because so many children are spending so much of their time playing video games despite the lack of knowledge about what it might be doing to them. They say that such studies should help both educators and parents in determining how much time children should be allowed to play.